James Supple looks at how Israel is continuing its Gaza genocide, ongoing Australian complicity and how we can fight it
Updated satellite photos on Google Maps in September brought home the horrifying destruction resulting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They show whole cities such as Rafah completely turned to rubble.
These crimes have only been possible due to the arming and support of Israel by the West, including the Australian government.
One year since the so-called ceasefire began, Israel continues to kill almost every day through bombings, drone strikes and gunfire.
More than 1400 Palestinians have been killed since it began in October last year, bringing recorded deaths from three years of genocide to over 74,000.
More than ten were killed in one day in September, including a pregnant woman, Iman Shalouf. ‘‘We heard the sound of gunfire while I was praying,’’ her mother-in-law told Anadolu. “My daughter asked me, ‘Where is Iman?’ I told her she was in her tent. She went to check on her and found her covered in blood.”
Israel continues to impose a barbaric siege on the whole population of over two million people through blocking basic aid and reconstruction. This is a blatant war crime.
Most people have spent years living in tents or makeshift shelters.
“When it rains, the sand under the tent turns to mud, and water seeps in from several places.
“We lift the mattresses and pile things on top of each other, then wait for the rain to stop,” Rasha Salama, a 36-year-old mother of three, told The New Arab.
“We’ve been living like this for three years. The summer suffocates us, the winter terrifies us and, in between, we just try to keep the tent standing.”
In September the World Health Organization announced it was unable to supply diesel to operate generators for electricity at more than 20 hospitals and medical centres.
“We are short of even the most basic medicines and equipment, such as gauze,” Fadi Husam, who works in the Khan Younis emergency department, said.
Israel restricts a long list of items that it claims can be used for military purposes. These include toilet seats, sleeping bags, tarpaulins, tents and construction materials.
Even wheelchairs have been prevented from entering–including 900 wheelchairs donated by the Australian charity Kids on Wheels Alliance that have been barred since October 2025. Israel’s bombing means Gaza has the largest number of child amputees per capita in the world.
“Today it is engine oil and spare parts; tomorrow it will be something else,” said Felipe Ribeiro, an aid worker with MSF. “The items change, but the logic remains the same: reducing people to conditions in which life becomes untenable and dignity is systematically stripped away … It is a deliberate effort to make existence itself impossible.”
Basic services like running water cannot be repaired because Israel refuses to allow in spare parts. Most people are reliant on water trucks provided by aid groups.
Nada Arouqi told Al Jazeera that trucks often reach their area in Gaza City only twice a week. Some weeks they do not make it at all.
The collapse of the sewerage system means that 150,000 cubic metres of untreated sewage is discharged daily, spreading disease and creating a breeding ground for insects and rodents.
Israel aims to create inhuman conditions so that the population will feel they have no choice but to leave. This is a policy of genocide aimed at ethnic cleansing.
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has made this explicit, releasing a plan to empty Gaza in seven years through what he called “voluntary migration”.
Defence Minister Israel Katz, too, has declared that Palestinians will eventually leave, saying this was “the only solution” and the problem was only finding countries to take them and gaining US approval.
Trump may have retreated from his immediate support for ethnic cleansing, following opposition from Egypt. But he has backed Israel continuing the genocide and blatantly violating the ceasefire.
Israel has still not met its obligations to cease armed attacks and end restrictions on aid set out in the October 2025 agreement. In August, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu bluntly rejected a new agreement that Trump negotiated for Hamas to disarm, showing Israel’s disinterest in peace.
Israel insists on Hamas’s complete capitulation, demanding that it fully disarm before Israel even begins to withdraw from Gaza. Israel has extended the area it occupies from the 53 per cent of Gaza set out in the ceasefire and now controls between 60 and 70 per cent.
Yet Trump is planning another $2.8 billion arms sale to Israel, including tens of thousands of massive 2000-pound bombs, the Washington Post says.
Israel is stepping up ethnic cleaning in the West Bank, too, with violent settler attacks reaching unprecedented levels aimed at driving Palestinian villagers from their land.
At least 103 new illegal settlements and outposts have been authorised under the current Israeli government, including the E1 project that would effectively cut the West Bank in two.
Brutal world order
Israel is a terror state that has spread death and destruction across the region. It continues to wipe out whole villages in Lebanon and helped push the US into the disastrous war on Iran.
The West’s backing of Israel has exposed the brutal reality of the imperialist world order and the barbarism that the US and its allies like Australia will support.
This is not the result of the Zionist lobby, as some say. It is based on a brutal calculation about how to boost US power.
For decades, the US has viewed Israel as an indispensable ally in controlling the Middle East. The region’s oil remains vital for the functioning of the global capitalist economy.
This is shown by the disruption of oil supplies after Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz, with initial panic about the threat to the global economy and ongoing anxiety about resulting inflation. Emergency measures to maintain oil supplies have partially overcome this.
The region’s importance is shown by the string of US wars and efforts at regime change, from the coup in Iran in 1953, support for Saddam Hussein’s eight-year war against Iran during the 1980s, two invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003, and the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Israel has been the only reliable watchdog state for Western interests in a region plagued by uprisings and opposition to the bloody history of Western imperialism.
Albanese’s support for Israel is a product of his determination to maintain the US alliance. Albanese is constantly trying to show his support for US power, chasing selfies with Donald Trump and throwing his support behind the $368 billion AUKUS nuclear submarines.
This is seen as the price for securing a world order where Australia has a seat at the table, alongside Australian control of the south Pacific. The Australian ruling class is prepared to throw hundreds of billions into supporting US global domination.
The fight for Palestine needs to be linked to opposition to Australian imperialism and the preparations for war on China, including the growing number of US bases here.
Surging military spending also means cuts to services from schools and hospitals to the NDIS. The impact of this on working class people here provides a basis for broadening opposition and winning union support.
Resisting repression
Since the Bondi attack last December, Albanese and pro-Israel groups have tried to attack the movement for Palestine, slandering it as somehow responsible and launching a Royal Commission into antisemitism aimed at silencing it.
Their determination to crack down on the movement shows the ruling class concern about how far support for Palestine has spread.
But they have failed to shift the broad opposition to Israel’s crimes. This was symbolised by the visit of Israel President Isaac Herzog in February. Albanese was left humiliated after tens of thousands joined protests across the country just two months after Bondi, defying anti-protest laws and police violence.
Australians have one of the world’s most hostile attitudes towards Israel, with 79 per cent viewing it unfavourably according to a Pew international poll this year.
The horror at the Gaza genocide that saw 300,000 march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge last year has not gone away.
But governments are trying to intimidate people against speaking out for Palestine. The Queensland government has banned Palestine slogans “From the River to the Sea” and “Globalise the Intifada”, while NSW Premier Chris Minns hopes to follow suit.
Activists can lose their jobs for comments on social media, as seen in the recent effort to ban John Morris from teaching in Sydney. At Sydney Uni the Students Representative Council has had its funding threatened after allowing an election ticket named “Globalise the Intifada”.
It is possible to stand up to repression. Students have beaten efforts at disciplinary action at Sydney Uni, Melbourne Uni and ANU, through mobilising in defiance of threats from university administration. An outpouring of support saw Sheik Wesam Charkawi, an activist with the Muslim Vote, reinstated to his job at a Sydney high school. The Adelaide Writers Festival had to back down and re-issue an invitation to speak to Randa Abdel-Fattah for 2027.
The UK’s decision to impose sanctions on West Bank settlements shows how pressure for Albanese to act can resurface. Albanese has tried to avoid action by pretending his government is not involved in Israel’s genocide. There is still not enough understanding of the scale of Australian complicity and ties with Israel.
The government continues to help arm the genocide through allowing the export of weapons parts for F-35 fighter jets, explosive material for tens of thousands of artillery shells and military grade steel, and sends military intelligence from Pine Gap.
There are also ties with Israel and the weapons companies arming it on university campuses, workplaces and events like the Sydney marathon.
Campaigns for sanctions and to cut ties can impose real costs on Israel, help broaden the understanding of its crimes and expose the depth of Albanese’s complicity.
