Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin - Leader of the Greens) - Mr Speaker, I thank the Premier for bringing this on today. It is an important motion and we are all thinking about the people, the civilians, everyone living in Israel and Palestine. We are all gripped by the news. The scale of brutality playing out horrifies and terrifies us. We cannot avoid seeing it and neither should we avoid seeing what is happening.
I first pay my respects to the Israeli families who have lost people they love and to the people who are suffering today with unspeakable anguish after they have watched the footage of the people they love, their children, teenagers and parents being murdered on livestream with glee and the horrifying acts of organised brutality carried out by Hamas, with the very old and very young being dragged away to a frightening fate as hostages. Israelis today, right now, are living with the pain of wondering what will be done to them.
Today our thoughts are also with the very innocent Palestinians; those living in Gaza in shock, living their own nightmare as the full force of the Israeli military is directed at the civilian population in an indiscriminate way. People have reported seeing their whole families being bombed to death in front of them, fleeing from block to block, and we hear the reports this morning from the United Nations members who are bravely in Gaza that there is no safe place for them to flee to. Apartment complexes have been purposely targeted and flattened, everyone inside dead and the city blocks are unrecognisable.
Mr Speaker, the pain of an Israeli parent is no different from the anguish of a Palestinian mother or father. The majority of all the deaths that have occurred so far have been amongst innocent civilians. Hamas' shocking summary killings and abductions of Israelis displayed a chilling disregard for life and international law. These deliberate acts were war crimes and have no justification.
In Gaza, close to half the population is under the age of 18 and the rising death toll there today poses a new war crime that is being committed as we speak by Israel. Gazan children have already been living there under an illegal blockade for the last 16 years and we have effectively participated in allowing that through our alliance with the United States and the Australian position. We have refused to speak out against the ongoing murder of children which has been called out by the United Nations. We have stayed silent. Gaza has become a ringed compound. People there have been starved of the basics of life and consigned to live in siege-like conditions as caged animals without effective employment and with poverty rates over 50 per cent.
Save the Children last year found horrifying rates of anxiety, sadness, grief and fear that exists in almost all Gazan children , with four out of five unable to sleep or concentrate, waiting every day for the next round of violence to erupt. These are the circumstances where now, according to Save the Children, more than half of Gaza's children have contemplated suicide, so we are seeing the horrifying and violent consequences of our decades-long failure to speak up and to really put more effort into negotiating a truce and intervening in the situation that has been unfolding before us for nearly two decades, and we shoulder some responsibility for not calling out acts of violence when they have been occurring.
We have appropriately, as a country, condemned the war crimes of Hamas, and the Greens strongly support that condemnation, but we have not, as a country, condemned the crimes of war that are being practised now by Israel against civilians in the bombing and the siege of Gaza. We disagree with the Labor minister who equivocated and said, 'It's difficult to judge from far away'. It was appropriate and quick to judge about Hamas' grotesque actions. It is very clear from the actions of the Israeli government at the moment that with the preparation of a ground invasion into the besieged territory and the fact that there is no humanitarian corridor the United Nations and other agencies can keep open, and the fact that civilians are being bombed and targeted as they are fleeing and attempting to find refuge, that there is another form of war crime occurring before us. All war crimes must be condemned.
Through our complicity and failure to stand against the attacks on defenceless civilians, we bear a moral responsibility. We have been too uncritical and have played sides in this issue, but there is no side when it comes to violence against civilians and Tasmanian Jewish people have the right to know - and we thank the Premier for bringing this on - that their governments, Tasmanian and Australian, condemn the despicable acts of glorified mass murder and hostage-taking that have occurred against Israeli civilians. Tasmanian Palestinians and people of Palestinian heritage also should know that our Government and the Australian Government have not turned our backs on international law and that we condemn the horrors of the carpet bombing and siege of Gaza and the innocent civilians who have been forced to flee to nowhere safe.
The Israeli government's commitment to enacting revenge on civilian populations is chilling and can only lead to an escalation and proliferation of fighting, which is what we are seeing. With other countries weighing in on this, we are seeing, by the equivocation of the United States and their failure to act strongly on this, a spread of violence. The Greens understand that violence begets more violence. We must address the root cause of the cycle of violence and it is more critical than ever that we are not selective about which crimes of war we denounce, so we condemn the actions of Israel and Hamas against defenceless civilians.
With that in mind, I thought much about whether we should do this but I believe it is very important to make a statement from the Tasmanian parliament, because the Australian parliament appears incapable of doing that at the moment, which is to apply the same standards to the war crimes that have been committed, by any country, by any terrorist group.
Therefore, I will move an amendment to paragraph (4) of this motion, because paragraph (1) appropriately and unequivocally condemns the attacks on Israel by Hamas, which were the heinous acts of terrorists and have encompassed the targeting and murdering of civilians, including women and children.
I move the following amendment to paragraph (4) -
Insert the following words after 'life':
'and condemns Israel's targeted bombing and siege of innocent Gazan civilians, including children'
I will circulate that amendment.
Mr Speaker, I have made this point really clearly. It is not just the Greens who are referring to what is occurring in Gaza as war crimes playing out. The United Nations and Amnesty International have made those same comments about the despicable acts by Hamas, and they are also making those comments today about what is occurring in Gaza. This is Amnesty International and the human rights organisations that are making this statement.
I believe it is so important that we do not pick sides when it comes to international law. Now more than ever, if we do not stand up for the rule of international law, then who will? If we do not set the tone for the future of the planet we want to live on, then it becomes a more and more lawless place, it gives cover for other countries to move into this space and to take up sides, but there can be no sides when it comes to war crimes. They must be called out; they are despicable.
I really hope that members can understand the good spirit I move this amendment to the motion in. Before I finish, I want to say that it is so important and I want to thank the Premier for adding in paragraphs (8) and (9) about condemning all forms of hate speech and violent extremist activity, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and that there is no place for hateful prejudice in Tasmania.
What we have seen unfold in Australia with the hate speech that has occurred is deplorable and it is the trojan horse that is used by neo-Fascists in these situations to beat up fear and loathing of people in the community. It is being against Jewish people, it is being used against Muslims and we have to stand strong against that.
We strongly agree and thank the Premier for adding for that part to the motion. I have moved that amendment and I again thank the Government again for bringing on this motion today.
