A lone Japanese woman stands proud, a dignified presence in the multitude of excited and excitable faces. Her tin pot and ladle in tune to chants of free, free Palestine. Her mind is not on the extremists or the ideals of high justice, and humanity’s many treaties to which only a few adhere. Her mind is on the children, the starving malnourished countless innocents, they whom, as seems to be the wont of human history, are always the first to be thrown into the mix as collateral damage. Feed the children, stop the blockade, she half shouts, half sings. She is not oblivious to the many whose cameras are trained on her but her mind is far from the purview of gotcha social media moments. Nonetheless, they will make her an instant star of this protest, a star of this historic protest set in one of the most recognisable man-made edifices in the world. Her agitation palpable but contained built into her small frame through generations of elegant stoicism, but being so perhaps is more keenly felt amongst her kindred, with only a touch of sadness detectable from the way her eyes waver and give quiet permission to her image being distributed across the panicky connected world.
Most people who are here today on an historic day of protest would not have heard of the principle of erga omnes partes but collectively this is what they seek. Erga omnes impose an obligation on all state parties to enforce international law, specifically international human rights law. They are calling for the Australian government – along with the rest of the world – to impose sanctions on Israel not unlike those imposed on South Africa when it followed an Apartheid regime. Economic sanctions proved an effective means of enforcing international human rights law and forcing the end of apartheid South Africa. Our politicians are again being called to take effective action and help end a brutal regime, to correct the course of history, one which began with the catastrophic mistakes made by the British mandates of 1948. It’s time.