Former chief of general staff of the Israeli military, (ret.) lieutenant general Benny Gantz, will address United Israel Appeal fundraising dinners in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne between 28 February and 9 March.

The UIA is an instrument of Israel’s policy of colonial dispossession of the Palestinians. While more than half of all Palestinians live in exile, unable to return to their occupied homeland, the UIA funds Jewish immigrants, who have no historic connection to the land, to settle in Israel/Palestine.

Gantz was the military’s man in charge when Israel launched its last blitzkrieg against Gaza, Operation Protective Edge, in July 2014. Over five weeks, the tiny Palestinian enclave on the Mediterranean Sea was carpet-bombed, and entire neighbourhoods were bulldozed.

More than 2,000 Palestinians were killed, including 500 children. Today, tens of thousands of Gaza residents continue to live among the rubble of destroyed and damaged homes, unable to rebuild due to a blockade of the territory imposed by Israel and Egypt’s military junta.

In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Palestinians face daily terror at the hands of Israel’s occupying army. Since last October, 170 Palestinians have been slain in routine acts of violence by Israeli troops and settlers. Most of those killed – including more than two dozen children – were shot dead during what Israel alleges were stabbings or car ramming attacks at West Bank settlements and checkpoints.

Dozens more Palestinians have been gunned down while attending street protests.

The Australian government has sent numerous delegations to Israel, and missed no opportunities to expound the virtues of Israel’s apartheid state and colonialist policy.

At an Australia-Israel-UK Leadership Dialogue gala dinner, held in Jerusalem last December, attorney general George Brandis praised Israel’s supposedly enlightened values: “Societies based on liberalism and democracy and freedom and respect for the individual are not the rule, they are the exception”, he said, according to a report in the Australian Jewish News.

“Your struggle as the custodians of the enlightened values of liberty and the freedom of the individual inspires those who journey across the world to join you for this important conference. On behalf of the Australian delegates I salute you. Your struggle is our struggle too.”

The “struggle” to which Brandis refers, is not one for “liberty and freedom”. Rather, it is a century-long campaign by the Zionist movement, supported by first British and then US imperialism, to ethnically cleanse historic Palestine of its indigenous people and establish a colonial settler state.

A nation born of ethnic cleansing

Zionism – the official ideology of the Jewish state – is based upon a myth: that Palestine constitutes the “homeland” of the Jewish people, from which they were exiled and strived for centuries to return to. “A land without people for a people without land” is how Zionists frame their story. Like the Australian version, terra nullius, this founding myth is a lie.

Israel’s declaration of independence, on 14 May 1948, followed a UN resolution that partitioned Palestine, which was then under British colonial control. The independence declaration was accompanied by a campaign of terror by Zionist militias. A million Palestinians (more than half of the population) were expelled from their homes, and thousands more were massacred. Hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated in an event known to Palestinians as the Nakba (Catastrophe).

Stolen land and property seized from the fleeing Palestinian population were immediately handed over to Jewish immigrants and ex-soldiers. Unlike Jewish citizens, Palestinians were subject to martial law. Palestinians required permits to enter or leave their own towns; political activity and organisations were banned.

The 1967 “Six Day War” began a new Israeli land grab. Israel’s invasion and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza left it in control of all of historic Palestine. Today, Palestinians living under military occupation in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem are subject to more than 3,000 Israeli military regulations. Issued at the whim of a military commander, these orders affect every aspect of Palestinian daily life, including legal identity, education, employment, health care, housing, freedom of movement and political activity.

Australia: an accessory to genocide

Israel’s colonial enterprise would not be possible without the massive military aid it receives from the United States. On 13 February, an Israeli cabinet minister told Defense News that US president Obama had offered Israel a package of more than US$40 billion in military aid over 10 years, beginning in 2018.

According to a US official in Israel, the latest offer “will be the largest single pledge of military assistance to any country in US history”, exceeding the $3 billion per year negotiated by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush. For Washington, Israel remains a vital ally in its efforts to preserve influence in the oil-rich Middle East.

The Australian government, which since World War Two has served as a strategic ally for US imperialism, has backed Israel at every turn. It was an Australian attorney general, Doc Evatt, who chaired the UN committee that first proposed the partition of Palestine. A Labor deputy prime minister, Julia Gillard, voiced her government’s support for Israel’s 2008-09 attack on Gaza.

In January 2014, Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop told the Times of Israel that the “international community” (the club of rich nation states) should refrain from calling settlements “illegal” under international law – which they are. A few months later, Brandis announced that the Australian government would no longer refer to East Jerusalem as “occupied”. Such “judgmental language” is unhelpful, he declared.

Judgmental language is of course fine when the government’s target is asylum seekers fleeing repression in Syria, or Muslim religious leaders expressing concern about Australia’s jackboot diplomacy in the Middle East.

The solidarity offered to the state of Israel by Australia’s ruling class is born of a common history: two colonial enterprises that have sought to hide genocide with a myth of resilience and stoicism by colonial settlers who have triumphed against adversity.

But their history is not our history. The stoicism we celebrate is the Palestinian spirit of sumud (steadfastness) unequivocally expressed by Palestinian journalist Muhammad al-Qiq, who has just secured a May release date after a three-month hunger strike in protest against his detention without charge or trial.

When Israeli war criminals Benny Gantz and Reuven Rivlin come to town, let’s raise our voices loud and clear, and express our steadfast solidarity with the Palestinians’ struggle for liberation.