Angry

I listen to Radio Melbourne, I've never rung in but my other half says if I did I'd be "Angry of Aspendale". 

Usually I would say I'm not angry, I'm passionate. But at the moment I am angry, angry and disappointed, angry and sad. I feel the world we've been chipping away at has slipped away from us, so much further out of reach. 

I was full of hope that the Australian public would recognise the wounds of our colonial past, would see the need for change, would heed the call made in the Statement from the Heart, and vote yes to a constitutional voice for our First Nations people. 

I sat on the couch on that Saturday night, and wept for our lost opportunity, for First Nations people who had worked so hard and held such open hearts for reconciliation to have the door slammed in their face. For our Nation beholden to fear, to the status quo, to the deeply held and mostly unacknowledged discrimination and racism. 

I wept, and my 10 year old held me, and I felt broken.     

And the days after, the ever increasing numbers of women killed by their partners and exes, elderly Aboriginal women dragged in the street by security guards paid by local government, deaths in custody. Let alone the floods, fires and impending heatwave while climate change deniers stick to their rhetoric. 

Then the Hamas attack, and the following population level punishment of a displaced people in a confined, militarised place - with so called democratic "civilised" countries failing to call for a ceasefire, as UN offices, schools and hospitals are targeted. 

How can Albanese go from promoting the Voice, to supporting Israel's right to defend itself? How can we with one breath seek to begin reconciling the impacts of genocide and colonialism that have profound and ongoing impacts we are still feeling, to supporting the occupation of Palestine land, the torching the olive groves, the withholding of fuel, food, water, electricity, power? How? 

Yes, it's complicated. Yes, this has a long and complex history. Yes, Jewish people have been subjected to horrific, unimaginable prescution, yes the trauma of the holocaust is huge, deep, long, beyond comprehension. Yes.

Yes, the kidnapping and killing by Hamas is awful, reprehensible.

But

Does this mean that a people forced off their land, held for decades in a narrow strip should be punished in their thousands, men, women, children? 

That we step back, brush our hands on our thighs, sigh, say it's complicated, nod, and go back to business as usual. 

As the UN calls for ceasefire. As 5000 children have died, and the hospitals have no fuel for premi baby incubators. 

There is racism here, scratch a little below the surface. 

Hamas murdered Israelis (absolutely they did). Gazans have died. 

Hamas is responsible. The Israeli government is not. 

As the Israeli military bomb hospitals how can we accept their rhetoric that Hamas holds responsibility for these bombs, for the killing of civilians? 

Deep down do Australians believe the white bodies of the lost Israelis are worth more than the brown bodies of Palestinians? Do we believe the often sown seeds of Palestines being responsible for their own destruction? That this brutal incessant attack on civilians is justified? 

And now I'm on holiday, listening to construction hammering and big band music waft through the humid Queensland air. I get to put on my swimmers and jump in a pool with my kids. Go for a wander for a good place for breakfast. I am so incredibly lucky, and I know, ridiculously, and I feel guilty. 

I know there is so little I can do to effect postive change in the world, as I nudge and explain, show and lay the tracks so that some day in the very local spaces others will be able to chug down them. I know the limit of efforts around global issues is email writing, matching and voting. Some times it feels too little. Not enough. So much suffering.

But, today and for a few days, I'll give the news a break. Read novels, and go on adventures with my fam. I'll try and refill this cup. To come back, to march and write and talk and lay more track. To keep on hoping for justice and peace.