If Gaza’s Children Were White, Would Australia Call Out Their Genocide?

Yes the PM has finally agreed to recognise Palestine as a state. But Australia is still exporting weapons to Israel. We continue diplomatic ties. And the PM and Penny Wong draw on carefully worded ambiguity from DFAT to avoid any mention of"genocide". Australia's concern is wrapped in acquiescence. Meanwhile in Gaza, civilians, brown children, continued to be starved, bombed and shot to death.

So today I left this white-skinned doll and battered toy pram with a letter outside Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra.

Not as a stunt. But as a question. A provocation. A mirror.

My letter to the DFAT Secretary Jan Adams asks if the children being starved, shot and bombed in Gaza looked like this, would Australia still be so weak?

We like to tell ourselves that Australia is multicultural. But our foreign policy institutions remain essentially white and elite. From DFAT’s executive ranks to the assumptions embedded in our diplomacy, the power to define whose lives matter and whose don’t sits with a narrow and privileged few.

That’s why I placed this white doll outside DFAT.

Because if the children of Gaza looked like her - if they were white, Western, and English-speaking - then I honestly believe Australia’s response would be faster, firmer, and louder.

This doll is a question Australia must face: Would we be acting differently if the victims looked more like us?

Racism isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it’s in what we don’t say. What we delay. What we ignore. What we permit through inaction.

The children of Gaza didn’t launch rockets or kidnap anyone. They’re not combatants. They’re not “collateral damage.” They’re kids. They’re daughters and sons. They’re humans being annihilated with our silence.

So I’m asking DFAT, PM Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, and all of us:

“If the children of Gaza were white, would Australia still be watching their annihilation?”