COMPLICITY IN GENOCIDE.

In 1937, the man who would go on to become Australia’s longest-serving PM, Bob Menzies, as Attorney-General in the Lyons Government, signed a contract selling 300,000 tons of scrap pig iron to Japan. The Waterside Workers Federation refused to load the ships on which it was to be sent, citing fears that it could be used to make munitions to fire back at Australians. His policy was part of a mistaken view that appeasement would see aggressors stop as they wouldn’t get a reaction.

At the time, Japan had invaded the Eastern parts of China and was moving down, and there were fears that Australia would be at war within a few years.

A friend of my paternal grandfather’s was a POW in Changi, and he said, “Beatings, yes, they were bad. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they were atrocities.” He was right. Even if death was preferable to dishonour amongst the Japanese, the use of the atomic bomb was disproportionate to what was happening. What makes the use of the atomic bomb even worse is that yes, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szeland knew the dangers if the splitting of U-235 atoms could be harnessed into a bomb, but nobody knew anything about radiation sickness.

There has been fierce discussion in Australia about the sale of munitions parts to Israel or to other countries that manufacture weapons that are then sold to Israel, and the fact of the matter is, if this country sells munitions parts that end up in their hands, then it is complicit in genocide. And what is occurring in Gaza makes the bombing of Hiroshima look like a party prank by comparison. None of us are that naive that we believe that selling munitions parts to another country is for anything other than warfare!