Few would have predicted that nine months after the October Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, an Australian Labor Party senator would break decades of caucus solidarity and cross the floor of parliament to vote with the crossbench. Nor could anyone have predicted that local uprisings in Syria beginning in March 2011 would eventually see several hundred Australian men and women travel to that country and Iraq to support a group committed to attacking Australia, and that dozens more would help facilitate or conduct attacks in Australia itself.
By contrast, equally significant and tragic world events, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the civil war in Sudan that has raged for the past 18 months, have made barely a ripple in Australian society. Claims of genocide being carried out in Gaza are routinely raised in parliament and in street protests, while Greens leader Adam Bandt has accused the Israeli military of engineering a famine.
Illustration by Simon Letch
Yet in Sudan, separated from Gaza by less than half the distance that separates Perth from Sydney, a conflict that is unfolding at the same time – with far more devastating humanitarian consequences for the civilian population when not only deaths but displacements, malnutrition and disease are taken into account – has had no impact on either Australian society or Australian politics.
Of course, some of the reasons are readily apparent. The Russia-Ukraine conflict is largely binary and therefore easily understood. It also pits the........