Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, breaks his vow of silence

from room 101 - the blog of a foreign aid worker in Gaza.

Well, Mr. Smith, I see you found your voice, (Civilian casualties 'horrify' Australia) and I know it is difficult to speak out in Australia; you might lose your career over it, so I do take some solace in the fact that you did at least speak out. What you said was, "I think it's true to make this point, that when Australians see civilian casualties, whether they are casualties from Gaza, whether they are casualties from Israel itself, Australians are horrified by those casualties."

Now, don't get me wrong. The 3 civilians killed in Israel due to rocket attacks is a dreadful loss of life and my heart does go out to the families who have lost dear ones. However the 900 casualties in Gaza, including 350 children, 160 women, and who knows how many civilian men, and the way they have died: bombed in schools, bombed with white phosphorous (which burns to the bone), allegedly through Dense Inert Metal Explosives, through being sheperded into houses and then shelled or maybe just from having aid denied to them - that's what horrifies me. That, and my government's complicity in the whole shebang.

By the way, now the Israelis are saying that the school in which 40 civilians died was bombed by a stray mortar, despite initially claiming that the school was teeming with militants .