In the Media

The Australian – 4 October 2024

In the aftermath of Iran’s second massive missile attack on Israel on October 1 – which followed the systematic elimination and dismantling of Hezbollah’s military command including the terror group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah – it’s crucial to understand the nature of the war we’re dealing with and where it’s going.

The war was launched by Israel’s enemies on October 7 via Hamas’ bloodthirsty invasion of southern Israel, which killed almost 1,200 Israelis and saw more than 200 hostages abducted to Gaza. Hezbollah joined the war on the northern front the following day, before Israel had even recaptured all of its own territory in the south.

In time, other Iranian proxies, such as the Houthis in Yemen and Iraqi Shi’a militias, were recruited into the war effort. Finally, in April, Tehran removed its mask and attacked Israel directly in a long-range missile and drone barrage thwarted with the participation of the US and its regional allies.

What do Iran and its proxies actually want? Just over two weeks after the attack, Ghazi Hamad from Hamas’ Political Bureau told Lebanese television that “we must remove [Israel] because it constitutes a security, military and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation.”

Hamad’s failure to cite Palestinian liberation or nationalism as a goal was no accident. Hamas is not seeking Palestinian statehood, demanding an end to the “occupation” of the West Bank, or reacting to Israeli policies. It may occasionally allude to such grievances, but as Hamad made clear, Hamas’ behaviour is driven by beliefs about Israel’s existence as an insult and danger to Islam.

Iran has spent decades and billions of dollars creating a network of terror proxies surrounding Israel and is quite open that it seeks the Jewish state’s complete destruction. Furthermore, its leaders believed they were winning.

How can that be, when the military capabilities of both Hamas and Hezbollah have been heavily degraded and most of the West agree, at least in principle, that Hamas must not be allowed to rebuild this capability or continue ruling Gaza, and Hezbollah must be made to pull back from the border?

Hamas, Iran and other jihadist groups are following the logic of muqawama (resistance), an Islamist doctrine. As Israel strategic analyst Gen. Gershon HaCohen explains, this “amounts to a different cultural view of the phenomenon of war itself. In the West, war is seen as a deviation from a stable order… managed with the aim of restoring a state of peace… Within the framework of muqawama, fighting is oriented towards maintaining and preserving a continuous momentum of friction and struggle” – forever, if necessary.

Meanwhile, in flagrant violation of international law, Hamas has been using all of Gaza’s civilians as human shields and hospitals, schools and even humanitarian tent camps as command-and-control centres and staging points for rocket launches, sniper nests and ambushes.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has declared that the civilian losses made inevitable by Hamas tactics are necessary sacrifices. Meanwhile, from the safety of a television studio in Lebanon, Hamad insisted, “We are a people of martyrs.”

The willingness of Hamas and Hezbollah to sacrifice civilians by fighting in a manner guaranteed to put them in harm’s way has in fact proven to be a powerful tool in its arsenal.

The IDF can point to having apparently achieved the best ratio of combatant to non-combatant deaths in the history of modern urban warfare. Military historians can agree it has made unprecedented efforts to try to evacuate civilians from areas likely to come under attack. Yet Israel’s war effort is constantly vilified and denounced because Hamas and Hezbollah made sure it would occur under conditions that would guarantee substantial civilian deaths, no matter what tactics the IDF used.

A year in, Israel’s war in Gaza is winding down just as fighting with Hezbollah and Iran is escalating. However, the Iranian axis’ war of annihilation against Israel – driven by the muqawama doctrine – has only just begun.

Disappointingly, here in Australia our Government has, far too often over the past year, accepted a Hamas-framed narrative about real-time war events, effectively rewarded the Palestinians for Hamas’ murderous terrorism, treated Iran with kid gloves and used our long-standing democratic partner Israel as a political punching bag.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s recent address at the United Nations bought into the falsehood that recognition of a Palestinian state in the absence of a peace agreement would somehow undermine terrorists. In reality, it would only energise them.

The Albanese Government urgently needs to change diplomatic course to reflect the reality of the unholy alliance of Iranian-led axis of Shi’a and Sunni jihadist groups, and their muqawama doctrine that feeds a perpetual war strategy, not only against Israel but the entire West.

Failure to do so will not only have grave implications for Israel’s security but our own security and national interests.

Dr Colin Rubenstein is Executive Director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affair Council (AIJAC).