Australia/Israel Review

Why now?

The question of whether US President Joe Biden or President-elect Trump deserved credit for Hamas and Israel signing a ceasefire agreement was a subject of contention. 

In the West Australian (Jan. 17), former UK Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard wrote, “The deal should be seen not as the final hurrah of the Biden administration but, rather, as the first foreign policy success of Mr Trump’s second term.”

Pollard argued that Trump’s extensive achievements in the Middle East during his first term as President showed why both sides signed the deal, explaining, “Trump gets that the single most important factor in succeeding in the Middle East is showing strength and being seen to mean it.” 

On ABC TV “7.30” (Jan. 16), US-based analyst Ghaith al-Omari said, “The turning point was last October when Israel killed Hamas’ leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza,” strengthening the more “amenable wing of Hamas… the guys who understood… time is not on their side.”

On the same program Tal Schneider of the Times of Israel added, “Hamas was weakened by the fact that the other terror organisation in Lebanon, Hezbollah… was also… hit, quite hard. The Syrians’ events [resulted in] Iranian detachment from their axis. So, all these things weakened Hamas in Gaza.”

In News Corp papers (Jan. 17), former Australia Ambassador to Israel and current Liberal Senator Dave Sharma wrote, “It’s a good thing Israel did not listen to the Albanese government. If it had there would be no ceasefire deal and no release of hostages.”

 

Always Israel’s fault

On ABC TV “News” (Jan. 14), Global Affairs Editor John Lyons blamed Israel for the length of time it has taken to get the ceasefire-hostage deal signed. 

Lyons said, “The outgoing American Ambassador to Israel has given a fascinating interview to the Times of Israel, where he talks about this and says that there were so many points at which the Government of Israel, they were close to a ceasefire. This is what the outgoing Ambassador said. He said that there were points at which the Government of Israel took private and small differences and widened them and made them public, essentially to say that therefore we can’t do a ceasefire deal.”

Actually, in that interview, Ambassador Jack Lew mentions the ceasefire exactly once, and that was in reference to March 2024, when the UN Security Council was considering voting on a resolution calling for a ceasefire. 

The fact is that, starting in May 2024, Hamas refused to agree to any ceasefire proposal, and Biden Administration officials have said as much many times. Hamas only shifted its position because of the deterioration in its strategic position.

 

Nothing to see here

The hostage-ceasefire deal raised the question of how successful Israel has been in degrading Hamas’ terror capabilities and its capacity to rule over Gaza.

On ABC TV “News” (Jan. 16), the Palestinian Authority’s representative in Australia Izzat Abdulhadi expressed confidence that Hamas’ military capabilities have been “reduced to the minimum” and the group exercises “no governance now in Gaza. The only governance is Israelis, because they control also Gaza military.” 

However, in an interview with the Weekend Australian (Jan. 18), lawyer ‘Mazen’ in Gaza, who established the ‘We Want to Live’ anti-Hamas protest movement in 2019, said, “I’m feel very disappointed about the ceasefire deal… I was hoping that the war would result in the ending of Hamas rule, but as we see now, Hamas is back, and Hamas now, when the ceasefire is signed, they will come back and kill all those who were in opposition to Hamas, a dissident to Hamas, including myself.”

In the Age/SMH (Jan. 17), Rodger Shanahan suggested that while Hamas has suffered a “grievous defeat”, unless there is meaningful progress toward a two-state solution and reforms addressing the conditions in Gaza, the same environment that allowed Hamas to rise could lead to the emergence of a successor organisation.

The Australian on Jan. 21 said, “It is hardly a surprise that [Israel] has struggled to eliminate Hamas completely or to break its control over the Gazan population. For 15 months Hamas has been able to callously use the hapless population of two million people as human shields to forestall Israel’s strategy. So, too, with the precarious situation of the hostages being held by the terrorists.

Hamas forces have regrouped in one city after another as Israeli forces pummelled them, then moved on. By the start of 2025, Israeli troops had cleared Hamas out of some neighbourhoods three times, only to see the jihadists return. Israel has had to fight a war (one it did not start) with more than just one arm tied behind its back.” 

 

How long?

On Jan. 19, Sky News quoted Strategic Analysis Australia’s Peter Jennings’ opinion that the ceasefire is “not permanent”.

“It’s just a ceasefire – it’s not a permanent peace deal, it can’t be a permanent peace deal… ceasefires are made to be broken, and I expect that’s what I think is going to happen because, ultimately, Israel will continue fighting for its own survival,” he said.

On SBS “News in Depth” podcast (Jan. 16), AIJAC Research Associate Dr Ran Porat said, “The concern is about the longer term, the future. Will [the ceasefire] lead to a better future between Israel and Palestinians, Israel and the Middle East? These are questions very much still open.”

 

Hospital blues

On Jan. 2, News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt slammed the slanted coverage by the ABC, SBS and BBC of Israel’s efforts to eject terrorists based in Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital. 

Bolt accused the media of pretending it was a civilian hospital, when “unlike most Gaza hospitals [it’s] run by the General Directorate of Military Medical Services.”

In the Daily Telegraph and Courier Mail (Jan. 15), AIJAC’s Oved Lobel argued that a new UN report on damage caused to Gaza hospitals whitewashed Hamas’ illegal use of medical facilities for terror purposes. The report “left unmentioned… why there has been ‘sustained combat in and around many hospitals,’ in Gaza, with the implication being that the Israel military may be intentionally attacking hospitals,” he wrote.

 

Truth and Untruths

Talking about the imminent ceasefire-hostage deal to ABC TV “News” (Jan. 17), Palestinian academic Rami Khouri dispelled the accusation that Israelis are warmongers.

Most Israelis, he said, “want the hostages to be released” in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and for the IDF to “stop attacking Gaza and pull out of the Gaza Strip.”

In addition, Khouri said, “The vast majority of citizens in Israel and in Palestine want the ceasefire to happen and the exchange, hoping that it would possibly open the door months and months down the road to a negotiation for a permanent resolution of this conflict.”

Unfortunately, Khouri also claimed that 150,000 Palestinians had died since Hamas’ October 7 massacre, which is more than three times the official estimate. 

Elsewhere, on ABC TV “News” (Jan. 16), pro-Palestinian lobbyist Nasser Mashni claimed 250,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. 

 

Exposing the cracks

Media reporting of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) decision to suspend Al Jazeera from operating in the West Bank briefly opened a window into the rarely covered area of internal Palestinian disputes. 

On Jan. 2, an ABC online report noted that the Qatari-owned broadcaster was accused by the PA of spreading disinformation, glorifying violence and inciting armed mutiny. The suspension followed its reporting of a young Palestinian journalist in Jenin refugee camp shot in the head by a PA sniper.

SBS’ online report the same day said Al Jazeera attributed the suspension to its coverage “of clashes between Palestinian security forces and resistance fighters in Jenin.”

ABC NewsRadio (Jan. 3) noted that “in recent weeks the broadcaster has published criticism of the Palestinian security services and their actions in cracking down on unrest in the West Bank city of Jenin.”

On Jan. 6, the ABC website noted that PA security forces had “moved into Jenin” in December to “suppress armed groups of ‘outlaws’ who have built up a power base in the city and its… refugee camp.”

The Guardian Australia (Jan. 7) explained that the PA is trying to prove it is capable of governing in Gaza after the war there ends. The Guardian quoted a hospital worker who “asked not to be named so he could speak freely” saying, “When the Israelis come it is tough, but we know what to expect. In this [Palestinian Authority] raid, this kind of fighting we haven’t seen before. It’s like there are no rules.”

 

Unserious on Syria 

After the fall of the Assad regime in Syria in December, John Lyons chided Israel in an online article (Dec. 12) for “using this opportunity to hit weapons supplies or military facilities that may pose a threat to it and has seized land to make Israel safer.”

Naively, Lyons complained that at any time during the last 50 years, Israel could have struck “any target that it deemed as a threat” and insisted Israel would be “better off talking to Türkiye about the nature of the incoming regime and how to ensure it was moderate rather than radical.” Never mind that the Turkish regime is itself not moderate and today has no diplomatic relations with Israel.

Bizarrely, Lyons seemed to suggest that while Israel had the right to “respond harshly to the horrors committed by Hamas” after October 7, its decision to operate in the West Bank, southern Lebanon and Beirut and “now Syria” was overreach – even though Israel came under attack from all those places.

But as Cameron Stewart explained on the Australian’s “The Front” podcast (Jan. 21), “Israel has really tamed its borders, and we’ve had the fall of the Syrian regime as well, where Israel has gone and destroyed military equipment just to prevent any future threat arising from Syria.”

 

Talking Turkey

On ABC RN “Breakfast” (Dec. 19), Deakin University’s Shahram Akbarzadeh said Israel’s move into Syria’s demilitarised zone “is not justified by any measure. No other country can just send their troops to the Syrian territory and claim that they want to act to defend themselves as a security measure.”

Maybe Akbarzadeh should tell this to Turkey, which has controlled what it calls “safe zones” in parts of northern Syria since 2016. 

His claim that Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights is “contested by all international actors,” is wrong. In 2019, the US Trump Administration recognised Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

 

War of the words

In the Daily Telegraph (Dec. 18), AIJAC’s Justin Amler said the Australian Government’s decision to keep voting for UN resolutions that ignore Hamas was “irresponsible”, while the argument that most of the world community does so too, was an “abdication of its moral authority.” 

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s comment in her December Hawke Lecture that Australia expects all nations, including Israel, Russia, and China, to adhere to international law met with a fierce response from former army officer and Labor Minister for Defence Materiel Mike Kelly.

In the Age and Sydney Morning Herald (Dec. 16), Kelly wrote, “In terms of the laws of armed conflict, Israel’s methods have to be viewed in the context of its fight for survival. This is the ‘military necessity’ and ‘direct military advantage’ underpinning its operations. Israel is half the size of my former electorate of Eden Monaro, facing threats from multiple directions.”

Both papers (Dec. 19) printed Lowy analyst Rodger Shanahan’s response dismissing Kelly’s claim that Israel is engaged in an “existential conflict”, on the basis that it has technological superiority over its adversaries and the backing of the US. 

 

Implausible claims

In the Canberra Times (Jan. 18), ANU academic Ian Parmeter claimed, “The International Court of Justice said that there is a ‘plausible’ case that Israel’s retaliation for the Hamas attacks has been genocidal.”

The Court never found that. As the Court’s President Joan Donoghue explained to BBC TV in late May, “The shorthand that often appears, which is that there’s a plausible case of genocide, isn’t what the Court decided.” It decided that the argument that Palestinians were entitled to make a case asking for protection under the genocide convention was “plausible”.

Elsewhere in the same edition, the paper’s former editor Jack Waterford’s weekly column was riddled with errors – far too many to cover here, including inflating the number of children killed during the conflict in Gaza by 53%.

Absurdly, he suggested the only reason why a Palestinian state was never created at any time since Israel was “granted nationhood 75 years ago” was because Israel didn’t “respect… Palestinians’ rights and a two-state solution.” 

The “power” of the “Jewish lobby” explains why US President Joe Biden supported Israel’s war against Hamas, he claimed, rather than the reality that his Administration understood Israel was in a multi-front regional war against Iran and its regional proxies.

Even if Hamas “troops” were hiding among the “civilian milieu”, Israel had no right to target schools, hospitals and dwellings, Waterford said. Yet international law unequivocally says the opposite, although action must be proportional as the term is used in the Law of Armed Conflict and civilians given sufficient warning. Israel abides by both conditions. 

 

Deja John

It was a case of déjà vu on Jan. 20, when John Lyons discussed the ceasefire-hostage deal.

Lyons said, “I don’t know how they’re going to rebuild Gaza… it’s just non-functioning. You only need to look at pictures of it. And it struck me the other day of all the pictures, video and stills and film that I’ve looked at from Gaza over the last few months. It struck me that I’ve never seen in any of those images, anybody eating, child, adult, anybody, no one eating any food at all, because of course, there’s not much there at all.”

It only just “struck” Lyons?

That’s funny, because on June 7, 2024, Lyons said the same exact thing, almost word for word: “Of all the pictures that you see, this struck me the other day… I’ve noticed I’ll never see a child eating or drinking.” 

It was nonsense then and is nonsense now. There is ample footage of both children and adults eating in Gaza if you care to look. 

 

Prisoners’ Base-less

An article on the hostage exchange/ceasefire deal, published on the ABC website (Jan. 21), focused on four Palestinian prisoners.

The article was not only highly sympathetic to the Palestinian prisoners, but frequently factually wrong.

Readers are introduced to a Palestinian woman Hadeel Hijaz who was in an Israeli jail “with no charges and no answers” under administrative detention which, it said, Israel uses “on the grounds [someone] plan[s] to break the law in the future.”

In fact, an independent Israeli military court must approve the detention on the basis that the detainee is suspected of preparing terrorist acts, not simply “planning to break the law.”

Detainees have legal representation and even a right of appeal, and the detention must be reviewed by a court every few months. None of this was noted. 

Meanwhile, the piece said Nael Barghouti “was first jailed in 1978 for taking part in an attack that killed an Israeli soldier in Jerusalem and spent 33 years in jail, before his release as part of a prisoner-hostage exchange in 2011. Israel rearrested him in 2014 and he’s been in prison ever since.”

In fact, Barghouti was jailed for murdering Mordechai Yekuel, a civilian bus driver, not a soldier. The claim his target was a soldier came from Barghouti himself.

The article also mentioned famous Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti, saying he’s “been charged with orchestrating gun ambushes and suicide bombings.” 

Barghouti was not merely “charged” with these crimes, he was convicted by an Israeli court more than 20 years ago, in 2004. He is currently serving five life sentences for the murder of four Israelis.

 

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Out of Parliament

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (ALP, Grayndler) and Foreign Minister Senator Penny Wong (ALP, SA) – Jan. 16 – Media statement on the ceasefire deal: “Our thoughts are with all the civilians killed, displaced and taken hostage in this conflict, and the many humanitarian workers who lost their lives… Australia will continue working with the international community towards a two-state solution… Australia remains unequivocal in our condemnation of Hamas’ atrocities on 7 October, and its ongoing acts of terror. There must be no role for Hamas in the future governance of Gaza. Any future Palestinian state must not be in a position to threaten Israel’s security.”

Anthony Albanese, NSW Acting Premier Penny Sharpe MLC (ALP) and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan (ALP, Bendigo) – Jan. 14 – Media statement: “The rise of antisemitism is abhorrent and there is no place for the kind of hate speech and attacks we have seen recently in our country. It’s why we’re taking action to stamp out the scourge of antisemitism.”

Anthony Albanese – December – Chanukah message: “We condemn the poison of antisemitism and are steadfast in our determination to combat it. Jewish Australians are an intrinsic and valued part of the Australian story and, like all Australians, you should feel safe and secure in our modern multicultural nation. The strongest way to reject hate is to continue living as proud Australian Jews. As you light the Menorah with pride, you send a message to all Australians that hate does not win.”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton (Lib., Dickson) – December – Chanukah message: “This Chanukah, there is much that will weigh heavily on the minds of Jewish people… There’s the plight of the hostages… There’s the chilling reality that in Israel’s hours of need since 7 October 2023, some of its allies have shamefully behaved more like adversaries and demanded standards of Israel which they would never expect of themselves in similar circumstances… the sheer magnitude of anti-Semitic incidents that have plagued Western democracies, including here in Australia… Chanukah… is a story of victory over oppression and the importance of hope… may the ordeals of the last 14 months be all the more reason for Australia’s Jewish community to commemorate Chanukah as a confident statement of your solidarity, strength, faith and hope.”

Peter Dutton, Shadow Attorney-General Michaelia Cash (Lib., WA) and Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Patterson (Lib., Vic.) – Jan. 20 – Media release: “Today, the Coalition has announced new action to combat rising anti-Semitism… The shocking rise in anti-Semitism in our country is a national crisis which requires a national response… A campaign of terror has been unleashed on the Australian Jewish community… Only strong action and real consequences for the perpetrators will bring this to an end.” 

Greens – Jan. 16 – Media statement: “The reports of a ceasefire deal between the State of Israel and Hamas are welcome and overdue, but the invasion of Gaza is something that should never have occurred, and has resulted in genocide…The Greens [call] on the Labor government to do its part in upholding international law by:…

Sanctioning members of the Israeli government directly involved in war crimes. 

Having Australia formally intervene on behalf of South Africa at the International Court of Justice and the commitment to uphold International Criminal Court warrants.”

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus (ALP, Isaacs) – Jan. 14 – Media statement regarding his imminent trip to Israel: “In my meetings with Israeli officials I will convey Australia’s support for Israel’s security and its right to defend itself in the face of terrorism. I will also visit the Occupied Palestinian Territories and make clear Australia’s support for Palestinians’ right to self-determination and commitment to meeting humanitarian needs in Gaza and the West Bank.”