Australia/Israel Review

Adam banter

Highlighting Hamas’ brutal crackdown on the growing numbers of brave Palestinians protesting against its rule in Gaza, the Australian (April 1) slammed federal Greens leader Adam Bandt for “despicably” suggesting “Israel was to blame for Hamas’s latest butchery. His contemptible views reaffirm why the major parties have no moral choice but to preference the Greens last in all seats and the Senate.”

The editorial also condemned Bandt’s colleagues, including former Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam, who is seeking to defeat Labor’s special envoy for social cohesion, Peter Khalil, in the Melbourne seat of Wills by accusing him of “supporting genocide”.

On April 9, the paper doubled down on its criticism of Bandt, stating that “despite Hamas’s terrorist record, its brutality to Gazans and its misusing them as human shields in war, Mr Bandt… would not rule out a role for the terrorists in governing Gaza in future. That would be a matter for Palestinians, he said.”

On ABC TV “Insiders” (April 20), Bandt displayed an inability to differentiate between a democracy defending itself and a genocidal terror group. Bandt said, “We condemned the attacks on October 7 and have called for the hostages to be released, but we also don’t think children should be killed by a very sophisticated and well-armed army… The Australian Government is not putting any pressure on the extremist Netanyahu Government for this slaughter to stop. We’re arguing very simply that Israelis and Palestinians both should have equal rights to live in peace and justice and have their rights to self-determination respected.”

Bandt seems to have no problem with Hamas playing a role in Gaza’s future, despite the terror group vowing to never make peace with Israel and its promise, if given the chance, to repeat October 7 again and again.

In his April 20 column, News Corp’s Piers Akerman pointed out that “Gaza is not ‘occupied’ by Israel. It’s occupied by Hamas – a jihadist death cult. Those masked murderers are not freedom fighters: they are enforcers of a violent theocracy whose cruelty knows no limits and as always, their first victims are their own people.”

 

May Day

Ahead of the May federal election, prominent Western Sydney Lebanese Muslim community leader Dr Jamal Rifi warned in the Australian (April 10) of the dangers that come with supporting sectarian parties.

Dr Rifi wrote, “It would be a tragedy for Australia, for our tolerant and multicultural future, if the Muslim Votes political party ‘succeeds’ in the forthcoming election. Muslim Votes is a mix of the aggressive left, of opportunists, cynics, and the naive, with some undercover Liberal support in certain electorates, and idealists unaware of the strange amalgam which is this grouping.”

He accused the party of “deliberately manipulating the Palestinian cause” and noted that several of its candidates “co-signed a statement written by Hizb ut-Tahrir, the extremist Islamist organisation that praised and celebrated the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel and advocates the establishment of the Khilafah [i.e. the caliphate].”

Earlier, on April 2, the Sydney Morning Herald also editorialised on the dangers of “the intrusion into the political sphere by identity-based tribalism,” decrying the intimidation that federal Labor and Liberal MPs endured when they wanted to attend mosques to mark the end of Ramadan.

On March 31, News Corp’s Joe Hildebrand said the “ugliness that has been exposed among some individuals in the wake of the October 7 terror attacks is a wake-up call in itself. It tells us not that multiculturalism has failed but that extremism cannot be tolerated or it will [fail].”

On the flipside, former Age newspaper writer Julie Szego in the Australian (March 29) noted that many Jewish Australians will be voting “in the wreckage of the belief that Australia, home to a disproportionate number of Holocaust survivors, is a safe haven from the Jew-hatred of the Old World.”

 

Stating the obvious

On ABC TV “The World” (April 10), the International Crisis Group’s Tahani Mustafa seemed to express sympathy for Hamas, whose “military capabilities are slowly [being] deteriorate[ed]” by Israel.

She also implied that the stated goal of Israeli PM “Netanyahu, along with Trump… of destroying Hamas,” was unreasonable.

Later that day on SBS TV “World News”, reporter Tom Stayner explained that Israel’s stated aim is to establish a broad military presence adjacent to Rafah “to guard against another October the 7th style attack.”

Meanwhile, Middle East correspondent Eric Tlozek reported on ABC TV “7.30” (April 8) on Palestinians who are living in the ruins of a university in Gaza but who have no access to education.

One resident, Noman Ahmad Radwane, accused Israel of having “destroyed learning, they destroyed the people.” The Palestinians camping out in the university were not asked if Hamas was in any way responsible for their plight.

 

Palestinian perspectives

In the Australian Financial Review (March 28), Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American who works for the Atlantic Council, called on Palestinians to abandon “unhelpful and unrealistic demands” and adopt “radical pragmatism” as the only effective path forward.

This would include accepting Israel’s right to exist, abandoning “the right of return to land that has been part of Israel since 1948,” and realising that “wishing for the disappearance of 8 million Israeli Jews is not a policy.”

Alkhatib lamented that “the so-called pro-Palestine movement has no space for a Palestinian who opposes Hamas’ terrorism and promotes a future of co-existence with Israelis.”

On April 1, the same paper ran Gazan lawyer Moumen Al-Natour’s article articulating why he and thousands of others took to the streets to protest against Hamas.

“The message of our movement is clear: the people of Gaza want to live, so Hamas must go, the hostages taken from Israel must be released, and this war must then finally come to an end…

“Take it from someone who has lived under Hamas since age 11: to support Hamas is to be for Palestinian death, not Palestinian freedom. Hamas is killing us – through war, poverty and extortion – not liberating us.”

Speaking to ABC Radio National “Breakfast” (March 27), Washington Institute Senior Fellow and former Palestinian negotiator Ghaith al-Omari said, “While Palestinians in Gaza continue to blame Israel primarily, they’re also blaming Hamas for bringing this along and as importantly, for not doing enough to end the war.”

Al-Omari said of Hamas that “violent ideologies, and we’ve seen it all over the world, [have] to be confronted militarily. I mean, as long as Hamas maintains guns, it will be able to survive.”

But military action is “insufficient”, he said, adding, “to be able to really defeat an ideology, you have to present an alternative, compelling ideology. And that’s part of the tragedy of the Palestinians today,” he said, because the alternative to Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, is corrupt and inefficient.

 

Historic blunders

In the Australian (March 27), echoing al-Omari, Walter Russell Mead wrote that both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority “have come to the end of the road.”

Hamas’ October 7 attack, he said, was the greatest strategic blunder by Palestinian leaders since the rejection of the United Nations partition resolution in 1947, exposing the “haplessness” of the Palestinian Authority which has been “essentially irrelevant” during the greatest crisis for the Palestinian movement in nearly 80 years.

In the same edition, the editorial called for the “groundswell of opposition to Hamas to be nurtured as a positive sign that change towards a peaceful future in the troubled Middle East is still possible.”

The Australian’s chief international correspondent Cameron Stewart (March 28) remarked that “protests of this size are unfolding among a population that once elected Hamas as their rulers says much about how many Gazans now recognise that the terror group has jeopardised their lives and their future by its ongoing conflict with Israel.”

 

Protests and Contradictions

In the Australian, (April 5), Middle East Forum founder Daniel Pipes analysed why the protests in Gaza erupted now, positing that “systematic Israeli incursions degraded Hamas’s internal security forces… create[d] an opening for Gazans finally to express their loathing of Hamas.”

Two days later in the Australian, Strategic Analysis Australia’s Anthony Bergin chided Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong for her contradictory positions on Gaza.

Bergin wrote, “Now we’re seeing a crackdown by Hamas against the protesters with six executed and some tortured. Last Monday Foreign Minister Penny Wong called the executions ‘reprehensible acts’ and said the terror group must play no role in Palestine’s future. Yet Wong also urges Israel to cease fire against Hamas. Wong can’t have her cake and eat it too. The protests are possible because Hamas is losing its grip after Israel resumed its military operations against it…

“As Gazans finally reject the sacrificial role of unwilling martyrs that Hamas has imposed on them, Wong is in effect suggesting Hamas shouldn’t be removed from power. If the foreign minister is serious about wanting to remove Hamas from the strip, she should be supporting Israel’s current efforts to achieve this objective rather than urging Israel to stop its military campaign.”

 

Mercury sinks

Tasmanian artist Bill Handbury lambasted the “Israeli lobby both here and in the US” in the Hobart Mercury (April 15), describing it as “relentless” and insisting it can bamboozle “most” politicians into seeing Israelis as “the good guys” and Palestinians as “bad”.

Inverting the chain of events, Handbury tries portraying Israel as the aggressor by falsely conflating its military response to Hamas’ invasion on October 7, 2023, with Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Handbury argues that both sides need the services of a Nelson Mandela to guide them to “a two-state solution”.

Of course, since 2000, Israel has elected many leaders willing to fill the role of Nelson Mandela at the negotiating table and create a Palestinian state. Sadly, the Palestinian leadership has refused all such offers in favour of perpetuating the conflict.

 

Devil in the Details

On ABC Radio “The World Today” (April 8), Middle East correspondent Eric Tlozek’s report about a strike on Tel al-Sultan in Gaza included accusations that civilians were deliberately targeted by Israel. The report did include one resident admitting Israel dropped leaflets advising people to leave.

Tlozek cited an IDF statement that it allows civilian populations to evacuate from combat zones in the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, on ABC Radio National (April 8), Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF) Dr Isabelle Defourny said her organisation’s workers “never felt that we were directly targeted by Israel.”

The only question mark impacting MSF’s operations is the “question of risk”, Dr Defourny said.

She also explained that MSF “cannot” leave Gaza because “we have 50 international staff in Gaza, but 2,000 Palestinian staff” who live there.

Disappointingly, Dr Defourny incorrectly asserted that the International Court of Justice said in January 2024 that there is a plausible risk that “genocide is happening”.

As AIR has pointed out many times, the Court’s former President Joan Donoghue explained to BBC TV last 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”.

 

Lost in translation

A report on SBS TV “World News” (April 20) mistranslated a Palestinian accusation to make it appear less antisemitic. 

The report of an Israeli airstrike on Gaza’s al-Mawassi – an area designated as a humanitarian zone – included subtitles translating into English the words of an angry Palestinian man saying, “The whole world says that there are safe zones for the Israelis (not to strike). They are liars, liars like the Israelis. There are no safe zones at all.”

But in fact, the man did not use the Arabic word for “Israeli” in the above quote but the word “Yahud”. “Yahud” means Jews, not “Israelis”. 

A headline in the April 8 edition of the Canberra Times claimed, “Israeli strikes on Gaza Strip kill 32, mostly women and children.” This was wrong. As the story’s introduction correctly noted, “more than a dozen women and children” were killed, which is not “most” of 32.

 

Hostage Diplomacy

On ABC NewsRadio (March 31), Middle East correspondent Eric Tlozek claimed that “Israel reneged on the previous ceasefire deal which would have seen all living hostages released and demanded a less comprehensive agreement, which Hamas refused.”

This is incorrect – there was no detailed agreement to release all hostages, only a framework to negotiate a second stage of the ceasefire that would have potentially included such a release. In the actual negotiations, Hamas proposed to release only one living American-Israeli hostage and the bodies of four others.

Speaking about a hostage-for-ceasefire deal on Sky News’ “The Kenny Report” (April 8), veteran Israeli analyst Ehud Yaari said he did “not see a situation in which Hamas will accept to remain without any of the live Israeli hostages. They see that as their ultimate insurance policy. So, the day after in Gaza that everybody was waiting for and talking about is not going to happen.”

Israel, he said, will “continue” to apply military pressure “until Hamas is willing to contemplate what is on the table, which is disarmament or safe passage outside.”

 

Food fight

On ABC Radio National “Breakfast” (April 4), International Criminal Court (ICC) founding prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo said Israel’s decision to block aid into Gaza from March 1 was “a crime”.

According to Ocampo, “You cannot attack two million civilians to attack Hamas… That’s a very clear war crime and crime against humanity.”

In fact, according to Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, allowing the passage of humanitarian aid is only required during war when that aid does not provide a “definite advantage [to] the military efforts or economy of the enemy.” Aid into Gaza clearly provides an “advantage” to Hamas, which seizes aid to finance its activities.

The previous day on ABC Radio National “Breakfast”, UN Special Rapporteur Michael Fakhri accused Israel of “starving the people of Gaza this entire time since October 9th, 2023” and warned that the Strip was on “the brink of famine yet again.”

Claims that Gaza has been on the brink of famine have been greatly exaggerated since October 7, 2023.

Fakhri also said, “based on eyewitness accounts and direct statements from the World Food Program and other UN agencies,” there is no evidence Hamas was stealing aid.

Ocampo had also claimed in his April 4 interview, “Israel as an occupying power in Gaza has an obligation to ensure that all civilians have access to food and the necessities of life, medicine, water, etc.”

However, in a second interview on ABC Radio National “Breakfast” (April 22), Ocampo essentially admitted that Hamas is responsible for the war’s outbreak and its continuation.

Ocampo explained that “for me, the biggest idea is it’s not about war crimes. It’s about stop wars.”

“Look, after one-and-a-half years, killing 50,000 people, and still Hamas is in power. That is for me a disaster. How to control Hamas? If you conduct criminal investigation in Hamas, you focus on the money. You focus on stopping the money. If you don’t stop the flow of money to Hamas, they will reconstruct again. They will rebuild again,” he said. Israel’s Gaza aid embargo is intended to do exactly this – stop the flow of money to Hamas.

While interviewing Israel’s special envoy on antisemitism Michal Cotler-Wunsh (April 4), ABC Radio National “Breakfast” host Sally Sara also claimed that Israel was legally bound to provide aid to Gaza.

An incensed Cotler-Wunsh insisted Hamas has stolen aid in Gaza and the proof of this was “the Gazans who are demonstrating against Hamas.”

 

Numbers Game

The Australian (April 4) was one of the few mainstream media outlets to highlight the fact that Hamas’ March quarterly casualty update had dropped thousands of names previously listed as having been killed in Gaza.

The report noted that, “The lists also include people who died before the war and people who died from attacks by Hamas rather than Israel.”

 

---

In Parliament

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (ALP, Grayndler) – April 14 – Passover message: “We remain steadfast in our determination to combat the scourge of antisemitism, and ensure Australia is a place of belonging, safety and respect. The Jewish community is a cherished part of our modern multicultural society, and you make Australia a better place for us all.”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton (Lib., Dixon) – April 12 – Passover message: “[The Passover story] evokes the strength, resilience and fellowship that is central to the Jewish character and identity. That strength, resilience and fellowship has been exemplified by Australia’s Jewish community during the last 18 months… This unprecedented wave of antisemitism not only threatens Australians of Jewish faith. It also imperils our social cohesion and is an attack on our democratic values and way of life.”

The following five statements are from the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee Estimates hearings, March 27:

Shadow Attorney-General Senator Michaelia Cash (Lib., WA) – “Minister, is Prime Minister Netanyahu welcome?”

Foreign Minister Senator Penny Wong (ALP, SA) – responding: “We continue to call for hostages to be released… for a ceasefire and… the observance of international humanitarian law so that civilians are protected, and for aid to flow. “

Senator Cash – “We stand with Israel… with the democracy… Prime Minister Netanyahu is welcome here under a Dutton government.”

Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition Senator James McGrath (Lib., Qld.) – “This government… has… allowed a situation… where Jewish businesses are vandalised, cars and businesses are torched, a synagogue is firebombed and Jewish people are targeted.”

Senator Wong responding – “Jewish Australians have a right to be safe and to feel safe… The rise in antisemitism and the threats and actual violence… are unacceptable.”

Senator Nick McKim (Greens, Tas.) – March 26 – moved: “In recognition of the National Day of Action for Palestine, and… Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza that demonstrates… blatant disregard for international law, that the Australian Government imposes sanctions on the extremist Netanyahu government… and calls for an end to the genocide… the system of apartheid and illegal occupation.”

Greens Deputy Leader Senator Mehreen Faruqi (NSW) – “The settler colonial state continues its attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, seizing more land to expand its apartheid settlements… [In Gaza] There are at least 50,000 dead, likely closer to 200,000, mostly women and children… It is a well-known tactic of Israel… of murdering journalists to try and cut off the coverage of the genocide.”

Senator Dave Sharma (Lib., NSW) – “Ultimately, this conflict will be resolved when Hamas releases all the hostages and recognises it cannot and should not play any future role in the governance of Gaza.” 

Senator Lidia Thorpe (Ind., Vic.) – “Israel has never had any genuine regard for any peace process with Palestinians… This colonial project has always been hell-bent on its mission of total annihilation of the Palestinian people.”

Greens Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Senator Jordon Steele-John (WA) – “There are countless examples of the State of Israel breaching international humanitarian law.”

Senator McKim – “What’s happening in Gaza… It’s not a conflict; it’s not a war… It’s a slaughter… barbaric murder spree… ethnic cleansing… genocide… war crime.” 

The motion was defeated. Only the Greens and Independent Senators Thorpe, Fatima Payman (WA) and David Pocock (ACT) supported it.

Senator Hollie Hughes (Lib., NSW) – March 26 – Valedictory speech: “I… pay tribute to the strength of the Australian Jewish community… To [AIJAC’s] Joel Burnie, Colin Rubenstein and Tammy Reznik: I was always a Zionist, but you showed me Israel, and it will be an experience I will always treasure and hope to return to very, very soon.”