Australia / Israel Review

Vale Nasrallah

Media coverage of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah’s death was largely informative.

SBS TV “World News” (Sept. 29) noted that there were “celebrations” in the Middle East at the demise of Nasrallah, including in “militia-held parts of northern Syria.”

Singapore-based analyst James Dorsey told ABC RN “Late Night Live” (Oct. 1) that Nasrallah’s decision to join Hamas’ war against Israel on Oct. 8 “was a gamble that cost him his life and put the movement that he built at great risk… He overestimated the degree to which Iran would come to his rescue [and] underestimated the Israelis. He thought that with October 7, the Hamas attack on Israel, Israel was on the ropes. Israel wasn’t on the ropes. It was traumatised for sure. But it had been preparing to confront Hezbollah for a very long time.”

ABC Middle East correspondent Eric Tlozek’s online article on the assassination (Sept. 28) noted, “In Syria, Hezbollah fighters were implicated in multiple attacks on civilians and allegedly blocked food from being delivered to starving people, earning the enmity of senior Arab and Muslim leaders around the region.”

Meanwhile, a Sydney Morning Herald editorial (Oct. 5) said Iranian Ambassador to Australia Ahmad Sadeghi was “unworthy of his job”, given his social media posts praising Nasrallah as a “blessed martyr” who had opposed the “vile entity of the Zionist regime.”

 

Goal oriented

On ABC TV “Insiders” (Sept. 29), Australian Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan summarised the goals guiding Israel’s military strategy in Lebanon.

He said, “It’s trying to damage Hezbollah and change the dynamics within Lebanon to the point where its own northern towns are safe again. It’s trying to re-establish deterrence. Deterrence only works when it lives in the mind of your enemy. When your enemy says, ‘if we hit these guys, they’re going to hit us back so hard that we’re not willing to accept that…’ And, of course, let’s not forget Hezbollah is the aggressor. They fired 9,000 missiles at Israel in the last year.”

On ABC Radio National “Saturday Extra” (Sept. 28), veteran US Middle East adviser Aaron David Miller explained that Israel “lost faith, I think, in the possibility – largely because Nasrallah doesn’t want it – of engaging the United States in a significant… diplomatic effort to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701.”

 

When bombs boomerang

In the West Australian, (Oct. 1), AIJAC’s Oved Lobel explained why Israel was taking the fight to Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

He said the Lebanese terror group started firing rockets at Israel the day after October 7 in solidarity with Hamas’ massacre and since then, Israel has been targeted by 9,000 rockets, drones and missiles, displacing 60,000 Israelis. 

Lobel wrote, “This is both Israel’s legal right under international law and moral duty to its citizens. To paraphrase Sir Arthur Harris, Marshal of Britain’s Air Force during World War II, Hezbollah entered this war under the rather childish delusion it was going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb it.”

 

At home with missiles

On ABC TV “News” (Sept. 25), Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad absurdly claimed that Israel had killed 569 people the previous day and only one was a Hezbollah member. Abiad said Israel’s claim that Hezbollah stores missiles in people’s homes was “an insult to the intelligence” – despite the hundreds of pictures and videos released documenting this practice. 

Earlier (Sept. 23), Lebanese journalist Mohamed Clate told ABC TV “News” that Hezbollah does not fire rockets from residential areas. He said this was “an excuse” by Israel “to target civilian areas,” just as it falsely claims there are terror tunnels under hospitals in Gaza. 

On ABC TV “7.30” (Oct. 2), former Australian Ambassador to Israel Senator Dave Sharma explained Israel’s challenge in needing to degrade Hezbollah, which “puts missile silos in people’s roofs, adjacent to schools, underneath hospitals, just as Hamas did as well.” He noted that Israel “trie[s] to minimise civilian casualties by warning residents of south Lebanon to vacate their homes.” 

 

Northern exposure

Speaking to Sky News from Israel (Sept. 27), AIJAC’s Joel Burnie said Hezbollah started firing rockets at Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, displacing 80,000 residents in Israel’s north.

“In the Australian context… we’re talking about a city the size of Hobart or Geelong or Newcastle.” Any ceasefire must rein in Hezbollah and return the displaced Israelis to their communities, he said. 

Meanwhile, in the Australian Financial Review (Sept. 28), AIJAC’s Dr Bren Carlill argued that the key to ending the escalating fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is holding Iran accountable for its role in the conflict that started on October 7. 

 

Going through the motions

Ahead of a UN General Assembly vote on a Palestinian-drafted resolution nominally demanding Israel’s unconditional withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza within 12 months, AIJAC’s Dr Colin Rubenstein told Sky News (Sept. 17) that the resolution text calls for “military, economic” boycotts of Israel, accuses it of apartheid and “basically call[s] for [Israel’s] unravelling.” 

After the resolution’s passage, writing in the Daily Telegraph (Sept. 24), Dr Rubenstein criticised the Australian Government for abstaining instead of voting “no”. 

The Government had scored “a clear own-goal”, he said, and damaged the ALP’s policy of supporting a negotiated process towards Israeli-Palestinian peace.

In Adelaide’s Advertiser (Oct. 3), AIJAC’s Justin Amler said the resolution was a recipe for continued conflict and Australia’s abstention was “morally incomprehensible”.

 

Time warped

In the Australian (Sept. 28), former Labor minister Dr Mike Kelly criticised Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s call at the UN General Assembly for a set timeline for the declaration of a Palestinian state regardless of the status of negotiations. 

Dr Kelly said none of the preconditions exist for a Palestinian state and it was more important to “make sure that we’re focused on the quality of the outcome, not a date.” He suggested the Government should instead “start putting pressure where it belongs,” which is on Iran and Hamas. 

The next day, SBS TV “World News” included AIJAC’s Colin Rubenstein saying, “a Palestinian state alongside Israel… has had the support of the Israeli people” but “the Palestinian leadership wants a state instead of Israel.”

In the Sunday Telegraph (Oct. 6), Senator Dave Sharma wrote that Wong “singl[ed] Israel out for criticism but [was] entirely silent on the roles being played by Hezbollah and Iran.” 

An op-ed by NGO humanitarian adviser Naomi Brooks in the Canberra Times (Sept. 25) criticised an escalation of Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon, saying, “We must use the international practices and accountability mechanisms that have served to protect civilians for so long. These can be used today to end Israeli impunity and its destructive, catastrophic violence across the Middle East.” 

It was Hamas’ massacre on October 7 and Hezbollah’s ongoing rocket attacks since Oct. 8 that are actually responsible for the “catastrophic violence across the Middle East.” 

 

Risky realities

An ABC TV “News” interview on Sept. 24 with the Australian Red Cross’ Yvette Zegenhagen shone a rare light on why aid workers are increasingly being killed in conflicts, including Gaza.

Zegenhagen said, “this is not an issue that is unique to any one conflict,” explaining that more “armed conflicts are being fought in densely populated areas.” Furthermore, “it’s often the local humanitarian workers… who are already part of their communities… living day-to-day in conflict zones,” not foreign workers, who are most at risk.

 

War gains

In the wake of Iran firing around 200 ballistic missiles at Israel to avenge Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrallah, AIJAC’s Colin Rubenstein explained in the Australian (Oct. 4), that the regime follows an “Islamist doctrine” called muqawama (resistance), which calls for perpetual war.

Quoting Israeli strategic analyst General Gershon Hacohen, he said, “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.”

Rubenstein said this helps to explain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s public declarations that civilian losses in Gaza are “necessary sacrifices” in the long war to destroy Israel.

 

Price Gouging

On Oct. 11, Sydney Morning Herald regular contributor Jenna Price accused Israel of making Palestinian and Lebanese civilians pay a terrible price for the crimes and threats of Hamas and Hezbollah.

On Oct. 7, the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ massacre, David Leser expressed similar thoughts in the paper and in the Age. 

Leser acknowledged Hamas’ “murderous doctrine” and the “private rejoicing in much of the Arab world” at the possible demise of Hezbollah.

His article inflated the number of children killed in Gaza while undercounting the number of Hamas fighters killed.

Leser also accused Israel of becoming the “oppressors of a broken people” over the past 60 years and asserted that Palestinians have a “very legitimate right… to resist brutal occupation.” 

Leser and Price disappointingly ignored the incontrovertible truth that, since the late 1930s, Palestinian leaders have rejected numerous opportunities to create their own independent state, instead preferring to reject coexistence and pursue relentless terrorism. 

 

Delusional claims

In the Sydney Morning Herald (Oct. 4), Sydney University PhD candidate Eva Shteinman rejected claims that antisemitism is “pervasive, systemic and representative of university life.”

Shteinman suggested that accusations of antisemitism on campus “emerged simultaneously with debate around Israel,” which she said, was “no coincidence” and designed to curtail “valid” criticism of the Jewish state. 

Shteinman said, “Claims of antisemitism began to appear in the media when the university allowed, for a brief period, the student-led encampment protests, which were staged in opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza.”

In fact, the encampment was not “brief”, but lasted 55 days and, as the paper noted on June 14, was “sprawling”. It was notable that Shteinman did not engage with the experiences of Jewish students, many of whom reported they had been targeted for harassment or exclusion.

 

Lack of balance meets cluelessness

On Oct. 5, the Sydney Morning Herald letters editor’s week in review column confidently asserted: “I’d like to thank the letter writers for their even-handed contributions to the debate [on the Israel-Hamas war].” The column added that the paper’s “commitment to independent journalism includes seeking comment from our readers to guarantee fairness and balance.”

Yet all five letters on the corresponding page that day lavishly praised Eva Shteinman’s highly partisan and controversial op-ed, and the Herald never published any letter that was critical of Shteinman’s view or claims.

The following week’s column claimed the columns by David Leser and Jenna Price “provided some welcome balance to the debate.” 

In other words, contrary to the letters editor’s claim, the Sydney Morning Herald has overwhelmingly favoured anti-Israel opinion pieces, especially from Jewish anti-Zionists, and the letters page is dominated by emotive and factually dubious smears. 

 

Publish, and be damned

On Sept. 21, the Age and Sydney Morning Herald ran a long opinion piece by extreme anti-Israel activist Louise Adler under the headline “The things I’ve learnt you can’t ask about Israel.”

Adler’s list included a claim that “it is impossible to ask… whether anyone feels that the images from Gaza… are reminiscent of the photos of the Jews rounded up in the Warsaw ghetto.”

In a letter published only in the Herald(Sept. 22), AIJAC’s Jamie Hyams responded that “Comparing Gaza to the Holocaust is obscene, and amounts to Holocaust denial. The Nazis tried to kill every Jew. Israel targets only terrorists while evacuating civilians. In fact, it is Hamas, which started this war, that shares the Nazis’ genocidal aims while it sacrifices its people, as it has repeatedly made clear.” 

 

The good oil

On ABC Radio “World Today” (Oct. 4), US-based Iran analyst and recent AIJAC guest Behnam ben Taleblu weighed up the likelihood of Israel targeting Iran’s oil fields in response to the regime firing almost 200 ballistic missiles at it on Oct. 1.

Taleblu said, “in the past, attacks and even sanctioning Iranian oil has gotten the regime’s attention before,” noting that Israel had “struck oil terminals at least twice that belong to Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, who also have been firing on Israel.”

Ultimately, it “depends on how much cover the Iranians believe the attack would be given by the Americans,” he said.

Earlier (Oct. 2), Taleblu told ABC Radio National “Breakfast” that Western countries want a ceasefire in the Middle East but “may have missed one element of what is going on in the region, which is that we are in a wider war” with Iran.

Nine Newspapers’ Peter Hartcher wrote on Oct. 2, that Iran’s “strategy from the outset was to light a ‘ring of fire’ around Israel to burn it to death” by arming proxy terror groups on its borders.

 

Behm me up 

In the Canberra Times (Oct. 5), the Australia Institute’s Allan Behm blamed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s intractability solely on Israel.

Behm wrote, “like most of the US allies, Australia is caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock is Israel’s intransigence and the implacability of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition partners.” 

He absurdly suggested that “what the Middle East needs most… is a supra-state.”

Meanwhile, in the same edition, Jack Waterford’s column was even more ludicrous, suggesting that the ideal solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be the “relocation of the Jewish state,” possibly to Ukraine. 

 

Same old cycle

In the Age (Oct. 7), Emeritus Professor Amin Saikal said what needed to happen is “Netanyahu and his extremist supporters [to] restrain themselves and embrace a Gaza ceasefire.”

This, he claimed, would free the Israeli hostages, avoid escalation and even lead to “a diplomatic resolution of the long-running Israeli-Hezbollah hostility and Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

But as Steven A. Cook told the ABC on Sept. 26, “the Hamas leadership, specifically Yahya Sinwar, has never been interested in a ceasefire. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition partners have also not done anything to suggest that they were interested in a ceasefire. So, I think… the United States was in the unenviable position of being the one who wanted agreement more than the parties themselves.”

 

Media malpractice

ABC Global Affairs Correspondent John Lyons repeatedly misrepresented a claim regarding Palestinian casualties that pro-Palestinian advocates have been attributing to the Lancet medical journal. 

Lyons told ABC NewsRadio (Oct. 7), “Gaza now is basically, in my view, unliveable… The… official death toll for Gaza is about 41,000 to 42,000. But the… Lancet says they believe that as many as 186,000 Palestinians in Gaza have died as a result of this war. Not just from the bombing, but from people who had cancer, or who had serious medical conditions, heart conditions, have not been able to get any medical treatment because the hospitals aren’t functioning, the water’s bad, kids have died from malnutrition, or from polio.”

He repeated a variation of this on ABC Radio “AM” (Oct. 7) and on ABC NewsRadio’s news briefs (Oct. 8).

The Lancet never claimed any such thing. This claim is based on a letter published by the Lancet. Moreover, that letter did not assert that 186,000 Palestinians had died but predicted that figure might eventually be reached in future.

There is also no evidence to support Lyons’ claim that large numbers of “kids” have died because of malnutrition and, so far, there appears to have been exactly one case of polio in Gaza, whose victim did not die. 

 

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In Parliament

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (ALP, Grayndler) – Oct. 2 – Jewish New Year message: “We reject antisemitism… Jewish Australians have long been a valued and important part of the modern Australian story. Australia is your home, and you have made it a better home.”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton (Lib., Dickson) – Oct. 2 – Jewish New Year message: “… the Jewish people’s spirit of strength, solidarity and survival – a spirit which has seen them overcome every trial and tribulation… will see Jewish people today prevail over present ordeals.”

Foreign Minister Senator Penny Wong (ALP, SA) – Sept. 28 – National Statement to the UN General Assembly: “Palestinian civilians cannot be made to pay the price of defeating Hamas… Australia wants… new ways to build momentum, including the role of the Security Council in setting a pathway for two-states, with a clear timeline for the international declaration of Palestinian statehood.”

Greens Deputy Leader Senator Mehreen Faruqi (NSW) – Oct. 9 – “Racism and colonialism are intertwined, and the monarchy is a symbol of that… It ties this nation’s complicity to the horrific genocide in Gaza perpetrated by another settler colony founded by the British.”

Shadow Assistant Foreign Minister Senator Claire Chandler (Lib., Tas.) – Oct. 8 – moved that the Senate consider “The need… to act in response to… Iran’s widespread sponsoring of terrorism, promotion of antisemitism, and oppression of its people by listing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation and declaring the current Iranian Ambassador… persona non grata.”

Assistant Trade Minister Senator Tim Ayres (ALP, NSW) – “We maintain diplomatic relations with Iran because it’s in Australia’s national interest… and [that]… of our closest strategic partners.”

Greens Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Senator Jordon Steele-John (WA) – “We will not be party to the blatant warmongering… implicit in [Senator Chandler’s] motion.” 

The motion was defeated.

Shadow Foreign Minister Senator Simon Birmingham (Lib., SA) – Oct. 8 – “Does the Albanese Government agree that Israel’s inherent right to self-defence necessitates it to remove the terrorist threat from its borders?”

Senator Wong replying: “Israel has a right to defend itself and… international law is to be respected.”

Senator Dave Sharma (Lib., NSW) – Oct. 8 – commenting on Wong’s timeline for recognition of Palestine: “Is the elimination of terrorists, like Hamas, from the governance… a precondition for recognition or would the minister’s clear timeline override that objective?… Is a reformed Palestinian Authority a prerequisite for any recognition or, again, would your clear timeline override that objective?”

Senator Alex Antic (Lib., SA) – Oct. 8 – “Israel has every right… to defend its territory and… to defend its people from external threats.” 

Senator Faruqi – Oct. 8 – “Palestine will be free, inshallah.”

Shadow Education Minister Senator Sarah Henderson (Lib., Vic.) – Sept. 20 – Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee: “Do you support slogans such as ‘river to the sea’ and ‘intifada’ being shouted on university campuses at Jewish students. Of course,… ‘intifada’ is another way of calling for the destruction of Israel, as is ‘river to the sea’.”

Senator Jacqui Lambie (JLN, Tas.) – Sept. 18 – “I have been increasingly horrified by the antisemitism in this country.”

Senator Faruqi – Sept. 18 – moving to debate a motion calling for an independent report into the killing of Zomi Frankcom: “We would never ask a murderer to investigate their own crime. Why on earth would we trust war criminals to investigate their own war crimes?”

Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy (ALP, NT) – “Air Chief Marshal Binskin’s report indicates that Israel’s process is broadly in line with the approach that the Australian Defence Force would take.” 

Only the Greens and independent Senators Fatima Payman (WA) and Lidia Thorpe (VIC) supported the motion.

Senator Penny Allman-Payne (Greens, Qld.) – Sept. 18 – “Every day, Israel has murdered more and more civilians in indiscriminate attacks.”