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United States President Donald Trump has warned that Palestinian recognition could threaten trade talks, raising the stakes for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as he tries to avoid higher tariffs while navigating a growing global push to advance a state of Palestine.

Labor ministers on Thursday welcomed momentum for a two-state solution but Albanese insisted Australia would stick to its own timeline after Canada became the latest Western nation to declare it would support Palestinian statehood at a United Nations meeting in September.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced on Thursday (AEST) that he planned to recognise Palestine, following France and the United Kingdom. But shortly after, he was rebuked by Trump, who warned Canada’s move “will make it very hard for us to make a trade deal with them” on his Truth Social platform.

It complicates the dynamic as Australia tries to negotiate a favourable trade outcome with the US after Trump threatened to raise baseline tariffs on imports to the US, while supporting the international community in pushing for a two-state solution.

Australian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity are bracing for a 15 per cent baseline tariff, up from the previous 10 per cent, when they are announced on August 1.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Thursday said recognising Palestinian statehood remained a question of “when, not if” for the government, and Albanese had a call with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to discuss the situation overnight, a day after the United Kingdom’s major foreign policy shift.

“The leaders agreed on the importance of using the international momentum to secure a ceasefire, the release of all hostages and the acceleration of aid, as well as ensuring Hamas did not play a role in a future state,” an Australian government spokesperson said about the call.

But Albanese reiterated on Thursday night that the Australian government would forge its own path when it came to acknowledging Palestinian statehood.

As Canada and the UK stipulated conditions for recognising Palestine at a September meeting of the United Nations, Albanese said Australia would not be swayed by that deadline, but by whether its own set of circumstances had been met.

“Once you make that declaration, you lose your capacity to negotiate and to influence outcomes to some extent. So, it will be based upon not whether a timeline is reached, but whether an objective is reached,” Albanese told the ABC’s 7.30.

“The UK have made a provisional statement if the peace talks are not advanced, and they have said they will recognise in September if that does not occur… [Carney] has made a decision, as the Prime Minister of Canada. We’ll make a decision as the Australian government, as a sovereign government, that it is in Australia’s national interest.”

Albanese also said he would not be swayed by the United States’ position. “I think there is an opportunity for the United States to play a leadership role here, for President Trump to play a role,” he said. “That, of course, will be a matter for them.”

Wong said on the ABC that she welcomed international momentum towards a two-state solution and laid out conditions that could lead recognition including regional commitments to Israeli security, the release of hostages and the demilitarisation of Palestine.

“What we want out of it is something … which breaks the cycle of violence,” Wong said.

Labor has been under mounting pressure from rank-and-file members and parts of its caucus to join international counterparts and add to global momentum. Former frontbencher Ed Husic this week said there was “deep feeling” on the issue among his Labor colleagues, and argued there was a moral imperative for Australia to take immediate steps towards recognition.

At the same time, Albanese assured the Executive Council of Australian Jewry in parliament this week that recognition was not imminent. Co-chief executive Peter Wertheim said the prime minister had made two things clear.

“Firstly, Australia will make its own decision concerning the timing of recognition of a Palestinian state. Secondly, recognition must not simply be an empty gesture,” he said.

Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler welcomed Albanese’s comments that Australia “will not follow other nations in prematurely recognising a Palestinian state”.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young pushed Labor to follow the lead of other countries, although she emphasised her prime concern was condemning Israel over the humanitarian suffering in Gaza.

The federal opposition has cautioned that there should be no conversation about recognition while Hamas still held Israelis hostage.

Opposition frontbencher Julian Leeser on Thursday morning said Palestinian statehood should come at the end of a peace negotiation process, not at the start or during it. “I think what the government is doing here, and what some of the other foreign governments are doing here, is wrong,” he said on 2GB.

“This really is putting the cart before the horse, and it has never been Australia’s foreign policy tradition to recognise states before they come into existence.”

Canada’s decision to recognise Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly in September, announced on Thursday (AEST), was predicated on the Palestinian Authority committing to “much needed reform”, Carney said, including general elections in 2026 in which Hamas could play no part.

The UK on Wednesday (AEST) also declared it would recognise a Palestinian state in September unless Israel agreed to a ceasefire, a two-state solution, and an end to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Starmer’s decision came under sustained political pressure from his MPs. It followed French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement last week.

Israel has criticised the push for recognition, with its foreign ministry rebuking Canada. “The change in the position of the Canadian government at this time is a reward for Hamas and harms the efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and a framework for the release of the hostages,” it said.

Trump envoy to visit Gaza to witness starvation crisis ‘first-hand’

https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/trump-envoy-heading-to-gaza-to-witness-starvation-crisis-first-hand-20250801-p5mjgo.html

US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Gaza to assess what the White House called a “dire” starvation crisis first-hand, and formulate a plan to deliver more food.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Witkoff and US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee would enter Gaza on Friday, local time, following a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.

They would inspect the current food and aid distribution sites and “secure a plan to deliver more food, and meet with local Gazans to hear first-hand about this dire situation on the ground”, she said.

Following that they would immediately brief Trump and approve a final plan for food and aid distribution to the region, Leavitt said.

Earlier, The New York Times reported Witkoff would visit an aid site managed by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Fund, an operation backed by the US government.

It marks a rare visit to the wartorn territory by a foreign official, although Witkoff visited Gaza in January to monitor a ceasefire that was in place at the time.

It comes amid shifting international views on Israel’s operation in Gaza, with a growing consensus condemning the Netanyahu government over a starvation crisis that has killed more than 150 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry, in addition to the tens of thousands killed in the war.

In a rare break between the two leaders, Trump contradicted Netanyahu on the matter this week, saying there was “real starvation” happening in Gaza, despite Israel’s denials, and he had seen the heartbreaking images on television.

“President Trump is a humanitarian with a big heart,” Leavitt said. “That’s why he sent Special Envoy Witkoff to the region in an effort to save lives and end this crisis.”

Shortly after Witkoff’s arrival in Israel, President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social network: “The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!”

The US State Department also announced sanctions on officials of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, saying the groups were undermining peace efforts. It was Washington’s latest apparent diplomatic shift backing Israel against the Palestinians and diverging from its European allies.

The PA and PLO, rivals of the Hamas fighters that control Gaza, are internationally accepted as the representatives of the Palestinian people and administrators of a Palestinian state that France, Britain and Canada have said in recent days they could soon recognise as independent. Australia has so far resisted that step.

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The full impact of the US move was not immediately clear: the State Department said targeted individuals would be barred from travelling to the United States but did not identify those targeted.

Witkoff arrived in Israel with Netanyahu’s government facing mounting international pressure over the widespread destruction of Gaza and constraints on aid in the territory.

Indirect ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas in Doha ended in deadlock last week with the sides trading blame for the impasse and gaps lingering over issues including the extent of an Israeli military withdrawal.

Since the war began, the Gaza health ministry has recorded 156 deaths from starvation and malnutrition, most of them in recent weeks, including at least 90 children.

Confronted by rising international outrage over images of starving children, Israel said on Sunday it would halt military operations for 10 hours a day in parts of Gaza and designate secure routes for convoys delivering food and medicine.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Wednesday the United Nations and its partners had been able to bring more food into Gaza in the first two days of pauses, but the volume was “still far from enough”.

With the number of Palestinians killed in almost two years of war passing 60,000 this week, pressure has been mounting in Gaza on Hamas to reach a ceasefire deal with Israel.

Hamas is still holding 50 hostages in Gaza, of whom around 20 are believed to be alive. Mothers of hostages led a protest outside Netanyahu’s office, calling on the government to end the war.

Israel has denounced declarations by France, Britain and Canada since last week that they may recognise a Palestinian state, which Israel says amounts to rewarding Hamas for its October 7, 2023, assault on Israeli territory. That attack, in which fighters killed 1200 people and took 251 hostages back to Gaza, precipitated the war.

Australia recognising Palestine would infuriate Netanyahu – but not the people of Israel

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-recognising-palestine-would-infuriate-netanyahu-but-not-the-people-of-israel-20250731-p5mje1.html

Like all Australian governments for decades, the Albanese government has considered itself a friend of Israel. But Benjamin Netanyahu’s callous mistreatment of Palestinians has finally gone too far.

Twenty months ago, it was impossible for civilised, fair-minded societies not to sympathise with Israeli victims of Hamas’ atrocities. Today it is impossible for civilised, fair-minded societies not to sympathise with Palestinian victims of Netanyahu’s atrocities.

His regime’s wilful blindness to its starving of Palestinian children proved to be the last straw for many. Even Donald Trump openly contradicted Netanyahu this week by calling it real starvation: “You can’t fake that,” said the US president.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has signalled that Australia is prepared to alienate Netanyahu by moving towards giving full diplomatic recognition to a state called Palestine. “It’s a very historic shift,” observes Amin Saikal, professor emeritus of Middle Eastern studies at ANU.

Not hastily or impetuously. The government is acting with the same circumspection that has become its hallmark. It’s been weighing recognition since Penny Wong said so in April last year. The Albanese cabinet has canvassed the issue extensively.

First, it’s moving in careful step with the rising Australian public sympathy for Palestinian civilians. One indicator: late last year, half of Australia wanted Israel to end its military assaults in Gaza. By this week, that had surged to two-thirds, according to Essential polling.

Second, the government waited until the Palestinian Authority had announced its own self-reform agenda. This was designed to make itself a more acceptable candidate for statehood. It included a call for the release of remaining hostages held by Hamas, a demand that Hamas disarm, a commitment to a demilitarised Palestinian state and a promise to hold elections within a year to allow “generational renewal” of the Palestinian Authority itself.

Third, Albanese waited until France and Saudi Arabia had convened a large group of nations – including the EU and the Arab League – to try creating preconditions for negotiations towards a two-state outcome.

Notably, all 22 countries in the Arab League for the first time put pressure on Hamas. The league collectively condemned the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, demanded that Hamas disarm, and insisted that Hamas relinquish control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority.

This Franco-Saudi-led group also proposed a temporary “stabilisation” mission. Crucially, some of the countries offered to supply troops for such a mission, which was predicated on a UN mandate.

Fourth, the Albanese government is moving in company with a range of other countries, including ones considered like-minded. In the past week, France, Britain and Canada have announced their intention to recognise a Palestinian state, possibly at the UN General Assembly meeting in September.

Fifth, Albanese put conditions on Australian recognition. As did the British and the Canadians. The British, for instance, said they would move on it only if Netanyahu failed to declare a ceasefire in Gaza.

In the case of Australia and Canada, they signed a 15-nation letter on Wednesday swearing commitment to a two-state solution “where two democratic states” live side by side in peace.

This so-called “New York call” group of countries, including New Zealand, stipulated that Gaza and the West Bank be unified under Palestinian Authority rule, and demanded that Hamas be excluded from any governance. They also called on all nations to establish relations with Israel.

Wong said the countries were trying to “work out what we can each do to break the cycle of violence that is consuming the Middle East”.

Albanese has made clear that Australia is not set on any particular deadline but will try to use recognition to maximum effect for peace. Over decades, a total of 147 countries have recognised a Palestinian state. Will the remaining few make any practical difference?

“Ultimately, it will depend on US support,” says the ANU’s Saikal. “If the US doesn’t come in, Israel can afford to ignore all the pressure.”

Otherwise, “it’s basically an expression of outrage towards Israel”. Or, as an Australian official confided, recognition would amount to “warm regards from Australia” to the Palestinians.

The Coalition continues to defend the Netanyahu position, which is not the position of the Israeli people. Most Israelis want the killing in Gaza to end. And, contrary to popular impressions, most Israelis are prepared to accept a Palestinian state in the right conditions.

A poll in May found that 75 per cent of Israelis “would support or accept recognition of a ‘Palestinian state’ in the context of a regional normalisation deal with full diplomatic, economic, and security co-operation with Saudi Arabia and the Arab world”, reports the Times of Israel.

The evolving position of Australia and its like-minded friends infuriates Netanyahu, but brings these countries into closer alignment with the Israeli people themselves.

The Palestine recognition train has left the station. Will Albanese jump aboard?

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-recognition-train-has-left-the-station-will-albanese-jump-aboard-20250731-p5mj6r.html

Anthony Albanese’s cautious instincts on recognising a Palestinian state are colliding with an international freight train hurtling towards a series of historic declarations at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

French President Emmanuel Macron set the train running with his announcement last week that France would recognise a Palestinian state at the major global meeting.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer followed by saying he would do the same, unless there is a ceasefire in Gaza and Israel commits to work towards a two-state solution. Then, on Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced he would recognise Palestine – as long as the Palestinian Authority that governs the West Bank, but not Gaza, commits to reform and holding elections.

These rapid-fire moves from like-minded democracies will spark increased calls for Albanese to do the same, despite his obvious doubts about the timing, and a pile of questions remaining about where the recognition push is ultimately headed.

“You need to recognise a Palestinian state as part of moving forward,” Albanese told the ABC’s Insiders on Sunday. “How do you exclude Hamas from any involvement there? How do you ensure that a Palestinian state operates in an appropriate way, which does not threaten the existence of Israel? And so we won’t do any decision as a gesture. We will do it as a way forward if the circumstances are met.”

Albanese’s remarks were widely interpreted as ruling out recognising Palestine in September, but they contained more flexibility than first appeared.

He continued to hold the line after Starmer’s announcement, telling reporters that “we’re looking at the circumstances where recognition will advance the objective of the creation of two states”.

“Not making a statement, not winning a political point, but achieving that. That’s very much my focus,” he said.

Albanese is right to be wary about playing the recognition card, knowing that once you’ve done so you can’t use it again. Most countries have already recognised Palestine, to no practical effect. Instead, the peace process has stalled and life for Palestinians has only worsened – most tragically with the death and devastation in Gaza.

One Labor MP, who is immersed in foreign affairs, said the debate about Australia recognising Palestine would do nothing to help people on the ground.

“It’s f—ing meaningless,” the MP said. “I want us to actually do something to help create a Palestinian state.”

Reflecting the complexity of the issue, the nation’s peak Palestinian lobby group, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, regards the recognition debate as a sideshow. The group’s president, Nasser Mashni, argues the “two-state solution is absolutely dead” and that establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel would be akin to partitioning South Africa as a way to end apartheid in the 1990s. Mashni wants one unified state with equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis.

As for the Labor caucus, there is overwhelming support for the speedy recognition of Palestine, but the discussion is playing out almost entirely behind the scenes. Liberated by the loss of his frontbench position, Ed Husic is the only one of the party’s 123 MPs who feels able to speak freely on the issue. He has been loudly calling on Albanese to join Macron and Starmer by recognising Palestine. Labor’s first Palestinian-Australian MP, Basem Abdo, went no further in his first speech to parliament this week than saying: “The right to peace, justice and recognition matters – deserving of a historic commitment.”

Albanese is a triumphant figure within Labor after his huge election victory, meaning his MPs are extremely reluctant to challenge his authority and voice their views on contentious issues. The risk is a command-and-control culture takes hold in the party rather than a lively debate on the big issues of our time, such as the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Macron’s bold recognition move has undoubtedly shaken up a stultified peace process, prodding Starmer and Canada’s Carney to take action and eliciting an important call from Arab states for Hamas to demilitarise and leave Gaza. Macron has also extracted commitments from the sclerotic Palestinian Authority to implement reform and democratise.

However, rather than acting in a co-ordinated way, world leaders appear to be improvising: they are pursuing different goals and offering disparate reasons for recognising Palestine. Starmer is using it as a cudgel to pressure Israel to wrap up the war in Gaza while Carney sees it as a tool to encourage the first Palestinian elections in two decades. How those elections would work when, according to many polls, Hamas remains the most popular political party among Palestinians remains one of many questions to be resolved.

The centrist Israeli Opposition Leader, Yair Lapid, listed many more this week when he accused France of not asking “basic questions” about how a Palestinian state would work. “What are its borders?” Lapid asked. “What is its capital? Who governs it? What kind of government will it have? Will it be a democracy? Does it support the right of return? Does it have the ability to prevent Hamas from taking over the moment it’s created?” His comments reflect the fact that Israeli support for a two-state solution has plummeted since the October 7 attacks. It’s not just about resistance from Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right coalition.

As for Albanese, his desire to use recognition to make a practical difference sits alongside his knowledge that Australia is not a major player in the Middle East. How much of an impact would an Australian declaration on recognition have if it is disconnected from nations like France, the UK and Canada? The recognition train has left the station and is gathering steam, raising the pressure on Albanese to hop aboard – ready or not.

Trump envoy meets Netanyahu for Gaza ceasefire push

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9030417/trump-envoy-meets-netanyahu-for-gaza-ceasefire-push/

US special envoy Steve Witkoff has met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a bid to salvage Gaza truce talks and tackle a humanitarian crisis in the enclave, where a global hunger monitor has warned that famine is unfolding.

Shortly after Witkoff’s arrival on Thursday, President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social network: “The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!”

Witkoff arrived in Israel with Netanyahu’s government facing mounting international pressure over the widespread destruction of Gaza and constraints on aid in the territory.

Following the meeting, a senior Israeli official said an understanding between Israel and the US was emerging that there was a need to move from a plan to release some of the hostages to a plan to release all the hostages, disarm Hamas, and demilitarise the Gaza Strip.

The official did not provide details on what that plan would be, but added Israel and the United States will work to increase humanitarian aid, while continuing the fighting in Gaza.

Witkoff will travel to Gaza on Friday to inspect food aid delivery as he works on a final plan to speed deliveries to the enclave, the White House said.

Gaza medical officials said at least 23 people were reported killed by Israeli fire across the enclave, including 12 people among crowds who had gathered to receive aid around the Netzarim corridor, an area held by Israeli troops in central Gaza.

The Israeli military said its troops had fired warning shots to disperse crowds, and had not identified any casualties.

Since the war began, the Gaza health ministry has recorded 156 deaths from starvation and malnutrition, most of them in recent weeks, including at least 90 children.

With the number of Palestinians killed in almost two years of war passing 60,000 this week, pressure has been mounting in Gaza on Hamas to reach a ceasefire deal with Israel.

Hamas is still holding 50 hostages in Gaza, of whom around 20 are believed to be alive. Mothers of hostages led a protest outside Netanyahu’s office, calling on the government to end the war.

Netanyahu, whose ruling coalition includes two far-right parties that want to conquer Gaza and re-establish Jewish settlements there, has said he will not end the war until Hamas no longer rules the enclave and lays down its arms. Hamas has rejected calls to disarm.

That attack, in which fighters killed 1200 people and took 251 hostages back to Gaza, precipitated the war.

I owe my life to those who ended genocide against Jews

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9029981/jenna-price-jews-around-the-world-must-call-on-benjamin-netanyahu-to-end-gaza-horror/

I don’t often feel sorry for politicians, and even less for aspiring ones. But I might make an exception for Simon Sheikh, the bloke who fainted on Q&A while Sophie Mirabella looked on. Sheikh is now CEO of Future Super. He’s a former member of the ALP and a failed Greens candidate in the ACT.

Sheikh, former executive director of GetUp, did something astonishingly unfeeling in 2023 and it looks even worse today. But in a past life, back in 2023, it would probably have seemed like good risk management. Support Gaza and your donors would run the other way.

According to new independent publisher Deepcut News‘s Alex McKinnon, Sheikh emailed GetUp!’s then-CEO Larissa Baldwin-Roberts and GetUp! chair Glen Berman. He warned that making public commentary on Gaza “is likely to be quite tokenistic” and that “it feels like it’s for others to intervene”. Plus! Taking a public stance on Gaza risked “alienating” donors with Israeli or Jewish family heritage.

You don’t have to look too far to know that when it comes to public support of Palestinians, the shit will hit the fan.

It will happen with a thousand phone calls to your employer. Take the people who mounted a campaign against former ABC Sydney broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf.

(Mind you, look how it turned out for them.)

The campaigners against Lattouf got what they wanted in the short term. In the long term, they damaged other Jews along the way. I’d argue they even damaged support for Israel.

For those campaigners, the public evisceration in the aftermath of the Lattouf scandal would have been embarrassing and humiliating. And then, to add insult to humiliation, courts found the ABC’s moral collapse and subsequent sacking Lattouf was in breach of the Fair Work Act.

Sheikh goes on: “Obviously as I’m sure you both know, there is a large group of GetUp! donors who have family in Israel and/or a Jewish family heritage. I find these groups of donors fall into two categories – one who are emotionally affected by this moment but still stand behind a two-state solution and another group who are progressive on all issues other than this one and take their lead from Zionist leaders.”

But in the words of the greatest song writer of all time (yes, yes, Boomer musical values here), the times they are a-changing. There is now a third group: Jews who cannot abide – or stand – by the ongoing war on Gaza.

This week, two leading Israeli human rights organisations made serious allegations against Israeli authorities. B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) labelled Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide. They demanded members of the international community put pressure on the Netanyahu government to stop. Stop the bombing. Stop the starvation (Remember the starvation? The one Lattouf was not permitted to tweet about?).

And then just this week, in actual Australia, the Zionist Federation of Australia said Israel has a moral obligation to ensure the flow of sufficient aid into Gaza. I can’t find anything where the ZFA also asks Israel to stop bombing Gaza but I’m sure it’s coming. I hope it’s coming.

These public comments are reassuring. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is horrified by the pictures and stories coming out of Gaza. Lucky for the urgent global interest, we can see some of these images and words. Israel is renowned for manipulating access, trying to control the narrative.

As nearly every single news outlet has reported, Israel has stopped international reporters from entering Gaza. Last week, members of the International News Safety Institute issued a statement calling on Israel to allow journalists in Gaza who are facing starvation to leave the enclave, and for international reporters to be allowed entry.

The day before, AFP, Associated Press, BBC and Reuters pretty much did the same: “We once again urge the Israeli authorities to allow journalists in and out of Gaza. It is essential that adequate food supplies reach the people there.”

Where does that leave us? Are the times changing, the tide turning? I’m still baffled by comments by Israel’s deputy chief of mission in its Canberra embassy Amir Meron earlier this week.

“We don’t recognise any famine or any starvation in the Gaza Strip … Israel has never acted in a policy of starvation. There is no such policy. There is no starvation in the Gaza Strip and there is no willingness of Israel that such a thing will happen in the Gaza Strip.”

Then, mindblowingly, he said that reports of the deaths of malnourished children are a “false campaign” from Hamas. Does he think we don’t see the reports on the news?

Oh wait, Sussan Ley also couldn’t make up her mind. Once, she was a parliamentary friend of Palestine. Now, ah, um, it’s a “complex situation”. Albanese says the situation is reprehensible but let’s be clear, taking independent senator David Pocock’s position would be better:

“The time for just words is over. We’ve even got President Trump now saying that clearly, starvation is happening. It’s time to start with more targeted sanctions, starting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, ratcheting them up.”

It’s a humanitarian catastrophe. And Jews around the world must call on Netanyahu to stop this behaviour. There is so much pain associated with the attacks on Israel on October 7 and the murders of innocent people. There are still hostages, both alive and dead, who must be returned to their families. But I don’t think an eye for an eye ever works but maybe Netanyahu thinks genocide will work.

We must be on the side of life. I owe my life to those who sought to end the genocide of the Jews during the Second World War. They succeeded and I’m very lucky.

In rush to vilify Israel, Sudan’s crisis goes MIA

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/in-rush-to-vilify-israel-sudans-crisis-goes-mia/news-story/49075018abc803a5af96610c89e205ae

On the very same day the ABC reported a UN statement calling Gaza the “hungriest place on Earth”, the World Food Program, which is the UN agency with central responsibility for preventing famines, warned that the situation in Sudan was veering into the “world’s largest hunger crisis in recent history”.

At that time, in late May, 25 million people in Sudan were “acutely food insecure”, while 650,000 – “the highest anywhere in the world” – suffered from “catastrophic levels of hunger”. Since then, conditions have worsened, with the incidence of “catastrophic levels of hunger” increasing by some 10 per cent.

The disaster’s immediate cause is a struggle between forces mainly backed by Egypt and a rebel group backed mainly by the UAE. But plunging that struggle into unrestrained savagery is the determination of Sudan’s Arabs to exterminate the country’s Masalit minority, who have been expelled from their homelands and herded into refugee camps.

Neither of the warring sides has shown any regard for civilians. Tens of thousands of children have died of starvation since the beginning of the year, as combatants pillage aid and prevent its delivery. Adding to the horror, there is irrefutable evidence of children as young as one being sexually abused before being slaughtered.

Following the release of that evidence, Benny Morris, the “revisionist” historian Israel’s critics love to cite (when it suits them), has described rape as an integral part of “the Arab way of war”.

The reality, he goes on to say, is that the atrocities in Sudan “tell us something many in the West don’t want to hear about the behavioural norms of Arab combatants in wartime”.

One thing is certain: they won’t hear about them on the ABC, which has consistently ignored the rapidly deteriorating situation in Sudan.

The figures are stark: a search of material added to the ABC website in the last month does not find a single hit for “Sudan” and just one for “Darfur”. But it does find 5750 hits for “Gaza” and 3380 for “famine and Gaza”.

Why then, despite claims that “all lives matter”, are some tragedies so much worthier of our attention and compassion than others, whose sheer scale is vastly greater?

It is, of course, true that our resources of attention and compassion are limited. David Hume was right when he wrote, centuries ago, that “We sympathise more with persons contiguous to us, than with persons remote from us: with our acquaintance, than with strangers: with our countrymen, than with foreigners” – and many more Australians have connections to the Middle East than to Sudan.

But while that factor and others are at work, the unmitigated focus on Gaza is scarcely neutral. To begin with, by hiding the facts “many in the West don’t want to hear about the behavioural norms of Arab combatants in wartime” it obscures a central element of the conflict’s ongoing context.

Even more importantly, the focus on Gaza is accompanied by a singular emphasis on Israel, which the ABC mentions some 10 times more frequently than Hamas – an imbalance equally apparent in statements by government ministers, whose ritualistic references to Hamas (such as its calls to voluntarily disarm) are entirely disconnected from reality.

Israel’s conduct cannot and should not be exempt from even searing criticism. But constantly repeated, the imbalance in emphasis absolves Hamas of its responsibilities, encouraging a simplistic, one-sided narrative in which Israel is the sole actor.

The result is to fuel a dynamic of demonisation whose characteristics have been extensively analysed since the work done by Lewis Coser, an eminent American sociologist who was a refugee from Nazism, in the early 1950s.

Thus, an unrelenting focus on a single party – in this case, Israel – makes it the lightning rod of attention and of the attribution of moral responsibility. As that happens, a symbolic moral boundary is drawn between the active “transgressor” and its allegedly passive “victims”, crystallising a distinction between virtue and vice. Finally, by framing the “transgressors” as evil, the newly drawn moral boundary places the “transgressors” outside the public’s “span of sympathy”, fracturing social bonds, preventing rational discussion and shredding any obligations of civility.

But more than just drawing moral boundaries is needed to convert condemnation into escalating confrontation.

Rather, mobilisers, intent on furthering the demonisation, must transform condemnation into outrage by using “scripts” that heighten the perception of evil – a process exemplified in the literature by the New Left’s equating of the US’s conduct in Vietnam with that of Nazi Germany.

As the outrage those scripts provoke foment mass protests, repeatedly participating in public displays of hatred cements the commitment of the weakly involved and incites hardcore activists to push the boundaries ever further.

Even worse, those displays of hatred normalise violence against the out-group, who – precisely because they are singled out for attack – are increasingly viewed by bystanders as “not quite like us” and hence not “meriting the sympathy we would extend to ‘our kind’ ”.

Meanwhile, with the lunacy of the fringe entering the mainstream, anyone even indirectly related to the out-group “becomes viewed as polluted” unless they can prove their innocence by denouncing their former friends and associates. As they are anathemised, they lose the right to hold their own opinions and to the equal and effective protection of the laws.

Coser, writing late in life, feared that the changes in communications technology that were creating a “global village” would bring more, and more rapid, demonisation rather than less.

As we were bombarded by images of dreadful events, he argued, the demonisers’ ready scripts would allow us to escape the burden of coping with moral complexity. Moreover, with everything occurring in full public gaze, the pressures to conform would increase, raising the cost of refusing to join the baying pack. Large conurbations favour anonymity; as history grimly shows, it takes a village to burn a witch – and no village mobilises witch hunters more venomous than the online village in which we live.

Little wonder that process has unfolded time and again in recent years. But its current reach and ferocity are truly unprecedented. That is largely because the “villain” takes more tangible form than in previous episodes: radical environmentalists may despise “climate deniers” but there are not well-defined, readily identifiable, communities of “climate deniers” for them to attack. Now the haters have a target: the Jews.

The transposition is hardly accidental. Not only is there a natural link between Israel and Australia’s Jewish community; the demonisation of Israel rekindles ancient prejudices in some and unleashes the deeply ingrained hatreds of others. As all the vices anti-Semites have always associated with Jews – vindictiveness, arrogance, demonic power and global reach – are heaped on to Israel, “Israel” has become little more than a signifier for “Jew”.

When, after attacks on synagogues, restaurants and individuals, the National Gallery of Victoria is targeted, in torrents of punitive hysteria, because the Gandel family, which is Jewish, has generously endowed it, who can possibly deny that the vilest forms of anti-Semitism are at work?

And who could reasonably deny that a relentless focus on Israel, and on its responsibility alone, has added unstoppable momentum to the hostility and encouraged the unabashed expression of blatant anti-Semitism?

An ugly abyss has opened up. It is, in the end, not only the Jews it will swallow. It is our moral bearings and, with them, our way of life.

Palestine state recognition now will only delay release of hostages: Mark Leibler

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/palestine-state-recognition-now-will-only-delay-release-of-hostages-mark-leibler/news-story/9ea221b68de919b661ee5941546f5ceb

Respected Jewish leader Mark Leibler has warned Anthony Albanese that prematurely recognising Palestinian statehood would delay the release of Israeli hostages and prolong the suffering of civilians in Gaza, amid fresh signs Labor is preparing to make the historic diplomatic shift.

Jim Chalmers declared on Thursday it was “a matter of when, not if” Australia recognised Palestine, after Canada became the latest like-minded country to commit to the change.

But as the Treasurer and the Prime Minister also consider trade and AUKUS talks with the White House in coming months, Donald Trump warned Canada that its support for Palestinian recognition would get in the way with the US-Canada tariff deal.

“Wow! Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine. That will make it very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them. Oh’ Canada!!!.” Mr Trump said on Truth Social.

Mr Albanese, who backs recognition of Palestine but is yet to announce a timeline, spoke to his British counterpart Keir Starmer for a second time late on Wednesday night about the UK leader’s pledge this week to recognise Palestinian statehood in September.

When asked on Tuesday night if he would recognise Palestine without Mr Trump’s support, Mr Albanese said the US would not have an effective veto over his policy on Palestine.

“No, we’ll make our own decisions. But clearly the United States have a role to play here,” the Prime Minister told the ABC.

“I think there’s an opportunity for the United States to play a leadership role here, for President Donald Trump to play a role, that of course will be a matter for them.”

Mr Leibler, a prominent lawyer and chair of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, reminded Mr Albanese that his own preconditions for recognising Palestine – including the disarmament of Hamas and the release of the hostages – were yet to be fulfilled.

“The Prime Minister has made it clear that, in the current circumstances, with Hamas terrorists continuing to hold both Israeli citizens and Palestinian civilians hostage in Gaza, the time is not right for recognition of a Palestinian state,” he said.

“The countries that have chosen to go down this path now are only encouraging Hamas in its current intransigence, and further delaying the release of hostages and the end of suffering for innocent Palestinians in Gaza.”

Fellow Jewish leader Peter Wertheim, the co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said it would be “worse than an empty gesture” if the government pressed ahead with recognising Palestine without its preconditions being met.

“It would be scandalous if Australia and other nations were to recognise a Palestinian state which, from day one, was internationally responsible for the holding of living and dead hostages and was impotent in the face of armed terrorist groups controlling large parts of its territory,” he said. “That would be worse than an empty gesture; it would set the scene for even more carnage than has already occurred for ordinary people on both sides of the conflict.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he would recognise a Palestinian state at the UN in September, falling in behind Mr Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Dr Chalmers said he welcomed the growing international momentum behind Palestinian statehood. “We need to make sure that the hostages are released, and so our support is conditional on meeting some of those, overcoming some of those obstacles,” the Treasurer said.

“But from an Australian point of view, it’s a matter of when, not if, and this progress and this momentum in the international community, from my point of view, is welcome.”

His comments came a day after Australia signed a joint statement with 14 other countries proclaiming the recognition of a Palestinian state “as an essential step” towards achieving peace in the Middle East.

Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek said there would need to be “delicate negotiations” on Australia’s next steps towards recognition. “We understand that. It’s not an easy path, but we need to take the next step along the path that will bring us to a lasting peace,” she said.

Labor has steadily built its case to recognise Palestine since Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a speech last year the government no longer saw the move as a final-status issue in a two-state solution, but as a vital step to break the “cycle of violence”.

What will happen to the West Bank if Palestine becomes a state?

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/what-will-happen-to-the-west-bank-if-palestine-becomes-a-state/news-story/19bb8f3bdf282fab54d8840a32e0851e

The political trigger for France, Britain and now Canada to recognise Palestinian statehood may well have been starvation in Gaza.

The historical trigger, however, was provided by events in the West Bank. The “other” Palestinian territory is seen by the world as the core of any future state, but to many Israelis, including most of its government, it is Judaea and Samaria, the biblical centre of the Jewish homeland, and ministers have been threatening to formalise Israeli rule over it.

That would make the West’s preferred – indeed, only – solution to the Middle East conflict, two states living side by side, an impossibility. France and Britain could not allow any move to annex the hills of Jericho and Hebron, Ramallah and Nablus, to go unchallenged.

It is, naturally enough, Gaza that has consumed the world’s attention since the events of October 7, 2023. The brutality of Hamas’s massacre of civilians and then the grim price paid by Gaza’s population has played out on the front pages.

The war has led to historic shifts: the near destruction of Hezbollah, Lebanon’s Iran-backed Shia militia, once thought impregnable; and then the attack by Israel and the United States on Iran’s nuclear program.

In the background all the time was a force driving in its own direction, for which the war served as a useful distraction.

Settlers have been rampaging through Palestinian villages. On Monday, one killed a leading activist, featured in an Oscar-winning documentary, but there have been scores of lower-profile clashes and assaults.

In turn, young Palestinian men are being radicalised, joining militant groups, and thus giving a pretext for further Israeli military assaults. The belief of the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, that there is no real distinction between Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank’s ruling Palestinian Authority, even though it recognises and even co-operates with Israel, will surely, if slowly, become a reality on the ground.

That suits the far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition government, who believe that extending settlements will make annexation of the West Bank a de facto, then a de jure reality.

For France and Britain, and particularly for their diplomats, steeped in the history of their colonial roles in shaping the borders of the Middle East, this was the mission creep that had to be stopped.

Both countries – indeed, nearly all countries, including the US – believe Israel cannot rule over Palestine for ever. Nor can it still be considered a democracy if half the population, the Arab half, does not have the same political rights as the Israeli half.

If they do, and Israel becomes a non-denominational, secular state, let alone a Muslim-majority state, would the Jews stay? Would it still be a home for the Jewish people?

As so often in the Middle East, western powers may have acted not because they saw a clear outcome, but because they felt that something, anything, had to be done.

NY Times offices vandalised after emaciated Gaza baby correction

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/ny-times-offices-vandalised-after-emaciated-gaza-baby-correction/news-story/093f49dd809b63ee86153fe6004cf341

Pro-Palestinian vandals have daubed the offices of The New York Times with red paint and slogans after the newspaper admitted it had published a misleading picture of an emaciated baby in Gaza.

Videos on social media show The NY Times’s glass frontage covered in paint and the slogan: “NYT lies, Gaza dies.”

On Wednesday (AEST) the newspaper admitted an error in publishing the image after it emerged the child featured had been diagnosed with pre-existing health conditions.

The photograph showing toddler Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq wearing a plastic bag for a nappy while being cradled in his mother’s arms was run on the newspaper’s front page with the headline “Young, old and sick starve to death in Gaza”.

It was also published by a number of other media organisations last week, including the ABC, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, BBC, CNN, The Times and Sky.

In a post on X, The New York Times said the newspaper had added an editors’ note to its story after learning “after publication … that (Muhammad) also had pre-existing health problems”.

“We have since learned new information, including from the hospital that treated him and his medical records, and have updated our story to add context about his pre-existing health problems,” it said in its statement.

Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett accused The New York Times of “blood libel” over the image.

“This is simply unbelievable,” Mr Bennett wrote in a post on X. “After generating a tsunami of hate towards Israel with that terrifying picture, the NYT now quietly admits that the boy has pre-existing conditions. NYT, you knew that Hamas uses babies with pre-existing illnesses. We’ve been saying this for months now. You knew exactly what this picture would cause. This is a blood libel in 2025. Have you no shame?”

The NYT correction came after Jewish journalist David Collier, who alleges he uncovered the evidence proving the photograph was misleading, accused international media of becoming Hamas’s “useful idiots”.

“It is the basic role of a journalist to verify and check the facts before he writes a story, so the question is, is the image an honest image or a dishonest one?” he said.

Adass Israel Synagogue arsonist identified as Giovanni Laulu in first court appearance

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/adass-israel-synagogue-arsonist-identified-as-giovanni-laulu-in-first-court-appearance/news-story/e48f7c146666641475c926c94fe19c6d

A 21-year-old man accused of being one of the attackers in the firebombing the Adass Israel Synagogue has faced court for the first time, following his arrest during a series of counter-terrorism raids across Melbourne.

Giovanni Laulu appeared in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday morning, charged with arson, recklessly endangering life, and vehicle theft over the attack on the synagogue in Ripponlea in December.

Dressed in a long-sleeved black shirt and sporting a thin moustache and beard, Mr Laulu sat quietly in the dock, only speaking to confirm his identity.

He maintained eye contact with the magistrate and nodded in acknowledgment of directions. He did not apply for bail and was remanded in custody.

The court heard federal and state police were still preparing an extensive brief of evidence against Mr Laulu, with 11 mobile phones yet to be analysed.

Prosecutors requested – and were granted – 12 weeks to finalise their case, with Magistrate Brett Sonnett setting a deadline of October 23.

Mr Laulu was arrested on Wednesday morning during a high-stakes operation led by the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team – a task force comprising Victoria Police, Australian Federal Police and ASIO – which executed a series of co-ordinated raids across Melbourne suburbs.

He is accused of being one of three people who set fire to the synagogue on December 6, 2024.

CCTV footage released this year shows masked men smashing their way into the $20m synagogue, with one carrying a red jerry can before flames engulfed the building.

The fire caused millions of dollars in damage to the synagogue and destroyed priceless religious artefacts, including centuries-old Torah scrolls.

Police allege the group arrived at the scene in a stolen blue Volkswagen Golf, previously described as a “communal crime car” allegedly used in a string of unrelated incidents – including a firebombing at South Yarra’s Lux Nightclub.

According to charge sheets released by the court, Mr Laulu allegedly stole the $40,000 vehicle the night before the synagogue attack, taking it from an address in Tarneit.

On Wednesday, AFP Deputy Commissioner Krissy Barrett confirmed police were examining potential links to overseas criminals.

She said an AFP officer was bitten by a dog during Mr Laulu’s arrest at a Werribee property.

A police firearm was discharged during the arrest and the dog was later euthanised at a veterinary clinic.

Investigations remain ongoing and authorities said they expected to make further arrests.

Another man allegedly involved in stealing the Volkswagen Golf was charged on July 16.

Mr Laulu is due to reappear via video link at Werribee Magistrates Court on August 6 for the state charges.

His federal charges will return to court on December 4 for a committal mention.

Division in Coalition ranks on Middle East ‘tone’

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/division-in-coalition-ranks-on-middle-east-tone/news-story/a138e5139ce1ebae651c69114c81e094

The Coalition is facing internal pressure from some sections of both the Liberals and Nationals over its messaging on Israel, with numerous MPs raising concerns that language on the war in Gaza was focused more at the Liberal base than the rest of the country.

While both parties are broadly unified on their opposition to recognising Palestine until preconditions such as removing Hamas from the region are met, the view that foreign affairs spokeswoman Michaelia Cash seemed determined to defend Israel “at all costs” has sparked backlash from several Liberal and National MPs.

According to six Liberal and National MPs who span across moderate and conservative ranks, the change in sentiment on the Middle East, evident in some parts of the country, needed to be met with an increase in “sensitivity” over the issue and a shift in the Coalition’s tone on the conflict.

“We can’t be defending Israel at all costs and supporting it to the end of the earth at this point,” one MP said.

Another senior member of the Coalition said mainstream Australians were beginning to harbour concerns over the direction of the conflict and the opposition’s language on Gaza.

“You get to a point where you go, ‘hang on, what’s going on here?’ Like, a Christian church was bombed,” the senior MP said. “I get the idea you don’t negotiate with Hamas and sure you need to wipe them all out and that, but just stop killing everyone else. This is all starting to look like a mess.”

Another MP said the Coalition should not spend so much of time and energy on the conflict, arguing the same went for the debate about whether to stand with the Indigenous flag or support a commitment to net-zero emissions.

“These are not bread-and-butter issues,” the MP said.

The comment follows Senator Cash reiterating her position last week that she would only stand under the Australian flag and didn’t support the overuse of welcome-to-country ceremonies.

Besides the calls to talk about the Middle East less, sources said there was a clear increase in the number of people who believed the language on the conflict needed to change. “There’s a growing number of us that are uncomfortable with it,” an MP said.

“It seems there’s a bit of a desire to replicate what was done when it came to the No case for the (Indigenous) voice. This isn’t that.”

The MP spoke of being worried that messaging from Senator Cash in particular was aimed at “pandering” to the Liberal base and preselectors, while another MP said the voice of the party’s foreign affairs spokeswoman “held weight” and that caution needed to be applied around the language she used.

Senator Cash, one of the most senior conservatives, whose upcoming preselection has sparked questions over her tactics going forward, said all of her statements and actions were in line with the wishes of Coalition leader Sussan Ley. “Sussan and I are on a unity ticket when it comes to our positions on the conflict in the Middle East,” Senator Cash told The Australian.

“The Coalition recognises that the dismantling of the terrorist group Hamas is the key to ending the conflict in Gaza.”

Senator Cash – who spent time in Israel during her youth – has accused the government of emboldening Hamas with its recent comments on the conflict and indications it would soon recognise Palestine as a state.

However, Senator Cash also demanded aid be allowed to flow into war-torn Gaza.

The Australian understands Coalition MPs have raised concerns over Senator Cash’s media statements and language in parliament during the past sitting fortnight directly with the West Australian senator, who is the opposition’s leader in the upper house. “We shouldn’t be the last country on earth to recognise Palestine,” one MP said. “With those images flowing in, we risk … being seen as heartless.”

The rift within the party follows a tight leadership ballot in May in which Ms Ley, a moderate, was elected over conservative MP Angus Taylor to replace ousted leader Peter Dutton, who lost his seat in parliament at the May 3 election.

Conservative sources said it was clear the moderates were seeking to mobilise and more strongly influence the direction of the Liberal Party, which is conducting a lengthy review after the Coalition’s crushing election loss.

Mr Taylor, now the opposition defence spokesman, warned on Thursday that if Labor followed Britain, France and Canada in recognising a state of Palestine at the UN in September, it would be “putting the cart before the horse.”

“It’s long been a bipartisan view that a peace agreement is a prerequisite for considering the two-state solution, and we don’t have a peace agreement,” Mr Taylor told Sky News.

“We’ve got to remember the origins of this conflict go back to October 7.

“It’s clearly tragic, but as I say, you’ve got to remember the origins of what’s going on here which was this attack by Hamas.”

Opposition finance spokesman James Paterson accused Labor of pandering to its own base and anti-Israel activists on Thursday over the issue of Palestinian recognition.

“And it is driven, let’s be clear, by domestic political considerations,” Senator Paterson told Sky News.

“We know there’s enormous pressure on the Labor backbench, from Labor Party branch members, from some unions, from the pro-Palestinian movement in Australia, which is bending the will of this government and has forced it away from historically held bipartisan positions on foreign policy. And I think that reflects very badly on them.”

While most of the concern raised over Senator Cash’s language on Israel came from moderate MPs, conservatives also levelled criticism at the strategy in recent weeks.

‘Ours forever’: would-be Israeli settlers march on Gaza

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/ours-forever-wouldbe-israeli-settlers-march-on-gaza/news-story/8db38e466ee0117929dfb0ae7c41dae1

Within sight of Gaza, the devastated Palestinian enclave ravaged by nearly 22 months of war, hundreds of Israeli settlers marched Wednesday to stake their claim to the battered territory.

Waving Israeli flags alongside the orange banners of Gush Katif — a bloc of settlements dismantled in 2005 — the marchers went from the town of Sderot to the Asaf Siboni observation point, overlooking the ruins of Beit Hanun.

Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza 20 years ago ended 38 years of military presence. About 8,000 settlers were evacuated and 21 communities demolished.

But a vocal fringe never gave up the dream of return — and now, amid war with Hamas and with hardliners in government, some believe the time is ripe.

Veterans of Gush Katif have been joined by a new generation of would-be settlers ready to move in if the army gets out of their way.

“As a movement, 1,000 families — you see them today marching — we are ready to move now, as things stand, and to live in tents,” said 79-year-old Daniella Weiss, a former mayor of the West Bank settlement of Kedumim.

“We are ready with our children to move into the Gaza area right away, because we believe this is the way to bring quiet, peace, to put an end to Hamas,” she told AFP.

“It’s only when we hold on to the soil, to the grains of sand, that the army will raise a white flag,” she said.

Far-right groups joined the protest, marching toward the border chanting: “Gaza, ours forever!” Loudspeakers blared: “The way to defeat Hamas is to take back our land.”

– ‘God and the government’ –

Much of Gaza has been ruined by the Israeli offensive launched in response to the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, which left 1,200 dead and more than 250 taken hostage.

More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed since, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. International NGOs have accused Israel of forcibly displacing civilians and committing war crimes — with some alleging genocide, a charge Israel fiercely rejects.

The official policy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is that the Gaza operation was launched to destroy Hamas and rescue Israeli hostages — not to restore settlements.

But the would-be settlers say they have been in talks with hardline members of the ruling coalition and believe there may be a political opening, despite the fact that reoccupation is deemed illegal under international law.

They were further buoyed this week when Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, in a speech at the Gush Katif museum, declared: “It’s closer than ever. It’s a realistic work plan.

“We didn’t sacrifice all this to transfer Gaza from one Arab to another Arab. Gaza is an inseparable part of the land of Israel.

“I don’t want to go back to Gush Katif — it’s too small. It needs to be much bigger. Gaza today allows us to think a little bigger.”

The marchers heard him.

“I have faith in God and in the government,” said Sharon Emouna, 58, who came from her settlement in the occupied West Bank to support the Gaza return movement.

“I’m just here in support, to say that the land of Israel is promised to the Jewish people and it’s our right to settle there,” she said.

And if any Palestinians want to remain in Gaza, Emouna added, they would benefit from living alongside the settlers.

On Wednesday, however, it was Israeli soldiers who blocked the final short walk to Gaza, across a parched landscape of low brush scorched by the summer sun.

A continuous stream of families approached the border, close enough to glimpse the apocalyptic silhouette of smashed Palestinian homes left by the fighting — and, perhaps, what they hope will become home again.

‘We’ll cross that bridge’: No ‘Plan B’ for Palestine protesters before Harbour Bridge court battle

Organisers of a pro-Palestine march over Sydney Harbour Bridge say they will “cross that bridge when we come to it” if a court orders the protest not to go-ahead.

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/propalestine-protesters-defiant-as-court-battle-over-sydney-harbour-bridge-march-looms/news-story/416c5eabc3468b76790b38c92da9164e

Organisers of a pro-Palestine march over Sydney Harbour Bridge say they will “cross that bridge when we come to it” if a court orders the protest not to go-ahead.

The Palestine Action Group filed a Form 1 with NSW Police last week, seeking to march across the bridge on Sunday in protest of mass starvation in Gaza.

Police will seek to block the march at the Supreme Court, with the showdown set for 12.30pm on Friday, according to activists.

Organiser Joshua Lees said activists were taking to the bridge to protest the genocide in Gaza, and that their “Plan A” was to win in court.

As for their Plan B, Mr Lees was less sure, saying: “We’re going to have to cross that bridge when we come to it”.

Mr Lees wouldn’t say whether that meant activists would cross the bridge if the police’s court action succeeded in stripping them of legal protections.

The seasoned activist said the march was “unstoppable” because of the “sheer weight of support that this has now amongst the public of Sydney”.

Mr Lees said a majority of Sydneysiders were on the side of protesters, with high-profile names like former Socceroo Craig Foster also backing the event.

“We are confident there is a big majority of people who want to see kids stop being starved deliberately as a matter of government policy by the State of Israel,” Mr Lees said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied that Gazans are starving.

In a statement, the Palestine Action Group urged supports to attend the hearing to “show your support for the unstoppable march for humanity”.

Premier Chris Minns earlier vowed not to allow the march go ahead at any point, claiming that Sydney would “descend into chaos” and it was a logistical “Everest”.

Organisers said they received a summons at 4.30pm on Wednesday from NSW Police to attend court, though as of Thursday morning no time had been set for the hearing.

It comes after 55 union and civil society groups signed a letter to the Premier on Thursday, urging him to “facilitate the exercise of the democratic right of protest”.

“Seeking to shut down this rally would be a serious departure from the NSW State and Police’s responsibility to uphold the democratic right of protest,” the letter said.

“We urge your government to facilitate the exercise of democratic freedoms in collaboration with community groups and support the holding of this protest.”

Organisers and the signees have repeatedly cited previous shutdowns of the bridge, including for the filming of a movie and the World Pride march in 2023.

Human Rights Watch, the Redfern Legal Centre, the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association, and Asylum Seeker Centre are among the groups to sign the letter.

Activists say the protest, which was expected to be attended by tens of thousands of people, comes at an urgent time as deliberate mass starvation grips Gaza.

Israel has become increasingly isolated over its nearly two-year campaign following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack.

On Thursday, Canada joined France and the UK in recognising a Palestinian state in a retaliatory move over the aid situation in Gaza.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has in recent days ramped up his criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza but fallen short of committing to recognising Palestinian statehood.

Protesters have rallied across Australia’s major cities near weekly since Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Acting Deputy Commissioner Peter McKenna on Tuesday said police would be lodging an application with the Supreme Court to deem the bridge protest unlawful.

In NSW, police can support a Form 1 application for a protest, which affords protesters protection from anti-assembly laws, or oppose it in court.

Mr McKenna said the decision to oppose the protest was made independently of Mr Minns, citing risks that emergency services may be blocked.

Mr Minns has faced dissent from within his own party over his staunch opposition to the protest, which is backed by the Greens and some independents.

Labor MLC Stephen Lawrence said in a statement he was “concerned the Premier has, in effect, made a purported decision himself to try and prevent this protest”.

“This will taint proper consideration of the matter by police, and that violence may ensue as a consequence,” he said on Tuesday night.

A second Labor MP, Anthony D’Adam, also accused Mr Minns of being “more concerned about traffic flow than the plight of starving children in Gaza”.

Wong calls for international action on Gaza as government weighs timing of Palestinian recognition

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-31/wong-palestinian-recognition-timing-gaza/105594040

Foreign Minister Penny Wong says the international community must do what it can to change the situation in Gaza, as the government actively considers when it should move to recognise Palestinian statehood.

France, the United Kingdom and now Canada say they will recognise a Palestinian state at the next United Nations General Assembly in September, provided several conditions are met, including that Hamas plays no role in Palestine’s governance.

It adds further pressure on the Australian government to explain its own timeline for recognising Palestine, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government would only do if it was a “meaningful action”.

Senator Wong on Thursday did not rule out Australia making a similar declaration, reiterating that it was a matter of “when, not if” as she pointed to several developments, including the Arab League nations’ unprecedented step to call on Hamas to disarm and relinquish power in Gaza.

“This is something that we are thinking very carefully about,” she told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing.

“What Canada and the United Kingdom and France and the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League are all seeking to do is work out what we can each do to break the cycle of violence that is consuming the Middle East.

“We cannot continue to stand by and watch what is happening in Gaza and not take the sorts of actions you are seeing.

“We have to see we can do as an international community to change the pathway that the region is on.”

Earlier in the day, Treasurer Jim Chalmers also said he personally welcomed the momentum towards recognising a Palestinian state in an interview with Sky News.

“From a personal point of view, I welcome this momentum, this progress that’s been made in the international community,” he said.

“From an Australian point of view, recognition of the state of Palestine is a matter of when, not if.”

Australia and several other nations signed a statement earlier this week expressing a willingness to recognise the state of Palestine and work on an architecture to guarantee Gaza’s reconstruction and the disarmament of Hamas.

But Mr Albanese said on Sunday, before the UK or Canada’s announcements, that Australia would not follow France to recognise Palestine in September.

“What we will do is we’ll make a decision based upon the time. Is the time right now? Are we about to imminently do that? No, we are not,” he said on Sunday.

He added that the United States also had a “critical” role in negotiating to move the conflict in the Middle East forward.

Albanese and Starmer’s overnight call

Mr Albanese spoke again with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer overnight to discuss “the situation in Gaza”, according to a readout of the call.

On that call Mr Albanese reiterated Australia’s long-standing “and strong” support for a two-state solution to Mr Starmer, who announced his nation’s move to recognise Palestine two days ago.

Mr Starmer laid out his framework for taking forward recognition of Palestine “as a driver for peace”, and the leaders agreed on the importance of using international momentum to secure a ceasefire, the release of all hostages and the acceleration of aid, “as well as ensuring Hamas did not play a role in a future state”.

Israel’s foreign ministry has warned nations moving to recognise Israel that doing so would reward Hamas and harm efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, as well as the framework for the release of hostages.

Mr Albanese said yesterday that for a two-state solution to be “genuinely” advanced, Middle Eastern states would also have to recognise Israel, and that Israel would need to have confidence that it could exist without a threat to its security.

Twenty-eight UN member states do not recognise Israel, including 15 nations in the Arab League, though their statement earlier this week expressed hope that relations between the countries could be normalised.

The prime minister has also pointed to unanswered questions about how an unwilling Hamas would be removed and democratic institutions rebuilt in Gaza.

Coalition frontbencher James Paterson questioned on Sky News the value of a “premature” recognition of Palestine.

“If you were to recognise a Palestinian state today, as the Albanese government is leaning towards doing, you would be recognising a state which is in part governed by a terrorist organisation, which is in part governed by an organisation which continues to hold 50 Israelis hostage, which has sworn the destruction of the state of Israel and the people in it, which has caused death and devastation for the people of Gaza,” he said.

“I think it’s going to be a very long time before any state can recognise a Palestinian state, Australia included, because Hamas has shown no interest in returning the hostages, certainly no interest in demilitarising or giving up its control over Gaza.”

Canada to recognise Palestine, as Chalmers says it’s ‘when, not if’ Australia will follow

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-31/canada-to-recognise-palestinian-state/105593946

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says his country intends to recognise a Palestinian state.

Mr Carney said the planned move was predicated on the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) commitment to reforms, including commitments to fundamentally change its governance and to hold general elections in 2026, in which Hamas could play no part.

The country would formally do so during the 80th session of the UN General Assembly in September.

Mr Carney said the prospects of achieving a two-state solution had been “steadily and gravely eroded”.

“For decades, it was hoped that this would be achieved as part of a peace process built around a negotiated settlement between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority,” he said.

“Regrettably, this approach is no longer tenable.”

He said reasons for this included the threat of Hamas to Israelis and Hamas’s rejection of a two-state solution, settler violence against Palestinians, and the “rapidly deteriorating humanitarian disaster in Gaza”.

“The deepening suffering of civilians leaves no room for delaying coordinated international action to support peace, security and the dignity of human life,” he said.

Israel’s foreign ministry rejected the Canadian statement.

“The change in the position of the Canadian government at this time is a reward for Hamas and harms the efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and a framework for the release of the hostages,” it wrote on X in a statement.

The White House, in similar terms, said US President Donald Trump believed a “Palestinian state would be rewarding Hamas and [he] does not think they should be rewarded”.

Canada follows in the footsteps of the UK and France, whose leaders have declared similar intentions.

Mr Carney said he talked to French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen before making his announcement.

Hours before, Malta told a high-level UN meeting it too would formally recognise the state of Palestine in September.

On Wednesday, Australia, Canada and 13 other countries signed a statement supporting a pathway to Palestinian statehood.

Speaking on behalf of the Australian government, Jim Chalmers said on Thursday that it was a matter of “when, not if” Australia moves to recognise Palestine.

But the treasurer stopped short of putting a timeframe on it.

“It’s been a longstanding bipartisan policy that we see a two-state solution in that part of the Middle East,” he told ABC’s News Breakfast.

“[The] momentum that we are seeing in the international community is welcome, but it’s also conditional.

“There are a number of obstacles still in the way to recognition of a Palestinian state. For example, the treatment, the release of the hostages, making sure that there’s absolutely no role for Hamas.”

What does recognising a Palestinian state mean?

Currently, there is no universally recognised Palestinian state.

Instead, there are the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which include Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Given that Palestinians do not have full sovereignty and live under Israeli occupation, recognition of statehood is largely seen as a symbolic move.

Still, Gazan man Saed al-Akhras said he hoped it marked a “real shift in how Western countries view the Palestinian cause”.

“Enough! Palestinians have lived for more than 70 years under killing, destruction, and occupation, while the world watches in silence,” he said.

Two Hamas officials did not respond to requests for comment on the demand for the group to hand over its weapons to the PA, which now has limited control of parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Hamas has previously rejected calls to disarm, while Israel has ruled out letting the PA run Gaza.

The Gaza health ministry reported seven more hunger-related deaths on Wednesday, local time, including a two-year-old girl with an existing health condition.

Israel’s war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas killed some 1,200 people in a terrorist attack and took another 251 hostage.

Since then, Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 60,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Canada’s signal it will recognise Palestine part of broader international strategy on Gaza

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-31/canada-france-uk-palestine-statehood-gaza-peace-strategy/105594532

Canada’s move to join France and the United Kingdom by signalling it will recognise a Palestinian state reveals more about the highly coordinated international strategy on Gaza now unfolding that involves both Western and Arab nations.

We’ve seen several manifestations of that strategy in the past few days — most conspicuously, the rollout of countries declaring their intention to recognise Palestine when the UN General Assembly meets in New York next month.

But there have also been two separate statements: one released yesterday from the foreign ministers of 15 countries, including Australia, which said they “already recognised, have expressed or express the willingness or the positive consideration of our countries to recognise the State of Palestine, as an essential step towards the two-state solution, and invite all countries that have not done so to join this call”.

In other words, they weren’t yet declaring they would back a push for Palestinian statehood, but Israel was put on notice that others were likely to join the move by what was then two major countries to shift position.

In making the statement, those 15 countries were implicitly backing the actions of France and the UK.

There was also a separate, much longer statement — the New York Declaration — emanating from a UN High-Level International Conference, which is just wrapping up.

The statement was from the co-chairs of the conference: France and Saudi Arabia, and it significantly included Egypt, Qatar, Jordan and the League of Arab States.

For the first time, this group of 18 countries not only agreed to take collective action, but also condemned the Hamas attacks of October 7, as well as Israel’s attacks on civilians in Gaza.

While it treads more carefully than the foreign ministers’ statement, the declaration reflects the coordinated process that has been underway — led by France and the Saudis since early this year — to address the crisis over Palestine.

Australia has been involved in this process, as reflected by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s repeated assertions that Australia is acting as part of an international effort rather than unilaterally.

Significantly, the PM made several references at his press conference in Canberra on Wednesday to “the commitments made by the president of the Palestinian Authority on June 10”.

UK and France declarations leave US as roadblock

Like the New York Declaration, these commitments by Mahmoud Abbas condemned the October 7 terrorist attacks, and notably called for the liberation of hostages and disarmament of Hamas.

He also calls for “elections within a year to trigger generational renewal and accepts the principle of a demilitarised Palestinian State”.

And it’s noteworthy that while France and the UK have emphasised pressure on Israel to cease hostilities in Gaza and allow aid in, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney particularly has upped the pressure on the Palestinian Authority to get its house in order.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer suggested in his statement that the UK might not proceed if Israel was to meet various conditions — including agreeing to a ceasefire and taking “substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza”.

But given Israeli intransigence, the UK must have made this statement on the presumption that the likelihood of Israel meeting all the conditions was pretty low.

In contrast, Carney said Canada’s intention to recognise Palestine was “predicated on the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to much-needed reforms, including the commitments by Palestinian Authority President Abbas to fundamentally reform its governance, to hold general elections in 2026 in which Hamas can play no part, and to demilitarise the Palestinian state”.

The international effort appears to recognise the much-weakened political and military state of Hamas after almost two years of horrendous attacks on civilians in Gaza, and with its Iranian backers, and Hezbollah, also significantly diminished.

While Hamas has continued to resist the push for hostages to be released, there is a clear sense within the international community that a tipping point has been reached, both in the position of Hamas and in the collapsed moral authority of Israel.

Also, the declarations by France and the UK mean that four out of five permanent members of the UN Security Council now support Palestinian recognition.

That just leaves the United States as the blocker and the move must increase pressure on US President Donald Trump to move too.

Significantly, his remarks on statehood on Air Force One on Wednesday morning, Australian time, were not dogmatically against it, just that he was not in the statehood camp at the moment.

Questions remain about what will be left to form state

Resisting the renewed push for Palestinian statehood has been rationalised until now because the question of who would run Palestine is a live one: Hamas as a terrorist organisation is not an option that any Western nation is prepared to accept; but the Palestinian Authority also faces problems of both external and internal legitimacy.

The Palestinian Authority hasn’t held an election in the West Bank since 2006 and Palestinians living there do not have the right to vote in Israeli elections. Similarly, Hamas hasn’t held elections since it took over Gaza in 2007.

But both the aggressive push to annex large areas of the West Bank and now Gaza, and the utter physical devastation of the Gaza Strip, also raise the question of what will be left to form the basis of any future Palestinian state if the world cannot force the issue soon.

In this regard, Carney’s statement noted Israeli actions including “the accelerated settlement building across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, while settler violence against Palestinians has soared”.

He also noted “actions such as the E1 Settlement Plan and this month’s vote by the Knesset calling for the annexation of the West Bank [and] the ongoing failure by the Israeli government to prevent the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian disaster in Gaza, with impeded access to food and other essential humanitarian supplies”.

“The deepening suffering of civilians leaves no room for delay in co-ordinated international action to support peace, security, and the dignity of all human life,” he said.

“Preserving a two-state solution means standing with all people who choose peace over violence or terrorism, and honouring their innate desire for the peaceful co-existence of Israeli and Palestinian states as the only roadmap for a secure and prosperous future.”

Israel has already rejected both Canada and the UK’s statements, arguing they are “a reward for Hamas” and will harm ceasefire efforts.

Sources say that the focus of the peace push will not be on determining borders but on the fundamental need to put in place the governance and security architecture to allow the rebuilding of Gaza.

ABC calls on Israel to allow journalists to move in and out of Gaza

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-31/abc-statement-on-journalists-in-gaza/105595590

The ABC has called on Israel to again allow international journalists to report independently from Gaza and allow them to move in and out of Gaza.

ABC News director Justin Stevens said the ABC relies on freelance journalists to tell the stories on the ground in Gaza as Israeli authorities continue to block access to the region.

“The ABC is the only Australian media organisation with a permanent presence in the region and we have repeatedly tried to get reporters back into Gaza,” he said in a statement.

“We had reporters in Gaza prior to the 7 October terrorist attack, but since then Israeli authorities have blocked access to international media to operate independently.”

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 186 journalists and media workers, mostly Palestinian, have been killed while gathering evidence of the war inside Gaza since October 7.

That number includes journalists who have done work for the ABC.

“We’re now seeing the effects of food shortages on journalists we work with, which our correspondents have reported on: The hunger crisis inside Gaza will affect the news you see about the war,” he said.

Last Thursday, several news organisations and agencies from around the world released a joint statement regarding the welfare of their staff.

BBC News, along with news agencies including the Associated Press, Reuters and AFP said they were “desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza, who are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families”.

“For many months, these independent journalists have been the world’s eyes and ears on the ground in Gaza. They are now facing the same dire circumstances as those they are covering.

“Journalists endure many deprivations and hardships in war zones. We are deeply alarmed that the threat of starvation is now one of them.

“We once again urge the Israeli authorities to allow journalists in and out of Gaza. It is essential that adequate food supplies reach the people there.”

AFP had already released its own statement detailing its concern for the welfare of its staff working in the Gaza Strip.

“For months, we have watched helplessly as their living conditions deteriorated dramatically. Their situation is now untenable, despite their exemplary courage, professional commitment, and resilience,” the statement said.

“This is why AFP, which managed to evacuate its eight staff members and their families from Gaza between January and April 2024, is taking the same steps for its freelancers, despite the extreme difficulty of leaving a territory subject to a strict blockade.

“Their lives are in danger, so we urge the Israeli authorities to allow them to evacuate immediately along with their families.”

In Thursday’s statement, Mr Stevens thanked the ABC’s correspondents and staff “who are doing a superb job covering an incredibly important story”.

Last week, multiple international news outlets including The Washington Post, The Financial Times and The Guardian signed a statement calling on Israel to allow journalists in Gaza who are facing starvation to leave the enclave — and for international reporters to be allowed entry.

“As local reporters are killed, face the threat of starvation, or try to flee, the world will be systematically cut off from witnessing what is happening,” the statement read.

“This cannot be allowed to happen.”

Media Report 2025.07.30

Posted on 30 Jul 20252 Aug 2025 by admin

PM slams Israel over Gaza starvation

The Age (& SMH) | Paul Sakkai | 30 July 2025

https://edition.theage.com.au/shortcode/THE965/edition/45ce0617-fd09-6671-fd2b-9054e572af46?page=39414d02-f749-50f4-bf3a-5baf9bafaf23&

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has signalled he believes Gaza will be freed from Hamas’ rule, paving the way for recognition of a Palestinian state, as he slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims that Gazans were not starving.

Asked by pro-Palestine back bencher Ed Husic on the time line for Australia to recognise a Palestinian state in the Labor caucus on Tuesday, Albanese repeated his criticism of Hamas’ role in prolonging the conflict but implored Israel to end the violence.

“While there is a caveat on any information provided by Hamas, it is Israel that has pre vented any journalists getting in,” Albanese said. “Those claims that there is no starvation are beyond comprehension.”

He was directly referring to remarks from deputy Israeli ambassador to Australia Amir Meron, who told journalists in a briefing on Monday that claims of starvation amounted to Hamas propaganda and relied on “false pictures” presenting a distorted view.

Albanese also made reference to similar remarks from Netanyahu, who said on Monday there was “no starvation in Gaza”, putting him at odds with aid agencies, the United Nations and widely shared images of malnourished children.

Husic lost his ministry after the election, freeing him to be more outspoken on the situation in Gaza. It is rare for MPs to ask challenging questions of the prime minister in Labor’s caucus meetings.

Albanese has emphasised in recent days Australia would only recognise a state if certain conditions were met, including the removal of Hamas as a governing force from the strip it has ruled since 2007.

But responding to Husic, the prime minister quoted former South African president Nelson Mandela in saying that things can seem impossible until they are not. This was taken by some MPs, who spoke on condition of anonymity, that Albanese believed Gaza could be freed from Hamas’ control.

Asked about Albanese’s comments yesterday afternoon, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said she was distressed by the images coming out of Gaza before calling for the return of the Israeli hostages.

“I’m pleased to see that aid is f lowing further and better into Gaza, and I really encourage everyone who sees the situation for the reality it is, to remind others that Hamas’ control of the hostages could end the war tomorrow,” Ley said.

Albanese’s comments in the Labor caucus discussion came a day after Meron said Israel did not recognise any famine or starvation in Gaza.

“This is a false campaign that is being [led] by Hamas, taking advantage of sick children in order to show a false claim and false presentation of hunger and starvation,” Meron said.

Netanyahu had earlier said it was a “bald-faced lie” that Israel was causing starvation. US President Donald Trump has since demanded Israel allow “every ounce of food” into the besieged strip and said there was “real starvation”.

“We can save a lot of people, I mean some of those kids. That’s real starvation; I see it and you can’t fake that. So we’re going to be even more in volved,” Trump said during a visit to Britain this week.

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Premier attacks ‘antisemitic’ NGV protesters

The Age | Daniella White | 30 July 2025

https://edition.theage.com.au/shortcode/THE965/edition/45ce0617-fd09-6671-fd2b-9054e572af46?page=671b6c62-db5d-4040-ec7a-bac02968db2c&

Premier Jacinta Allan has la belled pro-Palestine protesters who rallied outside the National Gallery of Victoria on Sunday as “extremists” who brought antisemitism to the streets of Melbourne.

The demonstrators targeted the gallery, which was forced into lockdown, because of do nations it has received from well-known Jewish philanthropists John and Pauline Gandel.

Hundreds of activists marched through the city to the NGV on Sunday afternoon, and one witness reported being yelled at by protesters and accused of supporting Zionism and genocide by entering the gallery.

Videos circulating online show protesters writing slogans in chalk on the gallery’s exterior walls, including “NGV funded by Zionists”, as well as turning the pond outside the NGV red.

The activists held banners saying “Zionism = fascism” and “blood on your hands”, while others chanted: “NGV, you can’t hide, you’re supporting genocide”.

Allan yesterday condemned the protest and said the demonstrators were shameful and “cloaking their extremism under the conflict of the Middle East”.

“Victorians are blessed to have the generosity of philanthropic generosity from families like the Gandels,” she said. “That generosity, that philanthropy enriches us all and that behaviour we saw where antisemitism came to the street on the National Gallery was just disgraceful.

“It is shameful behaviour and I condemn it because the generosity of the Gandels, it’s enriched my family.

“Those people who choose to cloak their extremism under the conflict of the Middle East are shameful and should be condemned.”

Allan’s comments were in stark contrast to those from Multicultural Affairs Minister Ingrid Stitt, who on Monday said people had the right to protest peacefully, infuriating senior Jewish leaders.

“You do have the right to peacefully protest. We can’t necessarily always impact what happens … in other countries around the world, but what we can do is all ensure that people in Victoria act appropriately, in accordance with the law and respectfully,” Stitt said.

Victoria’s new police chief, Mike Bush, said he watched part of the protest as he walked through Swanston Street and it was peaceful from start to finish. “It was peaceful as it walked through Swanston Street. It was loud, there were a lot of people there, they were entitled to do that,” he told ABC Radio on Monday.

“But I was very proud of the way our people prevented any further harm. Yes, there was an inconvenience to the public [police closing the front entrance of the NGV], so I was proud of how [police] did that to prevent any disturbance or harm or violence.”

The protest was organised days after a blog post written by an anti-Israeli activist was published and circulated, alleging the NGV held a “secret, extravagant Zionist dinner” to celebrate Pauline Gandel’s 90th birthday, attended by Israel’s ambassador to Australia.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said the pro testers were “beneath contempt”.

“No matter how they try to spin it, targeting two Jewish Australians in their 90s who have contributed enormously to this country and have devoted their lives to uplifting others is gutter activism rooted in racial prejudice and jealousy,” he said.

But Greens leader Ellen Sandell said governments should be doing everything in their power to pressure Israel to allow trucks of aid into Gaza “rather than demonising peaceful protesters who are simply trying to do everything in their power to call it out”.

The Gandels have funded institutions and organisations in Israel, according to the Gandel Foundation website. In an interview with the Australian Financial Review after the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas in southern Israel, John Gandel said Israel had no choice but to go “all out” in its war in Gaza.

“If they don’t go all out, it means they withdraw. They can’t do it gently,” Gandel told the AFR. The Gandels were contacted for comment.

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Trump disputes Israel food claims

The Age (& SMH) | David Crowe | 30 July 2025

https://edition.theage.com.au/shortcode/THE965/edition/45ce0617-fd09-6671-fd2b-9054e572af46?page=350b552f-0952-f81d-4358-6dd017174ccb&

US President Donald Trump has called on Israel to speed up the flow of food to families in Gaza and set a new deadline for Russia to end the war in Ukraine, urgently intensifying his demands on both global flashpoints.

Trump aired his frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin by revoking his earlier deadline of 50 days to ensure a ceasefire in Ukraine, declaring in Scotland on Monday (yesterday AEST) that the new dead line would be just 10 or 12 days.

With the war in Gaza causing widespread hunger, Trump disputed Israel’s claim there was no starvation and said he wanted to ensure food was sent urgently to civilians in the war zone.

Asked whether he agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said there was no starvation in Gaza, Trump replied: “I don’t know. Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry.” He later said: “Some of those kids that’s real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can’t fake that.”

The comments, made in a wide-ranging press conference with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, conveyed a more assertive message on the two conflicts when Britain and the European Union are hoping for an urgent White House intervention to stop the wars.

Speaking to the media alongside Starmer for almost an hour at his Turnberry golf course, Trump also attacked wind power, claimed he won last year’s presidential election on migration concerns and denied drawing a birthday greeting for child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

On Ukraine, his move brings forward the prospect of secondary tariffs on Russia and its allies that would tax their exports at 100 per cent, a severe penalty on China and India if the US president acts on the threat.

Trump set a 50-day deadline for Putin this month, giving the Russian leader until September 2 to stop firing missiles and drones at Ukrainian civilians and agree to a peace deal. “I’m going to make a new deadline of about 10 or 12 days from today,” Trump said in Scotland. “There’s no reason in waiting, there’s no reason in waiting. It’s 50 days, I want to be generous, but we just don’t see any progress being made.”

Repeating his previous exasperation with Putin, the president said the Russian leader would make claims about peace in their conversations but continue bombing Ukraine at night. “Russia could be so rich, instead they spend all their money on war,” he said. “I thought he’d want to end this thing quickly, but every time I think it’s going to end, he kills people.”

Asked if he wanted to meet Putin to end the war, Trump said he was “not so interested” in talking. If he acts on his new deadline, the secondary tariffs could begin on or around August 9.

Putin ally and former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, in a social media post, said Trump was playing “a game of ultimatums” that could lead to a war involving the US. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, however, welcomed the new timing. “I thank President Trump for his focus on saving lives and stop ping this horrible war,” he posted.

On Gaza, the joint remarks in Scotland marked another escalation in the calls on Israel to help civilians when the British Red Cross estimates that 470,000 people in Gaza face starvation – equivalent to 22 per cent of the population.

Trump said Israel had a “lot of responsibility” to help the situation despite being hampered by Hamas, which still holds 20 Israeli hostages from the October 7, 2023 attacks, when the terrorist group killed 1195 people and took more than 250 captive.

Trump suggested it was up to Netanyahu to ensure civilians were fed. “We’re giving money and things. He’s got to sort of, like, run it,” he said. “I want them to make sure they get the food. I want to make sure they get the food, every ounce of food … Because food isn’t being delivered.”

Starmer wanted Gaza to be a major topic in his private talks with Trump, as widespread images of starving children shape public opinion on the war. “It’s a humanitarian crisis. It’s an absolute catastrophe,” the prime minister said before the meeting, as he and Trump stood together at Turnberry. “Nobody wants to see that. And I think people in Britain are revolted at what they’re seeing on their screens.”

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Gaza Protests: Allan is wrong it is fair to highlight Israel links

The Age | Letters (1) | 30 July 2025

https://edition.theage.com.au/shortcode/THE965/edition/45ce0617-fd09-6671-fd2b-9054e572af46?page=3aef7815-72c2-7362-e68a-17f6586386f2&

In response to Premier Jacinta Allan’s statement regarding the pro-Palestinian March on Sunday that culminated at the National Gallery of Victoria, I would like to say that as a participant at that march for the first time, she is wrong (“Premier calls pro-Palestine protesters who rallied outside NGV ‘extremists’ and ‘antisemitic'”, 29/7).

The premier is wrong to label the marchers extremists because I did not see any extremists there, just normal people of all ages protesting against mass civilian deaths in Gaza being perpetrated by the Israeli government.

If the NGV, or any other organisation receives gifts from people who support the current Israeli government, then we as Australian citizens have every right to show our disapproval. There was nothing antisemitic about the protest, not the actions of the marchers nor the chanting by marchers.

The premier should think carefully about the language and labels she uses to describe normal people who are out raged by what is occurring in Gaza. It is so disappointing to have the leader of this state encouraging this level of division among the community.

Rosa Wright, Coburg

This protest uses nasty tropes

I’m a proud member of the NGV and it’s always been an environment of peace and refuge from a very challenging and traumatic period in my life. I wasn’t aware of the Gandel family’s involvement with Israel but to use their links of philanthropic gestures is hateful when many other wealthy individuals in our institutions have problematic relationships with China, Russia or other countries.

Whether or not I disagree with the Gandels’ politics, we have an ugly history of racism that includes nasty Jewish tropes of some people being controlling and wealthy, which makes me feel very uncomfortable with these protests. You win over people’s hearts and minds with smart and cr ative protests, not when the message has been lost among all this ugly noise.

Mel Smith, Brighton

Crossing the line

The pro-Palestine demonstration outside the NGV on Sunday (“Vilifying art-lovers at the NGV is a step too far”, 29/7) made it abundantly clear that many of the demonstrators, like too many supporters of the Israeli cause as well, have crossed a line where they are conflating issues. In the case of the demonstrators, their actions are not only expressing their disagreement with the Israeli government, which is a legitimate position, but have well and truly crossed the line. So it is time for the state government to act and no longer allow them to demonstrate.

Jim Payton, Keilor East

How should speech be restricted?

Steve Vizard was quoted as saying of the protesters at the NGV, “The government could stop this growing culture of lawlessness in a heartbeat if they wanted … they appear to choose not to.” My question is exactly what actions does he want the government to take?

Robert Dean, Hawthorn East

Which target comes next?

From what I’ve gleaned, these protesters were at the NGV as they were against the recognition by the NGV of Jewish benefactors because of their perceived support of Zionism, of Israel as a nation. What are the next targets of the protesters? Hospitals? Universities? Research institutions? Any institution that has received philanthropy from Jewish sources? Perhaps, have the statue of General Sir John Monash re moved and erase his name from places that honour him, as, after all, he was Jewish and a sup porter of Zionism. These are not peaceful pro testers but people bent on causing disruption, fear and chaos.

Harry Kowalski, Ivanhoe

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Gaza Protests: Allan is wrong it is fair to highlight Israel links

The Age | Letters (2) | 30 July 2025

https://edition.theage.com.au/shortcode/THE965/edition/45ce0617-fd09-6671-fd2b-9054e572af46?page=0a257aa9-f338-3700-06e1-2083299eb2b4&

Starvation claims

I never thought I’d quote Donald Trump in support of a position; but here goes. According to Deputy Israeli Ambassador Amir Meron, there is no starvation in Gaza and it’s a “false campaign that is being [led] by Hamas”. Trump noted: “That’s real starvation; I can see it and you can’t fake that.”

Apparently, according to the Israeli government, Hamas has managed to pull the wool of over Trump’s eyes – not necessarily a difficult task, to be sure- but also over the eyes of the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, more than 100 international aid organisations (who recently signed a joint statement about the starvation) as well as two respected Israeli aid organisations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights (whose members presumably know how to recognise genuine starvation). Who’s really faking it?

Dennis Dodd, Shepparton

Shared humanity

Experienced Israeli soldiers with proven loyalties are looking beyond the frontlines of Gaza’s war (“Israeli soldiers and generals turning their backs on Netanyahu over Gaza”, 29/7). They see a reality in which Palestinian civilian families are mere collateral for an Israeli government resorting to violence to shroud political ambitions. (Yes, Hamas fighters also trashed Israeli civilian families).

We should encourage Israel’s uniformed dissidents; your correspondents’ acknowledge they express a growing sentiment in Israel, against war. Yet being against war will not be enough to build a new peace.

Israel needs peace as much as Palestinians do. But can Israel even start down that path while its occupation, laws, regulations and budgets ensure Palestinians remain subjects or second-class citizens? The Jewish state’s reputation will fully recover, along with its security, when its people ac knowledge the full humanity of others.

Ken Blackman, Inverloch

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MPs slam Minns over march fight

Sydney Morning Herald | Michael McGowan, Alexandra Smith & Jessica McSweeney | 30 July 2025

https://edition.smh.com.au/shortcode/SYD408/edition/d8d570a8-64f8-683e-b51e-2c4b3567d412?page=904ac0be-126f-cf85-4b50-9a6fa1400e50&

Members of Chris Minns’s government have accused the premier of overstepping his authority in declaring he would oppose a planned march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday. Labor MPs have criticised the premier for tainting proper process and being “more concerned about traffic flow than the plight of starving children”.

Despite repeatedly criticising pro-Palestine demonstrators, Minns sought to strike a conciliatory tone yesterday, even as he reiterated that a planned march across the Harbour Bridge could not go ahead. “Many people are worried about aid and humanitarian care getting into Gaza, and I want the killing to stop as well,” he said.

But Minns’s insistence, during a radio interview with the ABC, that the planned march should not go ahead in “any circumstances” drew an angry re buke from some Labor MPs who say his ongoing opposition to pro-Palestinian demonstrators has created a “hostile” atmosphere which could lead to violence.

Stephen Lawrence, an upper house Labor MP and barrister, said the “detailed statutory regime” governing rules for protests gave “no substantive role” to the premier in deciding whether police can refuse to give immunity to demonstrators from offences such as blocking roads.

But, he said, he was “extremely concerned” by the premier’s comments, which he said could “taint” due process, and potentially lead to violent confrontations between police and demonstrators because of anger over the decision to block it.

“I find it troubling that the premier’s statement does not reference any apparent sound basis to prevent the protest nor the legal mechanism in NSW through which authorisation is considered,” he said. “I am concerned … this will taint proper consideration of the matter by police, and that violence may ensue as a consequence.”

Anthony D’Adam, a Labor MP who has repeatedly criticised the premier over his stance on the Gaza conflict, and who was sacked by Minns as a junior minister after he labelled Police Commissioner Karen Webb a “liar” over the behaviour of officers at pro-Palestinian protests, said the premier’s “default position” was to oppose the march.

“The premier is more co cerned about traffic flow than the plight of starving children in Gaza,” D’Adam said. “The Harbour Bridge has been used on other occasions, and police should work with the Palestine Action Group to find a suitable time for the march to occur on the bridge.”

Police yesterday denied Minns’s comments were a factor as he confirmed police would oppose attempts to march across the bridge. Acting Deputy Commissioner Peter McKenna said while police were “sympathetic” to the protesters’ cause, the decision was “first and foremost about public and police safety”.

“The premier has come out and stated he didn’t support it. We looked at the public safety, and it turns out we’re in complete agreement,” he said. Minns said closing down the bridge “even on a short-term basis” would have too big an impact on the city.

While protest organisers have pointed to other reasons for the bridge closing – including the Sydney marathon, filming for a Ryan Gosling movie, and a march during the 2023 World Pride event, Minns said those events had been “months and months and months in preparation”. Asked whether the march could go ahead if more notice were given, Minns said: “I wouldn’t do it for any circumstances.”

Lawrence, who has repeatedly defended NSW Police over the October 2023 protests, which created ugly scenes at the NSW Opera House when officers allowed a march from Town Hall in a bid to avoid conflict, said police should be allowed to determine how to manage a protest.

“The safety of police officers themselves could be endangered when political statements impinge on the making of operational policing decisions in respect of protests,” he said.

After meeting with police on Tuesday, Josh Lees, one of the organisers, said Minns’ comments would lead more people to attend. “When the police or the premier try to ban our protest, they multiply in size by about 10 be cause people are outraged not only that there’s a genocide going on but that our government would try to stop us,” he said.

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‘Justice warrior’ has raised the ire of Premier

Sydney Morning Herald | Jordan Baker | 30 July 2025

https://edition.smh.com.au/shortcode/SYD408/edition/d8d570a8-64f8-683e-b51e-2c4b3567d412?page=e6ca2947-ee33-f697-eb6e-da36d1f01257&

Chris Minns doesn’t seem to like Josh Lees. While the showdown over whether Sunday’s proposed march across the Harbour Bridge goes ahead is ostensibly between activists and authorities, it’s clear that the premier has little time for the socialist activist who has been a driving force behind the pro-Palestine protests that Minns has pushed hard to curtail.

As his frustration mounted last year, Minns dismissed Lees as a professional protester (the descriptor was put to him, and he agreed), whose weekly protest applications had cost taxpayers $5 million in resources. Broadcaster Bed Fordham went further, questioning what Lees did for a living and saying he could write on his resume that he was a “full-time pain in the arse”.

It’s true the list of causes for which 43-year-old Lees has taken to the streets is long and diverse; it reaches back 20-odd years to the Iraq War and John Howard’s refugee policies, and stretches through the Occupy Sydney movement, protesting corporate greed, inequality and capitalism, to Black Lives Matter and COVID-19.

But Lees’ supporters say the suggestion he’ll jump behind a megaphone for the facile thrill of annoying the establishment is unfair. They say he has come a long way in the 20-odd years since he made breathless headlines in the Green Left Weekly as a university tutor charged with resisting arrest over a voluntary student unionism protests, when “scores of police” with dogs and on horseback were sent to deal with a clash between his supporters and a group of young Liberals chanting “cops are tops” outside the courtroom.

With the help of sympathetic lawyers and two decades of activist experience, he is now among the leaders of the Palestine Action Group negotiating with law enforcement to stage weekly protests, and attempting to curtail pro Palestine protests in court.

Recently, he launched a constitutional challenge to laws introduced by the Minns government restricting protests near places of worship. Greens MP Sue Higginson is a fan. She describes him as a justice warrior. “Josh is somebody who is deeply respectful of the people he works with, and he’s deeply respectful of our democracy,” she said. “I mean that in the sense of our legal process, including the way our laws are made and the way the courts uphold them.”

Little is known about Lees’ personal background. He holds a degree in political economy from the University of Sydney, a course that has long attracted politically motivated students because it’s based on the premise that economies aren’t just mathematical systems, but influenced by power and social forces (Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is a more famous graduate).

He grew up in a pro-trade union household, but his shift to the far left of politics happened towards the end of his time at university. He writes for Red Flag, a newspaper published by Socialist Alternative, socialists who are also known as Trotskyists (and who are loathed by Minns’ faction, the Labor right).

He has a day job, but has never given any hints about what that might be. He lives in the Inner West and grew up in Sydney’s north-west. Much has been made of his strawberry blond man bun. He has faced a few minor charges relating to protest activity, many of which have been dismissed. He re fused to be interviewed or photographed for this piece.

Minns, who has previously flagged the possibility of making it harder for Palestinian protesters to obtain a permit, has said a march across the bridge would throw the city into chaos and would not be allowed under any circumstances, even if more notice had been given.

A march is supported by the Greens, but opposed by the Jewish community and the NSW opposition. “I vehemently support the right of free protest, but like all rights, it’s not unlimited,” said Alex Ryvchin from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, who argues the weekly pro-Palestine protests have empowered others to persecute Jewish Australians.

Lees is not alone in his concern about the government’s at tempts to curtail protests in NSW, a debate that has been reignited by Minns’ opposition to the bridge march. There are concerns from human rights groups, the legal fraternity and from within Labor.

The most recent Labor critic is upper house MP and barrister Stephen Lawrence, who said community concern about the situation in Gaza was increasing, and senior political leaders across both major parties had created an environment that was “hostile to protests concerned with the rights of Palestinian people”.

Regardless of whether the march across the bridge goes ahead, Chris Minns has not seen the last of Josh Lees. “The best way to fight for the right to protest,” Lees has written in Red Flag, “is to protest, in bigger numbers than ever.

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Israel’s denials don’t change the fact people are starving

Sydney Morning Herald | Letters | 30 July 2025

https://edition.smh.com.au/shortcode/SYD408/edition/d8d570a8-64f8-683e-b51e-2c4b3567d412?page=1a9a5b44-cd00-f148-bbac-9b843a3d96bd&

The Israeli embassy says there’s no starvation in Gaza. That the images are fake. That the dying children aren’t real (“Israel’s denial of starvation reports in Gaza ‘beyond comprehension’,” July 29). But they are real. And we know it. Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, calls this a policy of starvation. It has documented the blockade of aid, the bombing of bakeries, the shootings at food queues. Wasted bodies. Children dying slow, preventable deaths. Journalist Gideon Levy goes further – he calls this denial “no less vile than Holocaust denial”. Because it erases the victims. Because it adds insult to the unimaginable cruelty. So how many more must die before Australia acts? Before we impose sanctions? Cut military ties? Recognise Palestine? How many photos of starving children do we need before Anthony Albanese does more than speak? Words don’t fill empty stomachs.

Lila Malagi, Flinders (Vic)

Israel’s deputy ambassador should read the two reports released on Monday by two Israeli human rights groups, the Israeli-Palestinian human rights group B’Tselem, and the dependently? Physicians for Human Rights Israel, which have concluded that Israel’s conduct in Gaza constitutes genocide against the Palestinian population. Or is this just another case of fake news?

Joe Collins, Mosman

Israel’s denial of starvation in Gaza is to be warmly welcomed. It is such a blatant untruth that it reinforces our scepticism about all of Israel’s assertions. A government that is prepared to brazenly contradict plain and heartbreaking evidence clearly cannot be trusted. Claims that the devastation of Gaza and the slaughter of its people are in self-defence, that civilians are never targeted, only Hamas terrorists, that Israel’s army is the most moral in the world, that Hamas is solely responsible for the failure of ceasefire negotiations, and so many more, all without evidence, cannot be taken seriously. We should be grateful that Israel’s relentless public relations campaign has been so nakedly exposed.

Tom Knowles, Parkville (Vic)

If the Israeli government in sists that the starvation inside Gaza is Hamas propaganda, then why not let the international press in to report in Wayne Fitness, Rankin Park Israeli Deputy Ambassador to Australia Amir Meron should be informed that the international media is poised to descend on Gaza and reveal the starvation hoax. It’s ready when you are, Amir.

Garry Feeney, Kingsgrove

In all the talk on Israel and Hamas and Palestine, there has been little mention of the horrors of October 7, 2023, when more than 1200 men, women and children, including citizens from 30 countries were slaughtered by Hamas. Girls and women were sexually assaulted, and physically and mentally damaged. And there are still hostages being held by Hamas.

Selwyn Suchet, St Ives Chase

No, Alex Nikulin (Letters, July 28), my point is not that “the picture of the starving child is fake news”, but that media outlets have a duty and responsibility to uphold factual integrity. Printing context-lacking photos risks legitimising anti-Jewish hatred under the guise of political criticism. In the case of Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, his mother is reported to have told the media that her son suffers from a muscular disorder that results in wasting. In other words, Muhammad’s condition is due to a medical disorder, rather than an embargo by Israel on food distribution.

George Fishman, Vaucluse

Building bridges

Presumably the NSW government profited from the closure of the Sydney Harbour Bridge when Hollywood and the Formula 1 organisers came to town (“Pro-Palestine activists vow court action over march on Harbour Bridge”, July 29). Rather than Sydney “descending into chaos”, the record shows we revelled in the excitement of those particular Sunday mornings in 2005, on one occasion seeing Mark Webber zoom across the bridge a dozen times. Notice periods aside – since the premier could counter-offer a future date for a protest march does our desire for entertainment and profit trump the human and compassionate urge to peacefully protest over a human catastrophe which we cannot unsee: the preventable starvation and killing of thousands of innocent children and adults? C’mon, Premier Minns.

Jane Woolford, Marrickville

Mr Minns, surely you see that a couple of hours of disruption for Syndey-siders is meaningless against the suffering of the people of Gaza. As governments worldwide stand by, bound up by their fear of antisemitic accusations, seemingly powerless to act, everyday people are feeling anguish and outrage, in need of a collective voice and sense of action. Why wouldn’t our most well-known landmark be the right location to show that Australians are not blind or numb to this atrocity?

Kathryn Bates, Ashfield

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Albanese rejects Israeli claims over ‘false’ images

The Australian | Richard Ferguson & Ben Packham | 30 July 2025

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=18527130-1f24-49a5-825c-c74665a01a0a&share=true

Labor Friends of Israel co-convener and former minister Mike Kelly has slammed Education Minister Jason Clare for claiming there was mass starvation in Gaza, saying there was no proof and Australian forces in Iraq had conducted very similar exercises to Israeli forces.

Anthony Albanese on Tuesday, however, blasted Israeli claims that there was no starvation in Gaza as “beyond comprehension”, as he invoked Nelson Mandela to reassure Labor MPs Palestine would one day be independent and free of Hamas control.

The Prime Minister used a caucus meeting in the second week of the post-election parliament to dismiss allegations by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s embassy in Canberra that images of starving children in Gaza were Hamas propaganda.

“While there is a caveat on any information provided by Hamas, it is Israel that has prevented any journalists getting in,” Mr Albanese said. “Those claims that there is no starvation are beyond comprehension.”

Mr Clare went further later on Tuesday, and told Sky News that Israel must answer for images of emaciated children that he compared to the 1980s pictures of people starving in Ethiopia.

Mr Kelly on Sky News on Tuesday night said Mr Clare’s declaration was “ridiculous” and the world standard body for declaring famines had not done so in the Hamas-controlled territory.

The former defence material minister said the Australian Defence Force had also had to fight enemies similar to Hamas in Iraq, and the reality of warfare had to be understood by Labor ministers.

“It’s the most ridiculous statement I have ever seen … this is what warfare looks like, it’s horrifying and we should be distressed by it, and this is why you don’t start them in the first place,” Mr Kelly told Sky News. “(Hamas and Iran) are guilty of starting a war of aggression. (The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) have not declared this a famine.”

While the IPC has not declared a famine, it has said 47,000 people in Gaza are at risk of famine.

Mr Kelly also condemned former foreign minister Bob Carr’s claims that Israel was breaking international law. “He’s not an investigator, he’s not on the ground … nobody who’s not on the ground will be able to make judgment about this,” he said.

“The Israeli system is incredibly robust to investigate claims and allegations. Israel’s fighting a war (against) a terrorist organisation that respects none of that and is using the civilian population as a weapon.

“(Hamas) have been the ones shooting their own people, stripping their food.”

Mr Albanese also addressed concerns among his MPs, articulated in a question from former cabinet minister Ed Husic, that the government would stop short of recognising a Palestinian state because of the difficulty of ridding the territory of Hamas.

“Things seem impossible until they happen,” he said, referring to a quote attributed to Mandela on the importance of perseverance to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Reports on starving children in Gaza in recent days have focused on shocking images of an emaciated 18-month-old boy, Mohammed al-Mutawaq, but it’s unclear how representative the image is, with CNN reporting the boy’s mother said he had a pre-existing muscular disorder, while pro-Israeli journalist David Collier said he had cerebral palsy.

Mr Netanyahu insisted on Monday there was “no starvation in Gaza, no policy of starvation in Gaza”.

Donald Trump rubbished the claim, saying he was convinced by the images coming out of the Palestinian enclave. “That’s real starvation stuff,” the US President said. “I see it, and you can’t fake that. So we’re going to be even more involved.” He said Israel had “a lot of responsibility” for limiting aid in the territory, but again called for Hamas to release the hostages still held in Gaza to ease negotiations.

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Court row looms over bridge march

The Australian | James Dowling | 30 July 2025

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=2f8cf1de-5044-42f1-a565-7d43668a3fb5&share=true

NSW police have rejected an application by the Palestine Action Group to march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge this weekend, paving the way for a battle in the Supreme Court.

“After careful deliberations, we’ve made a decision … that we cannot facilitate that protest, that public assembly this Sunday. The main rationale behind that is quite clearly public safety,” acting deputy police commissioner Peter McKenna said.

“If it’s … the case that the applicant (PAG) says they want to go ahead with that public assembly on the Harbour Bridge, we will be going to the Supreme Court and lodging an application to have that matter heard and have the protest deemed unauthorised.”

The “March for Humanity” was set to cross the Harbour Bridge on Sunday, August 3.

“We will speak further with the applicant and see if we can negotiate,” Mr McKenna said. “We don’t want conflict. We don’t want an issue there, but if it’s the case that … we can’t achieve public safety then we will do what we have to do to ensure that people are kept safe.

“We just want these people to have a think about it, (and) see what they can do that is achievable for everyone.

“If people do attend on Sunday, they do not have the protections they would normally have on public assemblies … and they may (find) themselves caught up in a situation where they are lawfully moved on.

“The PAG made clear they would challenge the decision and would not accept an alternative location for the protest.

The PAG has said it will fight the decision in the courts. “If the NSW police are determined to act as Chris Minns’ pawns and oppose our march in the courts, then we will see them in court,” a PAG spokesperson said.

“The March for Humanity to save Gaza, marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge this Sunday, must go ahead.

“Chris Minns has made his views clear that he will never ‘under any circumstances’ or with any amount of warning support this march of Sydneysiders against genocide. Thankfully, it’s not up to him.”

It came after Mr Minns said he would block and divert the protest no matter when it was set for.

“I’m not questioning the motives of many of the protesters. I accept this is a protest that many people want to have. My argument here is I can’t close down the central artery for a city as big as Sydney,” Mr Minns told ABC Sydney on Tuesday.

“I think common sense has to play a role here, when it’s been closed in the past – and you can count on one hand over the last decade when it’s happened – it’s been months and months and months in the preparation, including enormous amounts of community communication so that the public understands that the central artery to get from north to south Sydney has been and will be blocked.”

The Police Association of NSW on Tuesday lent their support to Mr Minns, saying police safety had to be placed at the fore of any potential demonstration.

“The Sydney Harbour Bridge is a major arterial road where vehicles travel at 70km/h. The combination of protesters and vehicles travelling at those speeds is a recipe for disaster and a risk this organisation cannot expose our members to,” PANSW president Kevin Morton said.

“Make no mistake, based on risk, the entire Bridge would need to be closed, similar to the 75th Anniversary celebrations in 2007, which required an enormous policing response and months of planning. The safety of the community is paramount.”

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Kostakidis challenges alleged anti-semitism

The Australian | James Dowling | 30 July 2025

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=c917e573-22c1-4d45-aab0-d9589d45fe81&share=true

The racial discrimination case of Mary Kostakidis is a battle between “free speech” and “hate speech”, according to its litigants, with the former SBS newsreader arguing for allegations against her to be scrubbed away.

At a hearing on Tuesday, judge Stephen McDonald said political criticism of Israel could veer into overt anti-Semitism and had “an obvious potential for correlation”.

It came as Kostakidis pushed for a strikeout application that would cripple the claim brought by the Zionist Federation of Australia, potentially scuppering the case entirely.

Kostakidis’s defence was emboldened by the recent judgment of judge Angus Stewart in the racial discrimination case of jihadi preacher Wissam Haddad, which found anti-Zionism was not inherently anti-Semitic.

However, Justice McDonald told Kostakidis’s barrister, Stephen Keim, on Tuesday that he was attuned to the unique perils that face Jewish Australians confronting criticism of Israel.

“The overarching difficulty that arises in this case – and to some extent, the issue that was dealt with by Justice Stewart – is that there’s an obvious potential for correlation between views about Jewish people and views about Israel because the relationship between Jews and Israel (is) different from the relationship between many other states and ethnicities,” he said.

“There seems to be an issue here that people who are anti-Semitic tend to conflate these things, and people who are on the other side and trying to accuse someone of being anti-Semitic tend to conflate these things in a different way.

“That seems to make it difficult to separate out something that is clearly about Israel versus something that’s clearly about Jewish people.”

ZFA barrister Michael Borsky, representing its chief executive, Alon Cassuto, said his client intended to challenge Justice Stewart’s findings on the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

“Mr Cassuto … if it became relevant … would challenge the proposition. It is, at its most in this proceeding, an issue for trial, not a basis for striking out,” Mr Borsky said. “In Mr Cassuto’s claim … it is people of Israeli national origin in Australia (being threatened), and we submit it’s … at least arguable that group is capable of being offended or insulted in the relevant statutory sense.

Speaking before the hearing, Kostakidis said the ZFA was impinging on the public’s civil liberties.

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US, Europe defy Netanyahu with aid for Gaza

The Australian / WSJ, The Times | Shayndi Raice | 30 July 2025

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=59a19122-afd5-42d1-94ef-14a3502bddba&share=true

The US and Europe will launch a program to deliver food directly to Palestinians in Gaza as a hunger crisis grips the territory, Donald Trump says, in a direct challenge to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assessment of the humanitarian situation.

Speaking in Scotland with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Mr Trump described the food crisis in Gaza as a “terrible situation”.

He said the US would set up food centres “in conjunction with some very good people”, and fund the effort along with European nations.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether he was referring to a new American effort to get food into Gaza or an expansion of an existing Israeli-backed program called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which uses an American contractor to distribute aid.

GHF, which began distributing aid in May, has struggled to deliver sufficient aid to Gazans and has been beset by violence near some of its food distribution sites. Local health authorities say hundreds have been killed near the sites. Israel’s military acknowledges shooting at crowds but says the number of deaths is inflated.

Asked how new food-distribution sites could work, Mr Trump said there would be no physical barriers to people accessing the food. “The people are screaming for the food and they are 35-40 yards away,” Mr Trump said, adding that “very strict lines” at current food distribution sites meant people couldn’t access the aid. “So we have to get rid of those lines.”

A White House spokeswoman said further details of the plan would be issued soon. An official for the Israeli military branch that co-ordinates aid said it wasn’t aware of any new American or European program.

On Monday, Mr Netanyahu said there “is no starvation in Gaza, no policy of starvation in Gaza and I assure you that we have a commitment to achieve our war goals”.

In response to a question about whether he believed Israeli claims that there is no starvation in Gaza, Mr Trump said: “I don’t know, I mean based on television … those children look very hungry.”

Israel has in recent days increased efforts to get more food into Gaza. On Sunday, it announced a tactical pause in military activity for 10 hours every day in parts of the Strip to help ensure safe routes for aid.

The announcement follows growing pressure from Arab and Western officials over what residents and humanitarian workers say is the worst hunger crisis to grip the enclave since the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023 sparked the war in Gaza.

Sir Keir will this week set out a Middle East peace plan that will put Britain on the path to recognising a Palestinian state amid mounting cabinet pressure.

The Prime Minister will hold an emergency cabinet meeting on Gaza this week to approve his plan after his talks with Mr Trump.

Downing Street said Sir Keir and Mr Trump discussed plans being drawn up with France and Germany to bring about a “lasting peace”. Government sources did not rule out joining France in recognising a Palestinian state at the UN general assembly in September if a ceasefire is secured.

Seven members of the British cabinet are pushing Sir Keir to formally recognise Palestine, along with 130 Labour MPs, a third of its backbenchers.

Downing Street confirmed the goal was to recognise a state in this parliament, calling it a matter of “when, not if”. Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, and Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, are understood to be among those backing early recognition of Palestine. It emerged last week that Angela Rayner, Sir Keir’s deputy, and Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, had argued for urgent action.

Ministers acknowledged the US was in a “different position” on Palestinian statehood and was unlikely to join European countries and Canada in recognising one. However, Mr Trump said before his talks with Sir Keir in Scotland that the issue should not come between them.

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Arab peacekeeping force key to future of two-state solution

The Australian | Letters | 30 July 2025

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=2fdbc54e-2a91-4f89-aa24-9400a31324ac&share=true

Greg Sheridan is correct in observing that a two-state solution will be very difficult to implement as a response to the current loss of life in Gaza and Israel (“Recognising Palestine state would be a mistake”, 29/7).

While a possible enforcement of border security between two such states by UN forces has been proposed, the failure of the United Nations to enforce the “blue line” (UN Resolution 1701) separating Lebanon and Israel suggests otherwise. Indeed, Israel may understandably question the neutrality, as well as the practicality, of such a solution.

On the other hand, the feasibility of an Arab peacekeeping force should be pursued. Such a force, drawn from Saudi, Emirati, and other Middle Eastern states familiar with Palestinian politics, would be more likely to constrain the militancy of Hamas operatives.

Such nations are increasingly keen to restore peace and trade to the Middle East.

Vicki Sanderson, Cremorne, NSW

Severely emaciated children can be found around the world, even in Australia. The selective release of images by Hamas of such children, presumably in Gaza (“Images of starving children ‘false’”, 29/7), is clearly proving to be a highly effective propaganda weapon.

Paul Prociv, Mount Mellum, Qld

It doesn’t fit their current victimhood narrative but the pro-Palestinian mob need to be reminded that their political forebears rejected a two-state solution offered by the UN in 1948, and in 2000 a very generous offer by Israel at a Camp David summit hosted by Bill Clinton.

And why did they reject these offers? Because they want nothing less than a Palestine state “from the river to the sea”.

George Fishman, Vaucluse NSW

The awful situation In Gaza Is one that I feel has been largely determined by Hamas.

Originally it set out to attack Israel, but that was largely a sham and was dominated by the terrible massacre of October 7, 2023.

Hamas was not equipped for any full-scale attack and I suspect that its initial move was designed to entice other Arabic nations into the fray.

That didn’t work very well, and Iran was the only serious power to mount an attack. So now we have Hamas in need of a surrender, and I believe the situation of women and children in Gaza (who would likely have had no say in the initial support offered to Hamas) suits its agenda very well in that it puts Hamas in a position to dictate the terms of surrender. And world opinion seems to be effectively on Hamas’s side.

Ian Napier, St Peters, SA

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Police vow to block harbour bridge protest

Daily Telegraph | Nathan Schmidt | 30 July 2025

https://todayspaper.dailytelegraph.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=793c7b7a-623a-482f-9d21-d91f53ca46aa&share=true

Police will seek to block a planned pro-Palestine march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, setting the stage for a Supreme Court challenge with organisers.

The Palestine Action Group Sydney informed NSW Police of plans for a march across the Bridge on Sunday in protest as what they claim is mass starvation in Gaza.

Plans for the march have been condemned by Premier Chris Minns who said Sydney could “descend into chaos” if the protest went ahead.

Addressing the march on Tuesday afternoon, NSW Police Acting Deputy Commissioner Peter McKenna said the decision to block the march was made by police, independently of the Premier.

“After careful deliberations we’ve made the decision … that we cannot facilitate that protest, that public assembly this Sunday,” he said.

“We understand there is some angst at the moment about what’s happening overseas. We understand and are sympathetic to that, but the NSW Police decision around this has to be first and foremost about public and police safety.”

Dep Comm McKenna said the protest would block emergency services from attending emergencies and would put lives at risk.

He warned protesters if they attended on Sunday they would “not have the protections they would normally have at public assemblies”.

“They may face themselves being caught up in a situation where they are lawfully moved on and if offences are committed, (they will be) arrested and charged.’’

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March of madness planned for Sydney

Daily Telegraph | Editorial | 30 July 2025

https://todayspaper.dailytelegraph.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=4ee86408-6b46-4e4e-9ac4-e8b9fa51b724&share=true

The very first protest in Sydney following the October 7 atrocities committed by Hamas was not in fact against Hamas.

Rather, it was against Israel, whose citizens were raped, slaughtered, kidnapped and tortured by Hamas maniacs. And now another protest is planned for Sydney, again backing the Palestinian recognition movement. This is obscene.

Protesters should be demanding the release of hostages. Instead, they’re cheering for their captors.

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Carr goes off track

Daily Telegraph | Letters | 30 July 2025

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Thank God Bob Carr is in an advanced state of irrelevance (“Bob’s Gaza Carr crash”, DT, 29/7).

Not that I can recall anything of great significance that he ever had to adjudicate as foreign minister but it looks likely that he would be able to create an even bigger mess of the government’s attitude on Gaza than we are presently set on.

In order to have a two-state solution, there needs to be two states. Who in their right mind would offer state control over the Palestinians to a group with a track record like Hamas?

The removal of Hamas could establish an opportunity to begin the process of statehood for the Palestinian people.

Gary Bryant, Gladesville

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Pollies at odds over Gaza ‘starvation’

Herald-Sun (Courier-Mail) | Clare Armstrong | 30 July 2025

https://todayspaper.heraldsun.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=49f9df70-1bce-4169-9076-f9240127abeb&share=true

Anthony Albanese has told his Labor colleagues claims by Israel’s leadership there is no starvation in Gaza are “beyond comprehension”.

The PM contradicted Israel’s deputy chief of mission in Australia, Amir Meron, who had echoed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s suggestion there was “no starvation in Gaza” when asked about the conditions for Australia supporting Palestinian statehood during a caucus meeting of Labor MPs in Canberra on Tuesday.

Mr Albanese admitted, however, that there was a “caveat” on any war information flowing from terror group Hamas.

Opposition leader Sussan Ley said the photos out of Gaza were “incredibly distressing”, but she would not say there was mass starvation, describing it as “complex situation”.

“There are reports of Hamas interrupting the flow of aid. Now, if we want the war to end, and we all do, we know the simplest, quickest way is for Hamas to surrender and release the hostages,” she said.

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Er, Ingrid, this is ‘shameful’

Herald-Sun | Carly Douglas | 30 July 2025

https://todayspaper.heraldsun.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=91ad5f75-0cc4-45b9-96c8-8068f00232dc&share=true

Premier Jacinta Allan has been forced to clean up her multicultural minister’s mess after she refused to condemn anti-Israel extremists who sent the National Gallery of Victoria into lockdown.

On Monday, Minister Ingrid Stitt defended a crowd who blocked the entrance of the storied Melbourne arts institution in protest against Jewish philanthropists, John and Pauline Gandel, who are major donors of the gallery and various Zionist groups.

“In Victoria, people do have the right to protest peacefully and the vast majority … do protest peacefully,” she said.

Following fierce backlash, Ms Allan came out swinging at parliament on Tuesday, condemning the “extremists” over the “shameful” and “anti-Semitic” protest.

“We are known as the creative and cultural capital of the nation,” she said.

“A big part of that reputation has been due to the generosity of families like the Gandels.”

She said the targeting of the Jewish couple and the NGV had “frankly very little to do with the conflict in the Middle East” and was more about “driving division” on the streets of Melbourne.

“It is a small number of extremists and Victorians condemn their behaviour – I condemn it,” she said.

Pressed over whether the police should have moved on extremists causing havoc, Ms Allan said they had the powers to do so. “Police have the powers to move people on if they are posing a risk to the community,” she said.

It came after former NGV head Steve Vizard urged the Allan government to crack down on a “growing culture of lawlessness”.

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No peace in these protests

Herald-Sun | Editorial | 32 July 2025

https://todayspaper.heraldsun.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=2e1dc9e0-8f1f-4134-91b4-c3955f907087&share=true

The rejection by the Allan government and our new police chief of any need for protest permits will be tested this and over coming weekends.

That test could likely turn out to be in the comparative outcomes experienced in NSW, where a tougher approach from the Minns Labor government has refused to bow to protesters to issue a permit to allow the Sydney Harbour Bridge to be shut down by pro- Palestine demonstrations.

While criticisms continue to mount in Victoria about the Allan government’s approach to a demonstration that shut down access to one of our state’s icons, the National Gallery of Victoria, the lack of a protest permit system here curtails police powers to move unruly protesters on.

As shown last weekend, even though lawful access to the NGV was disrupted, protest incursions into public spaces and blockading thoroughfares is, apparently, fair game in the nation’s protest capital. And the fact an extremist element of the protests again touted their vile anti-Semitism, this time targeting well-known Jewish philanthropists and NGV benefactors John and Pauline Gandel, labelled by some of these rally morons as “genocidal Zionists,” illustrates the clear distinction between lawful protest and hate-fuelled mob.

On Sunday, about 1000 protesters, some chanting “Death to the IDF” and “socialism now”, rallied outside the NGV, blocking access for families and children.

Activists targeted the NGV following a gala dinner at which a hall was renamed in honour the Gandels, a family who have contributed enormously to the state.

Former NGV president Steve Vizard called on the Allan government to finally act to end the “culture of lawlessness” that had infected demonstrations with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hate.

“That a handful of protesters are permitted to shut down a major public gallery and slander some of Melbourne’s most esteemed families – families who have contributed to the cultural life of this city and nation for generations – by engaging in rampant racism, anti-Semitism, is outrageous and increasingly dangerous,” Mr Vizard said.

NSW has adopted a protest permit system, requiring protest organisers to prearrange demonstrations with police to ensure traffic and commercial disruption can be somewhat managed.

The Palestine Action Group had soug”t to’lead a mass walk across the Harbour Bridge this weekend to demonstrate against the horrors being seen in Gaza. Protest supporters argue the bridge revioussly been closed for the 2023 World Pride and 2000 reconciliation marches, as well as sections shut for film shoots.

NSW Premier Chris Minns said “we cannot allow Sydney to descend into chaos” and argued “the NSW government cannot support a protest of this scale and nature taking place on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, especially with one week’s notice.”

While demonstrators have since proposed another date to give more notice, the utility of the permit system has already been illustrated by the police-protester talks about where, when and if mass commuter disruption can take place. No such mandated process exists in Victoria – here it is largely a practice of letting local council know a demonstration is going ahead and then letting the havoc play out.

Former police chief Shane Patton last year formally requested the Allan government introduce a NSW-style protest permit system.

Now, new chief Mike Bush has already declared he doesn’t see the need for protest permits.

The right to protest – peacefully – is a democratic cornerstone.

But what happened at the NGV; the separate spate of anti-Semitic arsons and attacks, together with the weekly chants of hatred needs to be met with the arrest and prosecution of those who are clearly intent to vilify and incite violence.

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Rallies a blight on city

Herald-Sun | Text Talk | 30 July 2025

https://todayspaper.heraldsun.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=9a65383c-f9d4-4a37-b2ab-a71f38899a11&share=true

I am very disappointed to read that new Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush has rejected the idea of a permit system for protests, having personally watched one of these “peaceful” rallies (“Vizard rages at ‘rampant racism’”, HS, 29/7).

What is so peaceful about chanting “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea”, meaning death to Israel?

Furthermore, every protester I have asked about how they view Hamas, their response has always been as “freedom fighters”.

Anti-Semitic protests have no place in this country that has been my home for 55 years since arriving as an immigrant from Yugoslavia.

This country is the land of opportunity and with that comes responsibility and respect.

These so-called “peaceful” rallies are a blight on our city and totally disrespectful.

Steve Naumovski, Southbank

Exempt from laws

Airports, supermarkets, shops and offices prominently display signs saying to treat the staff with respect and abusive behaviour will not be tolerated.

So how is it that the pro-Palestine protesters are allowed to scream abuse in the face of the police who are there to keep the peace and protect the innocent without consequences (“Families caught in NGV lockdown”, HS 28/7)?

It appears some groups are exempt from laws that govern the hard-working majority.

Government indifference is clearly visible when it comes to providing a safe and free country for all people.

Both federal and state governments could have dealt with the abuse and the threats against the Jewish community right from the beginning.

Instead, they let it fester and now this protesting rabble are a threat and a nuisance to everyone.

Rohan De Soysa, Macleod

Labor inaction

Inaction by the Allan government continues in the face of violent anti-Jewish protests that’s becoming normalised in this state (“Vizard rages at ‘rampant racism’”, HS, 29/7).

Imagine the government’s response if similar protests were directed at Muslims, the Indigenous or the LGBTQIA+ communities.

The response would be immediate and decisive.

Hate legislation would be rushed through parliament and the plethora of our human rights organisations and the police thrown into top gear.

Some deportations might likely follow.

So why the insipid and drawn-out response by the government to anti-Semitic behaviour?

A couple of likely reasons stand out.

Firstly, there is an influential lobby in Labor.

Secondly, the government is dominated by the socialist left faction.

While these conditions prevail within Labor, curtailing anti-Semitism will be a protracted process.

Only a change in government will see the problem resolved.

Martin Newington, Aspendale

Echo of Nazi Germany

Melbourne is becoming the Germany of the late 1930s, filled with hate, fuelled by the left and anti-Semitic attacks by people like former Labor minister Bob Carr (“Carr’s ‘genocide’ barb for Israel’s action in Gaza just an attempt to ‘provoke outrage’”, HS, 29/7).

The government is incapable of stopping it.

Every day the situation gets worse and more frightening.

Why would anyone, if Jewish, want to stay in this city with such vitriol and hatred?

Imagine if this was directed at Islamic people.

It would have been denounced and stopped in a very short time.

I am embarrassed to live in Victoria.

Paul A’Bell, Leongatha

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Send in joint force

Courier-Mail | Letters | 30 July 2025

https://todayspaper.couriermail.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=78f29d5d-66c3-48a0-b9da-2ccd194c90f0&share=true

Why is no world leader from the G7 and other countries such as Australia calling for an international force, ideally under a UN endorsement, to intervene in Gaza?

Such a force, if not under UN auspices, realistically a “Coalition of the Willing”, would announce they are sending in such a force to occupy Gaza and enforce peace-keeping.

Israel would have to accept this intervention and withdraw, and Hamas would be forced to surrender and free the hostages, or be destroyed.

It is the only way to stop the war, secure humanitarian aid, and begin to rebuild Gaza.

It has been done before, eg Bosnia/Kosovo, and the first Gulf War in Kuwait and Iraq.

The current Exercise Talisman Sabre comprises some 35,000 troops from 19 countries with extensive weapons and equipment on land, at sea, and in the air, at immense cost.

So why not a real Operation Talisman Sabre, an armed intervention to bring the war in Gaza to an end, supply food and other aid supplies to 2 million Gaza civilians, and in so doing take a first step to build peace in Palestine and Israel?

Appeals for calm, restraint, de-escalation and other platitudes from the world’s politicians are meaningless.

Is there no world leader with the moral courage and conviction to propose such an intervention?

Bryn Evans, Redcliffe

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UK could recognise Palestinian state in September: PM

Canberra Times / AAP | 30 July 2025

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9028353/uk-could-recognise-palestinian-state-in-september-pm/

Prime Minister Keir Starmer says the United Kingdom is prepared to recognise a Palestinian state in September at the United Nations General Assembly unless Israel takes a number of steps to improve life for Palestinians.

Starmer said the UK would make the move unless Israel took substantive steps to allow more aid to enter the Gaza Strip, made clear there will be no annexation of the West Bank and commits to a long-term peace process that delivers a “two-state solution” – a Palestinian state co-existing in peace alongside Israel.

“The Palestinian people have endured terrible suffering,” Starmer told reporters.

“Now, in Gaza, because of a catastrophic failure of aid, we see starving babies, children too weak to stand, images that will stay with us for a lifetime. The suffering must end.”

Starmer said his government would make an assessment in September on “how far the parties have met these steps” but that no one would have a veto over the decision.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in response that Starmer’s decision rewards “Hamas monstrous terrorism and punishes its victims”.

“A jihadist state on Israel’s border today will threaten Britain tomorrow,” Netanyahu added.

Starmer took the decision after recalling his cabinet during the summer holidays on Tuesday to discuss a new proposed peace plan being worked on with other European leaders and how to deliver more humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, a government statement said.

“He reiterated that there is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas and that our demands on Hamas remain that they must release all the hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, accept that they will play no role in the government of Gaza and disarm.”

Successive UK governments have said they will formally recognise a Palestinian state when the time is right, without ever setting a timetable or specifying the necessary conditions.

A growing numbers of MPs in Starmer’s Labour Party have asked him to recognise a Palestinian state to push Israel towards action.

Pressure to formally recognise Palestinian statehood has mounted since French President Emmanuel Macron announced that his country will recognise a Palestinian state in September.

Meanwhile, Germany sent two military transport aircraft to Jordan to assist in airdrops of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said.

Planes from Jordan and the United Arab Emirates dropped another 52 pallets of food over the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said on Tuesday.

Egyptian planes also took part in the airdrops for the first time since Sunday, when Israel began allowing increased aid into the sealed-off Palestinian territory after months of restrictions, the military said.

The Israeli military on Sunday announced it was implementing daily “humanitarian” pauses in fighting to allow for new aid to be safely distributed in the embattled strip amid increased international pressure over warners of imminent famine.

The military said Egypt, Jordan and the UAE were co-ordinating the airdrops with Israel.

Aid organisations including Doctors Without Borders have criticised the method as ineffective and expensive compared to lorry aid deliveries.

They also note the danger posed to waiting civilians by the dropping pallets, which are attached to parachutes.

Scores of Palestinians in the Gazan town of Zawaida swam into the sea to retrieve what they could from airdrops of aid on Tuesday.

Kamel Qoraan returned to shore with a soaked bag of tea powder, saying that airdropping aid is “humiliating” and calling for the opening of border crossings for trucks.

Some people seemed relieved to get anything.

One boy smiled as he clutched a small sack of flour.

One man had a can of beans.

Momen Abu Etayya said his son urged him to chase the airdrops, and dashed into the sea.

“I was only able to bring him three biscuits,” he said.

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Anthony Albanese and Sussan Ley were once on a Palestine unity ticket

A close up photo of Annabel Crabb, who has long brown hair and is wearing red spectacles, red lipstick and a blue top

ABC | Annabel Crabb | 30 July 2025

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-30/friends-of-palestine-group-history-albanese-ley-carr-gillard/105580990

Here’s a weird state of affairs. On an issue that is swinging a wrecking ball through institutions and communities across this country and indeed the democratic world, the leaders of Australia’s two major parties are quiet co-occupants of a historic unity ticket.

Both Anthony Albanese and Sussan Ley are past convenors of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group, having joined it — or in Albanese’s case, actively co-founded it — when they were backbenchers, more than two decades ago.

Both have expressly supported the recognition of Palestinian statehood.

Friends across the political spectrum

Albanese created the group in 1999 with Joe Hockey, who was at the time a new Liberal MP and a junior minister in John Howard’s Coalition government.

Ley joined the Parliamentary Friends Of Palestine shortly after her election to the House of Representatives in 2001, having wrested the vast regional seat of Farrer from the National Party.

In 2003, she took on a leadership role, telling the Australian Jewish News: “For those of us who look forward to an independent Palestinian state and wish to advance the cause of viable sovereign statehood, this group gives us an opportunity to hold out the hand of friendship, understanding and trust.”

In 2011, by which time she was a shadow minister in Tony Abbott’s opposition, Ley told the parliament that she supported the Palestinian people’s bid for recognition and membership of the United Nations.

On the question of Palestine, the position of the federal Labor Party is clear. In 2021, for the first time, the party’s national conference voted not only to confirm its support for a two-state solution, but to “call on the next Labor government to recognise Palestine as a state”, in a motion authored by then shadow foreign minister Penny Wong.

That next Labor government arrived at the 2022 election. Wong is now foreign minister. And now the opposition is led by someone who also is on parliamentary record as supporting Palestinian statehood. If you were an intelligent alien freshly landed from the Planet Zorb, you could be forgiven for thinking matters should be pretty straightforward from here, yes?

No. The rules of Australian political debate about Palestine — more than 12,000km away from Canberra and approximately seven ten-thousandths of our land mass — are much, much more complicated than that.

Not so straightforward

Labor senator Fatima Payman last year found this out the hard way, when she announced her intention to vote for a Greens Senate motion to recognise Palestine, citing the Labor platform’s explicit position.

Payman is no longer a Labor senator. She is permanently estranged from her old party, an outcome that would cause our alien visitor to scratch its head, if that’s indeed how intelligent life-forms from Zorb express puzzlement.

The best demonstration of how tangled and Byzantine this matter can become is obtained by zooming back in time to the minority government of Julia Gillard, the time frame in which Ley devoted a parliamentary speech to her support for Palestinian statehood.

Albanese, by this time the leader of the House, wrangling legislation day by day for a prime minister holding power by one vote, was publicly more circumspect, for good reason.

The status of a Palestinian state was by this time the nexus of a significant proxy war within Labor.

And a complex, multi-layered war it was, fought mostly below the public water line, but much muddied by related disputes, some of them ancient: factional divides between left and right, or within the right between NSW and Victoria. The ongoing bad blood between Gillard and the leader she deposed, Kevin Rudd, was an additional underwater hazard. By that time, Rudd was foreign minister, running a campaign for Australia to win a seat on the UN Security Council and pressing Gillard to distance the government from Israel.

Gillard was a supporter of Australia’s alliance with Israel and despite nominally belonging to Labor’s left faction, she was much more closely associated with elements of the right (Keep up, little alien. Don’t lose focus!).

As Australian Union of Students leader in the early 1980s, Gillard was instrumental in quashing that organisation’s activism for Palestine in the early 1980s, arguing that it “alienated the vast mass of students”.

Bob Carr tries to persuade Julia Gillard

Australia won its bid for a seat at the Security Council in late 2012, by which time Rudd had quit as foreign minister and his replacement, former NSW premier Bob Carr, had taken over trying to talk Gillard out of voting against Palestine being given observer status at the UN.

“To feed my gloomy irritation I sustain another defeat at the hands of the Likudniks,” reports Carr in a diary entry on November 12, 2012, using one of his terms for pro-Israel Labor colleagues (another is “felafel faction”). In the same entry, Carr moodily records that an attempt to “escape episodes of atrial fibrillation” by eliminating coffee from his diet had also failed, producing only lethargy and headaches. “To live is to lose ground.”

But in a cabinet meeting on November 27 of that year, Carr and the majority of his cabinet colleagues erupted in rebellion against their prime minister.

Some were motivated by principle. Some by factional allegiance. Some by the demographics of their electorates. Some by their loyalty to Rudd. Either way, Gillard had only two cabinet voices defending her that day: Victorian right-wingers Stephen Conroy and Bill Shorten.

The upshot was that Gillard was forced to retreat from her position. Australia did not — as she’d earlier directed — vote against the motion affording Palestine observer status at the UN. Instead, we abstained.

The motion passed easily, with only a handful of nations opposed.

Australia’s stance made no difference to the final result, but it nearly tipped Gillard out of the leadership. As it was, she lasted just another six months.

Incidentally, Carr — who remains Labor’s most trenchant critic of Israel, and on Monday called on the government to recognise Palestinian statehood as soon as possible — way back in 1977 co-founded, along with Bob Hawke, the group Labor Friends of Israel.

++++++

The long and dangerous journey into Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid sites

ABC | Eric Tlozek & Toby Mann | 30 July 2025

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-30/long-dangerous-journey-gaza-humanitarian-foundation-ghf-aid-site/105580548

Palestinians in Gaza say they feel torn between risking their lives at aid sites or starving.
Health authorities in Gaza said more than 1,000 people had been killed while trying to secure food at sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
The ABC has talked to multiple sources in Gaza who have used the aid system, many of whom say they witnessed soldiers shooting directly at civilians.

Gaza has been cut off from steady food supplies for months, and since aid deliveries have resumed, more than 1,000 desperate people have been killed while trying to access essentials.

Many of the killings have happened around sites recently set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US- and Israeli-backed private operation that has taken over distribution of critical supplies from traditional aid agencies.

Palestinians in Gaza have told the ABC they feel they have to risk their lives in the hope of collecting food at one of the aid sites.

Multiple witnesses told the ABC they have seen soldiers fire directly at Palestinians.

People in Gaza are starving, and as the UN points out, they face an “unacceptable” choice over risking death to get food.

“The hunger crisis in Gaza has reached new and astonishing levels of desperation,” the UN said.

After mounting international pressure, Israel has announced “tactical pauses” of its bombardment of Gaza to allow more aid to be dropped.

Humanitarian agencies said the aid drops wouldn’t deliver enough for the 2 million people in Gaza.

Many will still have to make the long, dangerous and possibly fruitless journey to one of the GHF’s four aid depots.

The first steps

They set off after a message appears on Facebook.

“To the residents of Gaza, aid will be open tomorrow in Khan Younis in Saudi neighbourhood as of 9am. Please do not come to the location before this, as we may still be preparing the sites. The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] may still be in the area before that time.”

People immediately begin the long walk from across the strip, leaving their tents and shelters and heading towards the site they have been told will open.

The night before the site opens, some sleep in the sand dunes nearby, hoping to secure a place at the front of the growing crowd.

They want to arrive as early as possible to give themselves the best chance of getting aid.

The people massing outside the centres don’t know exactly when the gate will open, or for how long.

There’s no guarantee that after the long walk to the site they will leave with a box of food.

“Many stay for days, because distributions are inconsistent, and you never know when the next box will come,” Fayez Abu Obeyd told the ABC.

The dangerous walk to the site

The Israeli military has created long approach corridors for each of the GHF sites.

People are only allowed to enter by walking down a kind of trench.

They’re corridors made from bulldozed berms and security fences and are hundreds of metres long.

If people try to approach by another way to avoid the crush of the crowd, they say they are shot at by Israeli soldiers and tanks.

Drones also fly over those walking the trenches to the aid sites.

Hassan Abu Obeid, one of the many aid seekers, told the ABC the most dangerous part of the journey was reaching the queue at the distribution centre.

“Soldiers fire at us. Tanks are positioned nearby. They say, ‘If you’re visible, we shoot’. Just getting to the entrance is the hardest part. That’s where most people are shot,” he said.

Abu Abel described a similarly terrifying situation.

“Guards open fire on anyone who steps even slightly out of line,” he told the ABC.

“There are no warnings. A few centimetres off, and they shoot to kill, aiming for the head or chest.”

Sami Ashour said there was barely room to move in the queues.

“We’re packed so tightly that it feels claustrophobic,” he said

“Just getting to the distribution centre is incredibly difficult. There are far too many people, all desperate for the same thing.”

He said he had to risk his life “just to survive”.

“There’s no other choice,” he said.

“Either I take the risk or we have nothing.”

People have taken to calling the distribution sites cemeteries.

“That’s how deadly they’ve become,” Abu Abel said.

Abu Khaled has also been to the GHF sites.

“These aren’t aid distributions — they’re death distributions,” he told the ABC.

GHF denies its workers have shot Palestinians.

“No GHF contractor has shot at a civilian or anyone else for that matter. Period,” a GHF spokesperson said.

There is evidence the Israeli military has fired at people queuing to collect aid.

The UN said that as of July 21, 1,054 people had been killed in Gaza while trying to get food, 766 near GHF sites.

GHF and the IDF have disputed the figures and have previously denied targeting civilians.

The IDF has however admitted to firing “warning shots” towards “suspects”.

Tank at the gates

Before the site has opened, an Israeli tank is positioned outside to stop people entering, people who have been to the sites told the ABC.

GHF has been using a coloured flag to indicate when people can enter their sites to collect aid.

“We never approach until the flag is lowered and the tank moves. That’s the signal, meaning it’s finally safe to start,” Fayez Abu Obeyd said.

Palestinians told the ABC the opening times had been inconsistent and unpredictable.

GHF said the length of time its centres opened depended on the amount of aid available.

At 5am, a crowd has formed around an aid site.

At 9am, the rush starts.

“Young men often have to run when the gates open, competing to get supplies for their families,” Abu al Majed told the ABC.

Most of the people trying to get aid are young men, who have the best chance of reaching a box of aid in time.

Umm Ali, one of the few women to try reaching the sites, told the ABC she can’t reach the food before them.

She has missed out every time.

“I’ve never been able to get a single aid box,” she said.

“But I’ve seen many people killed, most of them young teenage boys. One moment they’re standing in line, and the next, a shot to the head, no warning, no reason.

“This isn’t an aid distribution. It’s a place of humiliation.”

She said trying to collect aid from the sites was not safe.

“There should be a secure, dignified way for people to access food, without risking their lives,” she said.

The GHF held a “women only” day at one of its sites last week, saying it was responding to community concern about the distribution method favouring men.

The sites generally open twice a day — in the morning and the afternoon.

That gives people two windows of about 15 minutes to grab whatever they can.

“Inside one box there’s 5kg of flour, 2kg of bulgur [wheat], 1kg of rice, 1kg of lentils, pasta, salt, tahini, and cooking oil,” Hassan Abu Obeid said.

One aid seeker, who spoke to the ABC after going to a GHF site, said all she managed to get was a kilogram of flour.

“Not even the basics,” she said.

“If I had a choice, I would never come to these distribution centres.”

It’s not just food that’s in short supply.

Fuel is scarce, and turning the ingredients in the aid boxes into food becomes another challenge.

“We cook using cardboard we collect from the streets,” Hassan Abu Obeid said.

“There’s no gas. We haven’t had gas canisters for four or five months.”

Hassan Abu Obeid even though the sites were “deadly”, people had no choice but to go there.

“We need flour, we need to feed the children,” he said.

The GHF denied that any guards it contracted had shot at Palestinians seeking aid.

GHF condemned by more than 170 aid groups

Much of the carnage has been around the three GHF sites in Gaza’s south and its other in the centre of the strip.

But there have also been reports of people being killed while trying to access aid deliveries in the north of Gaza.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has described what is said happened shortly after 25 aid trucks entered via the Zikim crossing a week ago.

“The convoy encountered large crowds of civilians anxiously waiting to access desperately needed food supplies,” the WFP said.

“As the convoy approached, the surrounding crowd came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire.”

About 80 people were killed, according to Palestinian authorities.

More than 170 aid organisations have condemned the GHF’s operations as immoral, in breach of international law and against humanitarian principles.

Bushra Khalidi, the policy lead for the occupied Palestinian territories for Oxfam, said the aid community was horrified by the large numbers of Palestinians killed around the GHF sites, as well as the way aid was distributed there.

“Massacres have happened daily at these distribution sites,” she told the ABC.

Ms Khalidi said one person her organisation had spoken with had almost died seven times in one day while trying to get flour.

“That’s not aid — that’s a death trap,” she said.

Ms Khalidi said aid delivery should be handled by independent agencies and guided by international law.

“The GHF does not abide by any of these principles, nor is it impartial because it’s run by the US, American veterans and armed actors. And the Israeli military. Nor is it independent, because it is directly tied to the Israeli military, and nor is it dignified,” she said.

“Where is the dignity in throwing food like boxes of flour and oil and pasta to the strongest? Because now it’s survival of the fittest in Gaza.”

GHF described the allegations that its operations breached international law and humanitarian principles as “completely false”.

“GHF is the only organisation right now getting in aid directly to the Palestinian people. Nearly all of the UN aid is looted and many times with people being severely injured or killed due to trampling,” a spokesperson said.

Ms Khalidi said aid should also be prioritised for the most vulnerable.

“A pregnant woman right now, a child, an elderly person, an amputee … how are they supposed to walk for five to six kilometres towards these distribution sites in the middle of the night through rubble and roads that they don’t even recognise because Israel has basically destroyed Gaza,” she said.

The GHF is also only distributing boxes of food, but people in Gaza have little access to water, gas and electricity.

“Palestinians have lost their homes and water and sanitation infrastructure has been completely destroyed,” she said.

“Electricity doesn’t exist in Gaza for the last 20 months. None of this is addressed by these food distribution sites.

“Granting Israel — an active party to this war — control over who receives the aid, where and from whom, basically has turned aid or food into a tool of control and coercion. It’s actually blurred the line between what is humanitarian assistance and what is the military objective.”

Media Report 2025.07.29

Posted on 29 Jul 20252 Aug 2025 by admin

Two leading Israeli human rights groups accuse their country of committing genocide in Gaza

ABC | Matthew Doran | 29 July 2025

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-29/israeli-orgs-label-gaza-situation-genocide/105584184

Two Israeli human rights organisations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, have labelled the country’s actions in Gaza as “genocide”.
B’Tselem compiled testimony as well as details of mass killings, destruction of infrastructure, forced displacement, mass arrests and alleged abuse of Palestinians in Israeli jails.
Israel has been conducting a military campaign in Gaza for the past 21 months, after Hamas militants entered Israel on October 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.

For the first time, two of Israel’s leading human rights organisations have labelled the country’s actions in Gaza as a “genocide”, demanding the international community step up pressure on the Netanyahu government to change course.

B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) released dual reports in Jerusalem on Monday afternoon, detailing grave allegations against Israeli authorities during the 22-month-long war in Gaza.

While both organisations have been critical of the Israeli government and military in the past, their intervention adds further fuel to the international argument over whether, or when, Israel crossed the line from self-defence to total destruction in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Both organisations compiled testimony from Palestinians, as well as official statistics and data about the impact of the war in Gaza, to reach their conclusions.

B’Tselem’s report, titled Our Genocide, detailed the factors the organisation believed led to a charge of genocide against Israel.

They included mass killings, destruction of infrastructure, forced displacement, and mass arrests and alleged abuse of Palestinians in Israeli jails.

“The report we are publishing today is one we never imagined we would have to write,” B’Tselem’s executive director Yuli Novak said.

“But in recent months, we have been witnessing a reality that has left us no choice but to acknowledge the truth.

“Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

Ms Novak said Hamas’s deadly attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and taking 250 hostages, were a “trigger” for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“October 7 was real. It was a real attack that was oriented mostly towards civilians. It was a criminal attack and, personally, I can say it was one of the most, or probably the most, frightening day of my life,” Ms Novak told the ABC.

“What it created … in Israel society is a sincere feeling of existential threat.

“That feeling, that collective trauma, was taken advantage of by a government.”

‘Israel has imposed a violent and discriminatory regime’

While acknowledging the October 7 attacks, B’Tselem said the response from Israel could not be viewed in isolation.

“The current onslaught on the Palestinian people, including in the Gaza Strip, must be understood in the context of more than seventy years in which Israel has imposed a violent and discriminatory regime on the Palestinians, taking its most extreme form against those living in the Gaza Strip,” the report stated.

Israel has repeatedly denied it is pursuing a campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza, accusing Hamas in turn of trying to wipe out the Jewish population in Israel.

Israeli authorities frequently refer to the war in Gaza as being against Hamas and not the Palestinian population.

But B’Tselem and PHRI disagreed, and argued the massive death toll, now approaching 60,000 according to Palestinian health authorities, and the scale of destruction on the ground were evidence that there was a broader plan.

Israel has rejected figures released by Gaza’s health authorities as Hamas propaganda, without providing any evidence for its claim and without publishing its own data on the number of dead and injured in the war.

Gaza health workers ‘acting heroically’

PHRI focused its inquiry on the destruction of Gaza’s health sector, describing a “deliberate and systemic dismantling” of the strip’s hospitals and health workforce over 22 months of war.

The organisation cited the frequent targeting of Gaza’s hospitals by Israeli forces, with evacuation and displacement orders issued throughout the war and direct attacks crippling their operations.

PHRI outlined damage to facilities including Al-Shifa, Al-Ahli, Al-Awda, Kamal Adwan, Nasser, the Indonesian, and the European hospitals as evidence of a concerted campaign.

“From the start, Israel portrayed hospitals as legitimate military targets, justifying attacks that would never be tolerated anywhere in the world,” PHRI’s executive director, Guy Shalev, said.

“Israel claimed Hamas used the hospitals for military purposes, but these claims were unverified and bore no relation to the comprehensive, absolute destruction of an entire system.

“Amid this horror, our colleagues and friends, the healthcare workers of Gaza, are acting heroically to save lives while they themselves are under direct attack.”

Dr Shalev said more than 1,500 healthcare workers had been killed, and 300 had been detained by Israeli forces.

“It is our duty to support them, ensure their protection, and insist on accountability and justice,” he argued.

Dr Shalev was asked whether he believed the tide of public opinion in Israel was turning — or, at the very least, there was a recognition amongst the population about the realities on the ground in Gaza.

“Yes, we’ve been seeing a change in the past few weeks — and I think that a lot is attributed to the reality being much worse on the ground in Gaza,” he replied.

“And the ability to deny it, the ability to not see it, I think, is just not so much possible for many of the Israelis watching the images coming out from Gaza.

“We always say better late than never — and everyone who is reckoning with what has been going on in the past almost two years and is willing to join us calling to stop it, doing whatever they can to stop, it is something that we of course support and we want to encourage, but also the past needs to be accounted for.”

The Israeli foreign ministry rejected the B’Tselem report, labelling it a “politically motivated document”.

“This so-called ‘advocacy’ group has long dedicated itself to vilifying Israel while covering up jihadist terror organisations such as Hamas,” a spokesperson said.

“The cynical use of the extreme term “genocide” was designed to provoke and draw the attention of the media and the public.

“Needless to say, such an accusation is obscene, baseless in both fact and law, and only emboldens Hamas, a jihadist terrorist group that openly and proudly committed horrific atrocities and massacres which are in themselves acts of genocide.”

The ministry said Israel “targets only Hamas and certainly not civilians”.

‘They called Gazans human animals’

One of the key elements of the crime of genocide, under international conventions, is the proof of intent.

Both B’Tselem and PHRI said there was a wealth of evidence, such as statements from political and military leaders, coupled with the scale of the devastation on the ground, which could prove intent.

“As much as this legal discussion is super important and is critical in order to bring perpetrators to justice, what we know from history is that the legal system, definitely the international legal system, works not in the time frame that is needed in order to stop a genocide,” Ms Novak said.

“Usually it gets to its conclusion way, way after the damage has already been done.

“In the first days of the attack, the highest political level in Israel — including the prime minister himself, the minister of defence, the president of Israel — stood out and told us, all of us, told the world and also their soldiers their intent.

“They marked the entire population of Gaza as responsible for Hamas’s attack.

“They called Gazans human animals.”

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No starvation in Gaza Israel insists, at odds with UN, aid groups

The Age (& SMH) | Matthew Knott | 29 July 2025

https://edition.theage.com.au/shortcode/THE965/edition/c1af1655-d232-23cd-94c4-864ca3c5b5d0?page=a31d70c7-c83b-34fd-c6dd-3566080bc978&

Israel’s embassy in Australia has declared there is no starvation in Gaza despite calls by world leaders for more aid to be allowed into the ravaged strip and reports of surging malnutrition levels among Palestinian civilians.

The Israeli embassy also rejected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s claim that Israel has breached international law in Gaza by curtailing food aid, insisting the nation has complied with its humanitarian obligations since the conflict began 21 months ago.

The intervention came as the Israeli military began a limited pause in fighting in three populated areas of Gaza for 10 hours a day and began airdrops to increase the supply of aid to Gazans.

Deputy Israeli ambassador Amir Meron told journalists in a briefing yesterday that claims of starvation amounted to Hamas propaganda and relied on “false pictures” presenting a distorted view of the situation in Gaza.

“We don’t recognise any famine or any starvation in the Gaza Strip,” Meron said. “This is a false campaign that is being [led] by Hamas, taking advantage of sick children in order to show a false claim and false presentation of hunger and starvation.

The remarks are starkly at odds with those of the UN, global aid organisations and world leaders including Albanese, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week that the organisation is “witnessing a deadly surge in malnutrition-related deaths” in Gaza, with at least 21 cases of children under the age of five dying from malnutrition.

Meron said that Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007 and launched the shock October 7 attacks on Israel that led to an estimated 1200 deaths, was “deceiving the media, deceiving international organisations, the international community, and it is deceiving its own people”.

Referring to images of emaciated Palestinian children that have shocked people around the world, including Albanese, Meron said: “The picture that you see, we think these are false pictures.” Meron said food shortages in Gaza should be blamed on a lack of willingness by international aid organisations to de liver the aid and the theft of food and other supplies by Hamas militants.

He said the new measures announced by Israel, including pauses in the fighting, were “of course to tackle this false campaign that Hamas is running against Israel, the starvation campaign”.

“When the UN agencies are saying that there is no aid, we’re showing those pictures [and saying] look, there is aid, and it’s ready, and it’s you can take it now and bring it to the Gaza Strip into the population. Why aren’t you taking it?” he said.

The deputy ambassador’s comments echoed those of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier yesterday, who told the UN and other aid organisations: “Stop finding excuses, do what you have to do and stop accusing Israel deliberately of this egregious falsehood. There is no starvation in Gaza, no policy of starvation in Gaza.”

Netanyahu has been charged by the International Criminal Court with using starvation as a weapon of war, a claim his office dismissed as false and antisemitic.

After French President Emmanuel Macron urged world leaders to recognise Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly last week, Labor MP Basem Abdo used his first speech to parliament yesterday to subtly support Australian recognition of Palestine.

Abdo, who was born in Kuwait to Palestinian refugees, described Palestinians as a “suffering people, a steadfast people”, adding that “international law matters, the international rules-based order matters. The right to peace, justice and recognition matters – deserving of a historic commitment,” he said.

More than 100 international aid organisations issued a joint statement last week saying “mass starvation” was spreading across Gaza, and that “our colleagues and those we serve are wasting away”.

According to the WHO, there have been 74 malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza this year, with 63 occurring in July – including 24 children under five. The Australian government last week joined 27 nations to condemn “the drip-feeding of aid” by Israel, while Albanese said on Sunday that “quite clearly, it is a breach of international law to stop food being delivered, which was a decision that Israel made in March”.

Pressed on whether Albanese was wrong to say that Israel broke international law by halting all aid deliveries from March until May, Meron said: “What we’re saying is that Israel doesn’t breach … international humanitarian law in Gaza. There is enough aid in Gaza, and we are acting in different ways in order to bring more aid in Gaza. And the responsibility should be [placed] on Hamas, not on Israel.”

Albanese told parliament yesterday that Gaza is in “the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe” and that “Israel’s denial of aid and the killing of civilians, including children seeking access to water and food, cannot be defended nor can it be ignored”.

“We have called upon Israel to comply immediately with its obligations under international law,” he said, adding that he also condemned Hamas.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley told Sky News: “I find the images incredibly distressing and the stories of aid not reaching the people where it’s needed incredibly distressing.”

Asked about Meron’s comments regarding “false pictures”, she said: “It’s clearly a very complicated situation on the ground.”

The war could end immediately if Hamas agreed to surrender and release all the remaining hostages, Ley added.

Liberal Senator Dave Sharma said there was “pretty over whelming” evidence of malnutrition and food shortages in Gaza but told the ABC: “I don’t believe Israel has stopped food from being delivered, or at least my understanding is that has not been the policy intent.”

According to the UN human rights office, more than 1000 Palestinians have been killed while trying to get food aid over the past two months, including more than 700 near one of the distribution centres run by the recently created Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s office was contacted for comment.

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Israeli soldiers and generals turning their backs on Netanyahu over Gaza

The Age (& SMH) / The Telegraph | Henry Bodkin & Adrian Blomfield | 29 July 2025

https://edition.theage.com.au/shortcode/THE965/edition/c1af1655-d232-23cd-94c4-864ca3c5b5d0?page=8b9ab0c9-81bf-5869-82fa-4e7279dbd0d5&

Ron Feiner looks philosophical as he points to where the bullet struck the side of his helmet, knocking him off his feet. Just a few millimetres difference and he would have been killed, like six of his comrades were when they walked into a house in southern Lebanon in October, believing – wrongly that it had already been checked for terrorists.

“It was a really horrible day,” the 26-year-old recalled. “They opened the door, and behind the door were two Hezbollah fighters who immediately started firing with their rifles. Four soldiers died immediately.”

Feiner, a captain in Israel’s 933rd Nahal Brigade, acquitted himself well, picking himself up and dragging wounded colleagues to safety as the battle raged for five hours. It was his destiny, having dreamt of becoming, like his father, an infantry officer for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) since he was a child.

It is a role that carries elite status in Israel and has been the foundation been building on Israel over the dire humanitarian conditions inside the strip, with aid agencies warning of mass malnutrition and widespread hunger. stone for many a stellar business or political career.

But he has now chosen a different path. He is refusing to report for another stint of reserve duty and a potential deployment to Gaza, in disgust at the ongoing war that has killed more than 59,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

He said: “When the bombing of Gaza started again, it became clear to me that our government wants to make this war as long as they can – they don’t want to end it. “I knew then I can’t go back to serving in this war.”

Sentenced to 25 days in jail by Israel for refusing to serve, Feiner is believed to be part of a growing wave of young Israeli reservists who feel they can no longer participate in their country’s war in Gaza. The majority are not showing up to call-ups, either “forgetting” to check their emails or pleading medical or family emergencies.

Feiner believes the images of starving children inside Gaza will mean fewer soldiers will turn up. Immense global pressure has France on Thursday said it would move to recognise Palestine as a state.

On Sunday, the IDF said it was introducing a “tactical pause” in fighting in some areas of Gaza. Feiner’s opinion on the futility of the conflict appears to be shared by a rising number of serving and retired senior officers who are turning against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war.

General Assaf Orion, the former head of strategic planning at the IDF, said while there were clear strategic goals in the Israel campaigns against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, there was no longer any clear military imperative for the continuation of military operations in Gaza.

He told London’s Telegraph: “In Gaza, I suspect that the strategic train of ends, ways and means was kidnapped by ulterior motives. I think the main reason for a prolonged war in Gaza is political expediency.”

Eran Etzion, a former deputy head of Israel’s national security council, was even more blunt. “By now it has long been clear to most Israelis that the main reason the Gaza campaign lingers on is because of Netanyahu’s political, personal and judicial interests, and he needs the war to go on in order to sustain and even enhance his grip on power,” Etzion said.

Many believe Netanyahu fears his government would col lapse if the war ended, as ultra nationalist parties in his coalition would abandon him. “That’s the main reason. It has nothing to do with Hamas and everything to do with Netanyahu,” Etzion said.

If even some of the spate of leaks from Israel’s security cabinet are to be believed, the scepticism is not confined to retired generals. Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, the IDF’s chief of staff, is said to have argued that there is little more to be gained by continuing the campaign – particularly without risking the lives of the approximately 20 remaining living hostages who were abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

Although degraded into a series of, in effect, independent guerrilla units, Hamas continues to fight amid the rubble, sending a stream of IDF body bags back to Israel. Netanyahu insists that Hamas must not just be broken as a military and governing force, but eradicated entirely, and also argues the best way to secure a hostage deal is to fight even harder.

Israel’s negotiating team re turned home from Doha empty handed at the weekend, amid widespread pessimism that a deal will be agreed any time soon. The Jewish state’s reputation on the international stage is in crisis, with traditional allies such as Britain, France, Canada and Australia queuing up to condemn the escalating reports of starvation.

Professional servants of democratically elected leaders, such as Zamir and those under him, are caught in the middle. This was perhaps best demonstrated this month by Zamir’s opposition to a scheme of Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz to order the entire civilian population of Gaza into a so called “humanitarian city” built on the ruins of the southern city of Rafah.

The military chief was reportedly anxious to protect his officers from potential complicity in a war crime, amid outrage that the zone – described by former prime minister Ehud Olmert as resembling a “concentration camp” – could be a precursor to forced population transfer.

It would also put his troops, who would ultimately police the perimeter and facilitate the entry of aid, under significant practical pressure. The military was further worried that Hamas would interpret the humanitarian city as a signal that Israel wanted to restart fighting after the proposed initial 60-day ceasefire, thus threatening a potential deal on the hostages.

The IDF leadership earned Netanyahu’s ire by reporting the project to build a city on Rafah’s outskirts could take a year and cost $US4 billion ($6 billion). While the Israeli prime minister demanded a “shorter, cheaper, more practical” plan, it is not clear whether the initiative will ever take place.

The scheme may have been too much for Israeli generals who are already deeply unhappy about the position their troops have been placed in under the new US-backed aid system. The United Nations accuses the IDF of killing more than 1000 civilians near the new aid distribution sites in Gaza.

According to multiple videos and eyewitness testimony, crowd flow in and near these sites is extremely poor, and Israeli soldiers, who provide an outer ring of security for the American contractors, open fire if Palestinians come too close. In one heated security cabinet exchange, Zamir reportedly forced an ultra-nationalist minister to watch a video of an incident showing how close aid seekers came to his soldiers.

The IDF has now captured 75 per cent of the Gaza Strip – the goal when it began Operation Gideon’s Chariot, which started in May Last week, it pushed into the town of Deir Al-Balah, the first time it is thought Israeli troops have deliberately sought to seize an area where intelligence indicated there is a high likelihood that hostages are being held. Netanyahu and his allies argue that leaving even remnants of Hamas intact in the strip would eventually precipitate another October 7-style massacre.

They have so far rejected Arab proposals for an interim government to administer the enclave in the event of a permanent ceasefire. Orion, the former head of strategic planning at the IDF, said: “The Gaza war is a long way past its culmination point. Every military operation, like many human endeavours, has the rule of diminishing returns. “At some point, great successes meet growing resistance and lose their efficiency. The costs rise and the benefits are lower. In Gaza, we are way past that point.”

Although the true figures are closely guarded, some campaign groups and politicians believe the rate of attendance among Israeli reservists could be as low as 60 per cent. The majority of refusals are so-called “grey refusals” – people who plead medical problems, family issues or who simply go abroad during the call-up window and “forget” to check their emails.

At the same time, the acrimonious issue of Haredi con scription rumbles on, with Netanyahu expected to give in on promises to force ultra-orthodox Jewish young men to turn up for military service.

Feiner’s prison sentence was considered a relatively harsh penalty for refusal, given the maximum is 30 days. But he served only one night, as the prison was largely evacuated when Iran started firing ballistic missiles at Israel in June.

Waiting to see if he will be re called to jail, he believes the pictures and videos of what’s happening in Gaza will further decrease the rate of call-up response. “There are always a lot of people who are not sure if they are willing to go, and every little thing can affect them,” he said. “Maybe if they are sitting with their family on a Saturday evening watching the news and see the pictures and the video of what’s happening, they will decide they can’t.”

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Vilifying art-lovers at the NGV a step too far

The Age | Letters (1) | 29 July 2025

https://edition.theage.com.au/shortcode/THE965/edition/c1af1655-d232-23cd-94c4-864ca3c5b5d0?page=16c3b102-2b69-eb3a-e1d3-67411a1f1fc3&

Exiting the NGV on Sunday, I was confronted by women protesting. My first instinct was to think they are women like me. As a teacher and Christian leader I’ve worked for peace, justice and reconciliation in education, churches and communities creating meaningful ways of offering hopeful transformation. I am a protester. But my instinct was wrong about these women as I don’t target individuals and vilify them as they did to hundreds of us.

A woman with the mega phone claimed “anyone entering the NGV was ensuring the NGV thinks it’s OK to hang out with fascists. You have blood on your hands and you support Zionism.” She then got personal to one woman saying “you in the hat, you are supporting genocide entering the NGV”. I was collecting my bike nearby and foolishly engaged suggesting we can protest but it’s wrong to target individuals as perpetrators of genocide. She then directed the megaphone at me chanting “you support genocide”.

She’s right; we are all complicit in systemic and collective sins of commission and omission. But broad scale public vilification is not protest. It polarises, shuts down empathy and divides us further.

Sally Apokis, South Melbourne

Albanese should offer more than a gesture

Anthony Albanese is correct in that the government should not recognise Palestine as a gesture only. He should do it as a commitment to the people of Palestine (“‘We won’t make a decision as a gesture’: Albanese says no imminent move to recognise Palestine”, 28/7). At the moment Albanese is gesturing, not acting. He is unprepared to take a bold stand, whether it be to recognise Palestine or sanction Israel for its blatant crimes. While acknowledging the heartbreak of seeing children starve, he makes no mention of genocide or ethnic cleansing. It’s time he be a true leader.

Lorel Thomas, Blackburn South

Australia must act

Sadly it appears the world’s leaders are deaf and blind to what has been happening in Gaza. And as Sean Kelly noted (“Mere words won’t pass our moral test”, 28/7) only two months after the horrific Hamas attacks on Israelis on October 7, 2023, already 93 per cent of people were in phases 3, 4 or 5 of food insecurity. In May UN experts noted that “while States debate terminology — is it or is it not genocide? — Israel continues its relentless destruction of life in Gaza, through attacks by land, air and sea, displacing and massacring the surviving population with impunity”. When will the Australian government take action? It’s time we say to the US and the UK that we will not proceed with AUKUS unless arms supplies to Israel stop. Where is the power of leaders if they take no action to stop this carnage in Gaza?

Peta Colebatch, Hawthorn

Blame not so simple

Regarding Sean Kelly, the Geneva Conventions allow the blocking of aid if the enemy is stealing or using it. Kelly cites a New York Times story denying Hamas is doing so, but a Washington Post report set out in detail, citing many witnesses including Gazans, how Hamas is in financial crisis because Israel has stopped it taxing aid, or stealing and selling it. Kelly writes about famine starting within months of the war beginning, but those warnings were retracted by the Famine Early Warning System, a US funded monitoring group

The UN is also culpable. After ending its nine-week blockade in May, after having allowed enough aid into Gaza to last for some months, Israel not only facilitated the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has distributed around 95 million meals, but also resumed UN access. However, there were recently 900 truckloads of aid inside Gaza checkpoints the UN hadn’t collected. As for the suggestion of recognising a Palestinian state, only Palestinian Authority intransigence has prevented such a state. Hamas would say recognition only happened because of the October 7 atrocities. Recognition would simply encourage further Palestinian rejectionism and terrorism.

Jamie Hyams, Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

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Statehood for Palestine

The Age | Letters (2) | 29 July 2025

https://edition.theage.com.au/shortcode/THE965/edition/c1af1655-d232-23cd-94c4-864ca3c5b5d0?page=5582b25a-d402-afd1-8768-fb34cd54613f&

Statehood for Palestine

The people of the world claiming statehood for Palestine are living in a world of delusion. There are so many questions that still need to be asked. Some of these are: What are the geographical boundaries that define this state called Palestine? Who are the citizens of Palestine and who makes the decisions as to who becomes a citizen? What are the institutions that govern this state called Palestine? Are Jews allowed to be citizens of this new state called Palestine? These are only a few of the questions that need to be considered. No leader nor a member of the lobby groups that are advocating for statehood have made proposals that define this state. It’s disingenuous on all people wishing for a state called Palestine because it’s a false hood. The people who are most vulnerable and exploited are once again being led up a path of others making.

Graham Haupt, Glen Waverley

Revert to 1947 borders

Yes, as several correspondents to this page have stated, there are other serious human massacres also occurring, right now, in Yemen, and in Sudan. The difference is that those wars are not openly supported by a vocal and prominent segment of Australians, or accepted by Australian governments. Injustice for the people of Gaza stings our collective con science. Here, and around the world. The only fair and long-term solution is to formally recognise those 1947 UN borders and al low the two states to exist as equals — with equal rights to exist, and also equal rights to have the military capability to defend themselves.

Geoffre McNaughton, Glen Huntly

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Middle East

The Age | And another thing | 29 July 2025

https://edition.theage.com.au/shortcode/THE965/edition/c1af1655-d232-23cd-94c4-864ca3c5b5d0?page=befe6f65-796b-391a-7843-590fd6796ded&

“A one-year-old boy is not a Hamas fighter,” the prime minister says (“Albanese says no imminent move to recognise Palestine”, 28/7). True, but the Israeli government and IDF are doing their best to ensure he follows in their footsteps.

Brian Marshall, Ashburton

Imagine the outcry if a class room of children were being killed every day in Australia. That is what is happening in Gaza and it’s not being carried out by Hamas.

Paul Chivers, Box Hill North

Many seem to forget that the 1948 resolution supported a two-state solution. Look how well that went. Recognising a Palestinian state, without protections to make it viable, will only repeat the mistakes of history. Albanese and Wong appear to understand this.

Frank Jones, Melbourne

I keep thinking of a survivor of Pol Pot’s regime saying they kept waiting for the world to come but no one came. We can not once again ignore another man-made humanitarian catastrophe.

Charlotte Brewer, Shepparton

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Aid to Gazans has been co-opted and weaponised

Sydney Morning Herald | Letters | 29 July 2025

https://edition.smh.com.au/shortcode/SYD408/edition/99a95d86-5280-0895-048d-80d7aa1c6453?page=a482852a-dd94-fca5-8594-1287ad244c69&

Sean Kelly says the “unsayable” —the Israeli government is starving Gazans (“The moral test for Labor has shifted on Gaza: Words are not enough”, July 28.). In March 2025, Israel prohibited the delivery of aid to Gazans by independent organisations such as the UN, replacing it with the Israeli-appointed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) which provides aid sporadically. Netanyahu insists that Hamas was looting independent deliveries. No evidence has ever been revealed of this. On the contrary, facts indicate that, until March, enough aid was getting through to prevent starvation. Since then, the GHF has failed to provide adequately for Gazans. Even the American head of GHF, Jake Wood, has resigned because the aid plan failed to uphold the principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality. He acknowledged that he witnessed innocent Gazans being fired upon while seeking aid. Netanyahu argues that Hamas must be defeated before aid can flow freely. He also vowed to “defeat” Hamas in 2014. How much longer must starving Gazans wait?

Nell Knight, Avoca Beach

It was with some distress that I saw reports of the opposition’s Dan Tehan pulling the “where are the facts?” card on Gaza. Is this the blood-stained hill the Liberal Party wish to take a stand on? Politics so often sweeps real human choices under the rug, saying “that’s politics”, or “someone needs to make the tough decisions”, divesting themselves of any real choice in the matter. The tough decision would have been to support the government to help find a solution whereby civilians do not get slaughtered, and preventing the creation of a new generation of vengeance fuelled agents of change. A moral party should be helping disclose the facts with the government. Stop treating politics like a two-team football league. Be a team player for the country and a better world instead.

James Cottam, Enmore

I think Premier Chris Minns needs to read the room better (“Pro-Palestine demonstration across Sydney Harbour Bridge to be blocked”, July 28). The Harbour Bridge carrying tens of thousands protesting the starvation in Gaza would send a powerful image about Australians’ attitudes about the current situation to the world. It would have far more impact than the words of politicians. What’s the point of having such iconic locations that are immediately identifiable without being able to leverage them?

Dale Bailey, St Leonards

The opposition’s insistence that criticism of Israel’s government be muted because it’s all Hamas’ fault sounds a lot like support for the infamous domestic violence excuse: “Look what you made me do.”

Tom Mangan, Woy Woy

Hamas is not forcing Israel to use the tactics being employed it is Israel’s policy. Israel has never in reality “targeted” Hamas. Witness the fact that the “war” is still going after 21 months, which may well be the intention.

John Christie, Oatley

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Pro-Palestine activists plan to defy bridge ban

The Australian | James Dowling | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=3ccd3648-fa0a-4efc-a28b-9b7098837785&share=true

Pro-Palestine activists barred from marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge by NSW Premier Chris Minns plan to defy any orders should negotiations with the state government and NSW police fall through.

Mr Minns said on Monday that he would block and divert any planned protest on Sydney Harbour Bridge, after the Palestine Action Group announced it had requested the state government divert traffic to allow the “March for Humanity” on Sunday, August 3, in protest against “the horrific suffering in Gaza”.

Mr Minns said the NSW government “cannot support a protest of this scale and nature taking place on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, especially with one week’s notice”.

“The bridge is one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure in our city – used every day by thousands of people,” he said.

“Unplanned disruption risks not only significant inconvenience, but real public safety concerns. We cannot allow Sydney to descend into chaos. NSW police are in discussions with organisers about other routes they can take and are working to ensure community safety is upheld.”

But Palestine Action Group spokesman Josh Lees told The Australian the march would seek to go ahead regardless, although he did not want to pre-empt the negotiations with police.

“Thankfully, it’s not all up to the Premier to decide if the people of NSW can protest,” he said.

Asked if protesters would march if negotiations failed, he said: “Yes, but it’s premature to discuss that. We still haven’t heard from the police.”

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chair Alex Ryvchin said the protest would be “sullying another Australian icon” and urged the state government to stand firm. “These very sorts of protests brought such shame and disgrace to our city at the foot of one of our other iconic landmarks not so long ago,” Mr Ryvchin said.

“These protesters disgraced our country at the Opera House and dealt a blow to Australian decency from which we’re still reeling. The Premier is right to stop them from sullying another Australian icon.

“The last thing we need is another spectacle like that.

“We’ve seen the tenor, the mood, the slogans of these protests become progressively more aggressive, more vitriolic, more hateful and more unlawful in many cases. So with this plan to take place here on our Harbour Bridge, there’s every chance that things will escalate further.

“This is one of our most iconic landmarks. It’s the beating heart of our city. We don’t need it sullied with this extremism that’s been ripping our society apart.

“Australians are sick of the cost, the disruptions and the extremism that come from these protests. This is the time to enforce our laws and ensure our city is open to everyone.”

Mr Lees said in an earlier statement that the Harbour Bridge was Australia’s “most iconic symbol” and allowing marchers to cross it would “send a powerful message to the world, to Gaza, and to Israel that we are determined to stand up for humanity”.

He invited Anthony Albanese to participate. Following Mr Minns’ intervention, Mr Lees questioned whether safety was falsely being cited as a reason to block the protest.

“The Premier warns of chaos, but there is nothing chaotic about people marching for peace, to stop mass starvation. We call on the NSW authorities to work with us to plan this event and stand on the right side of history,” he said.

“The horrific suffering in Gaza is urgent and unprecedented, demanding an unprecedented response from the international community. That is why we have called for an urgent March for Humanity, to save Gaza, across the Sydney Harbour Bridge this Sunday. If the Premier says we need more time to plan such an event, then would he agree to support the March for Humanity a week later? Or is this a disingenuous concern?”

He argued past closures such as one for a World Pride march in 2023 bolstered their case for a protest, pointing to an exemptions given to Universal Studios for filming of its Sydney-based feature film Fall Guy as precedent.

Mr Lees is leading a constitutional challenge against the state’s anti-protest laws passed in February, which gave police broader powers to block protests held near places of worship.

The protest comes after the Prime Minister gave his strongest rebuke of Israel to date, albeit while backing away from recognising Palestine statehood in the “immediate future”.

Mr Albanese on Sunday accused Israel of breaching international law by standing in the way of aid supplies being delivered to Palestinians.

NSW Greens MP Sue Higginson came out in support of the march, saying her party would “do everything we can to protect this protest from Labor Premier Chris Minns and any attempts by the NSW Police Force to stop it”.

Independent MP Mark Latham said he “might just walk across the bridge” if able and argued it was “a march for free speech” following the introduction of the anti-protest laws.

“Bob Carr saw it first: the dictatorial suppression of free speech, fairness and humanity by the Jewish lobby,” he said on social media.

“From the start I said people should not bring their Middle Eastern grievances to Australia.

“But after Chris Minns sucked up to the powerful Jewish lobby and legislated under false pretences – Dural caravan – to stop protests, this march is in large part a march for free speech.”

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Anti-semitism ‘spills over’ into empowering hate attacks on Hindus

The Australian | Helen Trinca | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=8fc00a02-aece-4f89-b7ce-927b3b5ef9b5&share=true

A failure to combat anti-Semitism has empowered racists to attack Australia’s Indian population, according to the national vice-president of the Hindu Council of Australia, Surinder Jain.

He said the recent graffiti painted on a Hindu temple and two nearby Asian shops in the outer Melbourne suburb of Boronia underlined the need for the federal government to establish an envoy for Hindus.

“The problem with Hindu hate is that there’s no mechanism for the government to take it up,” Mr Jain told The Australian.

“There is hate against Muslims and there’s hate against Jews, but the government has appointed envoys, so when there’s any problem, they can talk to the envoy, and envoys can suggest (strategies) to government, as the Jewish envoy has done. But there’s nothing for Hindus – and we face a large amount of hate.”

In the July 13 attacks in Boronia, anti-Indian graffiti and an image of Hitler were painted on the walls of the Swaminarayan temple, with similar graffiiti on the shops.

Mr Jain said there had been an increase in racism against minorities in Australia: “I think part of that is because there was an increase in racism against Jews, and the steps taken were ineffective. Those who are spreading the hate probably feel ‘we can get away with it … we can target these other people also, who belong to the same kind of group, whom we don’t want’.”

The HCA has been lobbying the federal government since before the federal election for an envoy to combat “Hinduphobia” along the lines of the envoys on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, but on Monday Mr Jain said there had been no formal response.

“In informal discussions they are basically saying ‘Where will it stop? We’ll have a Hindu envoy, then the Sikhs will want an envoy’,” Mr Jain said.

“(I think) it’s good to have envoys for Jews and Muslims but Hindus are also facing hate. There’s no reason to deny the same access to them that’s been given to the other two faiths. The government has shown that having envoys for specific faiths is the way they want to go, so that’s the way it should be done.”

He said the growing racism was directed at Indians but 80 per cent of Indians in Australia were Hindus, who were increasingly visible.

Forty years ago when he arrived in Australia, Mr Jain said, there were very few temples. “Hindus were not visible, except perhaps at workplaces in the IT department,” he said. “Now, with so many Hindus, so many temples, so many festivals being celebrated, we are more visible and the kind of hate we are seeing now is probably at its highest level in 40 years.”

The council’s national president, Sai Paravastu, said it had told the government it needed a point of contact to “get these things raised, discussed and resolved”.

An increase in vandalism and theft at temples was “instilling fear in youngsters” and people were becoming scared to go to temple: “It’s just not stopping.There have been rogue incidents of people bullying or abusing and commenting absurdly – that’s a common thing which is happening, and there’s no proper register, there’s no proper interface. Sometimes people are not bothered to report it because they think ‘Oh, nothing’s happening (to combat it)’ .”

Mr Paravastu said while Australians were happy to enjoy Indian temples and food and festivals, “when the same community reaches out to them, saying Oh, we’re in trouble – no response.”

Mr Paravastu wrote last Friday to Anthony Albanese urging the appointment of an envy, noting “escalating incidents of vandalism, targeted attacks and community intimidation directed at Hindu temples, families and the broader diaspora across Australia. The growing frequency and organised nature of these incidents have caused significant fear, emotional trauma, and a loss of confidence within the Hindu community.

“We are also concerned that mainstream Australian media has remained largely silent on these repeated hate incidents. Selective coverage not only denies the Hindu community fair representation but also emboldens those spreading hate.”

The letter argued that a Hindu envoy would provide formal liaison between the Hindu community and government agencies; a culturally informed advisory channel for law enforcement and policymakers; and active reinforcement of the principles of multicultural harmony and religious freedom.”

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Images of starving children ‘false’

Israeli envoy claims Hamas is deceiving the world

The Australian | Ben Packham & Geoff Chambers | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=f1905991-6b8b-4bf8-92ac-047b2cf5d82f&share=true

Israel’s No. 2 diplomat in Australia says there is no starvation in Gaza and that images of emaciated children in the Palestinian enclave are part of a “false campaign” by Hamas.

Rejecting mounting reports that famine is sweeping the territory, Israel’s deputy ambassador, Amir Meron, said Hamas was “deceiving the media, deceiving international organisations, the international community, and it is deceiving its own people”.

“The picture that you see, we think these are false pictures,” he said.

“There is no starvation in the Gaza Strip. This is a false campaign as we see it. A false campaign from the Hamas side to have those photos being published … to bring a false negative story to the world.”

Images from Gaza in recent days have sparked international condemnation, including from Anthony Albanese, who accused Israel of killing civilians by illegally withholding humanitarian aid.

Mr Meron denied Israel was failing to meet its international obligations, accusing international aid organisations of refusing to deliver aid and of stealing supplies.

“The aid is ready. It’s ready to be given to the population. They just need to come and get it,” he said.

His comments followed those of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who declared earlier: “There is no starvation in Gaza, no policy of starvation Gaza.”

The Prime Minister was unmoved by the claims, savaging the Jewish state in parliament for the “humanitarian catastrophe” unfolding in Gaza. “Israel’s denial of aid and the killing of civilians, including children seeking access to water and food, cannot be defended nor can it be ignored,” Mr Albanese said.

He said he shared the distress of those across the world at the image of a starving one-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, published globally in recent days. “He is not a threat to the state of Israel, nor is he someone who can be seen to be a fighter for Hamas,” he said.

“He’s a young child who deserves to be treated appropriately. And the position of the Australian government is very clear, that every innocent life matters. Every Israeli and every Palestinian.

“This conflict has stolen far too many innocent lives, tens of thousands of civilians are dead, children are starving.”

Amid the claims from Israel that photos from Gaza have been doctored, CNN has reported that the boy’s mother has said he had a pre-existing muscular disorder.

There has since been claims from pro-Israeli journalist David Collier that he has cerebral palsy and other diseases that affect his appearance.

Mr Albanese demanded Israel comply with its obligations under international law but reiterated he would not rush to recognise a Palestinian state, as France had declared it would do in September.

“It must be more than a gesture,” he said. “It must be something that’s a part of moving forward.

“We obviously are in discussions with other countries as well, going forward.”

His comments came as Victorian ALP members prepared motions demanding the immediate recognition of a Palestinian state and sanctions on Israel, to be moved at the party’s state conference this weekend.

Labor is considering recognition of Palestine, after Foreign Minister Penny Wong flagged last year that Australia could do so ahead of a formal peace process.

Former NSW premier and Labor foreign minister Bob Carr on Monday compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis.

“The use of famine as a weapon of state policies is precisely and absolutely what Israel has been doing,” Mr Carr said.

“It would be hard to distinguish between the pinched despairing faces of childhood victims in the Warsaw ghetto and those we are seeing out of Gaza.”

Labor Friends of Israel co-convener Nick Dyrenfurth said he was “gravely concerned with the Netanyahu government’s actions in Gaza” but condemned Mr Carr’s provocative comments.

“Mr Carr is wilfully lying and deliberately stoking community tensions with extremist language and deliberately provoking his former friends in Australia’s Jewish community with Nazi slurs,” he said.

“War is an awful thing, but there is no genocide taking place.”

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Vandals unleash on shipping giant for alleged ties to Israel

The Australian | Ryan Bourke | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=913721ac-e482-43d5-baa2-5818fafd3b88&share=true

An Anti-Israel Instagram account has posted a series of vlog-style videos revealing a wave of attacks over the past two weeks on properties owned by global shipping giant Toll.

It comes after Toll became the latest target of Melbourne’s Pro-Palestine movement for its alleged role in transporting ammunitions to Israel.

In the first of three videos posted to Instagram account @forautonomydestroyaustralia, a first-person perspective video shows vandals approaching the Toll headquarters on St Kilda Road in inner Melbourne while saying “Peace be upon Gaza, its battlefields, its heroes.”

Multiple figures are then shown sprinting towards the property before dousing its front windows in red paint and smashing a revolving glass door in an attack believed to have taken place in the early hours of July 15.

A second video uploaded by the same account and seemingly shot on the morning of July 20 shows vandals attacking the Toll Global Forwarding Centre in Broadmeadows, in the city’s north.

While the poorly lit video reveals little, its caption claims “The facility was attacked with graffiti and sprayed with red paint”.

“Its windows were hit and internet pits sabotaged.”

The account then posted a third video from July 22 in which masked vandals again vandalise a third Toll facility, which appears to be the company’s site in Campbellfield, with windows shown being smashed and the word “genocide” scribed across the building’s facade with spray paint.

A spokeswoman from Victoria Police said “Police are investigating a number of incidents of criminal damage at businesses across Melbourne between 18 and 22 July this year. Investigators believe at least three incidents in Melbourne, Westmeadows and Campbellfield are linked.”

The spokeswoman also said police had not ruled out whether the same offenders were behind previous attacks on weapons manufacturer Lovitt Technologies in Greensborough, which was also filmed and posted for the first time by the same Instagram account.

That account also posted the first known version of a clip that circulated earlier in the month of masked activists threatening further attacks on the Lovitt site and demonstrating how to manufacture a rudimentary firebombing device. The Instagram account claims all videos posted are submitted anonymously through an encrypted upload portal linked in the account’s biography, although all the videos share similar graphics and appear to use the same voice altering software.

“Police are also looking at whether the incidents are related to any other recent incidents of criminal damage, including an incident at a Greensborough business earlier in July,” the spokeswoman said.

“At this time, no one has been arrested and the investigation remains ongoing.”

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Truckloads of aid pouring into Gaza: Israel

The Australian / The Times | Richard Spencer | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=70036be7-09d9-42b6-9344-41a17f9d206d&share=true

After challenging the UN to carry out its pledge to deliver more food to the starving people of Gaza, Israel said on Monday that more than 120 truckloads of food aid were distributed by the UN and aid agencies in the Gaza Strip on the first day of a partial pause in fighting.

On Sunday, Israel declared a “tactical” pause in military operations in part of Gaza and promised to open secure routes for aid, urging humanitarian groups to step up food distribution.

“Over 120 trucks were collected and distributed yesterday by the UN and international organisations,” COGAT, an Israeli defence ministry agency overseeing civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said in a post on X on Monday.

After two months of restricting UN aid convoys in favour of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the Israel Defence Forces said they were implementing new “humanitarian pauses” in fighting to allow in more UN aid. They stopped daytime military operations in three locations: Gaza city, Deir al-Balah and Muwasi.

In addition they set up “secure routes to enable the safe passage of UN and humanitarian aid organisation convoys delivering and distributing food and medicine to the population across the Gaza Strip”.

They also allowed three Jordanian and Emirati supply planes to drop aid supplies into the strip, though the quantity delivered, 25 tonnes, is a fraction of what the UN can deliver on the ground.

The World Food Program said it distributed 4200 tonnes of food last week, even before Israel eased restrictions. Israel also staged its own air drops.

Israeli ministers have alternated between denying the existence of famine conditions in Gaza, despite the mounting numbers of images of emaciated children, and blaming Hamas.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an ambiguous interpretation of whether the aid reversal amounted to a concession to international pressure, including from Britain and other Western governments.

“Whichever path we choose, we will have to continue to allow the entry of minimal humanitarian supplies,” he said.

Speaking from the Ramon air base in the Negev desert, the Prime Minister added: “There are secured convoys. There have been all along, but today it is official. There will be no more excuses.”

In line with warnings from aid officials, the first convoys seen to enter Gaza under the new regimen, including from Egypt for the first time in months, were mobbed by desperate crowds.

Apart from the aid situation, the prospect of a ceasefire will be high on the agenda when US President Donald Trump meets British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday, local time, especially after the announcement by President Macron of France on Friday that he intended to recognise Palestinian statehood.

Sir Keir has so far resisted pressure to follow suit but ministers were keen to show they were paying attention to growing concern about Gaza by focusing on aid.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy reiterated promises to join the Israeli air drop scheme but also insisted that ground convoys were the only way to get enough food into Gaza to feed its people.

“Access to aid must be urgently accelerated over the coming hours and days,” he said.

“While airdrops will help to alleviate the worst of the suffering, land routes serve as the only viable and sustainable means of providing aid into Gaza. These measures must be fully implemented and further barriers removed. The world is watching.”

Although aid agencies say that only a ceasefire will allow Gaza to obtain all the aid it needs, they welcomed the easing of restrictions.

“We have enough food in, or on its way to, the region to feed the entire population of 2.1 million people for almost three months,” the World Food Program said. “These new commitments to improve operating conditions come on top of earlier assurances from Israel to strengthen facilitation of humanitarian assistance.”

UN emergency relief co-ordinator Tom Fletcher said aid restrictions appeared to have eased by Sunday evening.

He warned in a statement, however, that “sustained action” was needed to “stave off famine and a catastrophic health crisis”.

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Does the IDF’s concession on aid make a ceasefire any more likely?

The Australian / The Times | Richard Spencer | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=d10bb8fa-e23b-47c7-9188-e2161f36f42a&share=true

No one expected the war to last this long, for all the horror of October 7, 2023.

There were questions about what would come after the massacre, when Israel had finished pummelling Hamas and Gaza’s cities, as it had done in previous rounds of conflict since the militant group took over the territory in 2006.

That “day after” was also sure to look very different, given the loss of 1200 lives and abduction of more than 200 hostages. But most assumed it would involve some new arrangement of the perennial face-off between an ever more implacable Israel and the Iran-led “axis of resistance”.

In fact, the war has rumbled on, the “resistance” has been emasculated and most of Gaza has been reduced to rubble. Yet Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu says he will not stop until Hamas is eliminated, an outcome few believe is imminent.

When US President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, he promised peace under the aegis of what he refers to as his legendary deal-making. There was indeed a 60-day truce but it did not last.

Now there is the starvation crisis, Israel’s about-turn to allow aid into Gaza and Trump’s visit to Britain. On the eve of his arrival, even that spotlight was stolen by President Emmanuel Macron, who promised France would recognise Palestinian statehood.

Is this, then, the moment in which Athena’s lot shifts from war to peace?

Macron’s intervention and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s vaguer promises are not insignificant. And just think of the children, says everyone.

Political pressure on Britain and France is always greater than that placed on other countries because of their historical roles in the Middle East, their large minorities of Muslim citizens and their power to use vetoes on the UN security council.

Nor is Trump unsympathetic – his voice is the only decisive one outside the zone of combat. He slapped down Macron, as is customary, but even he has expressed concern at the horrific images coming out of Gaza.

There is a ceasefire process just waiting for men of goodwill to make it a reality. Both sides say they want to take the step but only if the other moves in the right direction. Much depends on what lies behind last week’s walkouts by the Israeli and US delegations on the ceasefire talks hosted in Doha.

Netanyahu and Trump said Hamas’s demands were so unrealistic the talks could not continue. Qatar and Egypt, the Arab mediators, said the differences between the sides were narrowing. Arguments over the definition of starvation may dominate the discourse but its images are what the world is seeing. The bigger issue of stopping the mass killing of Palestinian civilians is in danger of being lost.

On Monday, Trump and Starmer were meet face to face. Both want a ceasefire in Gaza. But can they steer the people who matter in the direction of peace?

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Premature state no help to Gaza

In contrast to Bob Carr’s hysterics, the PM is showing leadership

The Australian | Editorial | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=edd74481-152f-476e-9ada-3f5b9d64c789&share=true

Former NSW premier and Labor foreign minister Bob Carr’s false likening of Israel’s behaviour in Gaza to the war crimes of Stalin, Hitler and Mao received the contempt it deserved from Labor Friends of Israel co-convener Nick Dyrenfurth. Dr Dyrenfurth responded to Mr Carr’s outburst with historical truth: “During the systemic and cold-blooded extermination that was the Holocaust, the world’s Jewish population fell from 18 million to 12 million,” he said. “By contrast, since the founding of Israel in 1948, the Palestinian population in Gaza, the West Bank and Green Line Israel has grown from 1.2 million to some 5.5 million.” He could have added that Stalin and Mao were each responsible for countless millions of deaths because of political and religious persecutions, torture and prison labour. At least 30 million starved to death during the 1959-61 famine caused by Chinese Communist Party policies.

As the death toll in Gaza nears 60,000 according to Hamas health ministry figures, Mr Carr claimed a pattern of behaviour “that really demands comparison with the worst of the last 100 years, of Stalin’s Ukraine, of the Warsaw Ghetto, of Mao’s Great Leap Forward”. Unspeakable cruelty was being visited against babies and children as Israel used “mass starvation as a weapon of war and giving effect to a genocide”. Whatever mistakes the Jewish state has made in a fraught situation, Hamas has oppressed ordinary Gazans, hijacking and selling aid at inflated prices, punishing those who oppose terror, and misusing their suffering as a propaganda weapon. Israel has finally stepped back to allow aid into the Strip, as Hamas continues to hold the remaining Israeli hostages after 21 months.

Despite pressure from Mr Carr for Anthony Albanese to recognise a nonexistent Palestinian state, which is no solution to the current suffering, the Prime Minister has shown appropriate leadership in resisting such a gesture. As he told the ABC: “How do you exclude Hamas from any involvement there? How do you ensure that a Palestinian state operates in an appropriate way which does not threaten the existence of Israel?” A state would need a structure; no elections had been held in the Palestinian Authority for about 20 years.

After the offensive, anti-Semitic excesses of the October 9, 2023, pro-Palestinian protest at the Sydney Opera House forecourt, NSW Premier Chris Minns’s leadership in barring a pro-Palestinian march over the Sydney Harbour Bridge on August 3 makes eminent sense. The march, as Executive Council of Australian Jewry cochair Alex Ryvchin says, would sully another Australian icon.

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PM’s claim to high moral ground ignores reality of Hamas

The Australian | Letters | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=2a936f7d-9e5d-49b1-8225-b1cce229bef3&share=true

Anthony Albanese takes a breathtakingly unjustified high moral ground position when he singles out the plight of an unnamed child to morally condemn Israel for allegedly causing the mass starvation of the children of Gaza.

It is quite obvious that Albanese takes his views from the heavily biased news reporting from unverified pro-Hamas sources that bombard our ABC and SBS every day with photos of children and lines of food trucks standing idle on roads into Gaza.

All are allegedly the innocent victims of Israel aggression, without any honest due diligence investigative verification. Albanese cites “a breach of international law” without being able to identify what that breach actually is.

Albanese makes no mention of the hostages still held by Hamas and ignores the Israeli viewpoint that it is the heavily pro-Palestinian UN that is condemning Israel wrongly for its alleged starvation of children and it is the UN and Hamas that have prevented these food trucks from reaching the people.

Albanese tries and fails to have a dollar each way when he condemns Israel for its alleged inhumanity but in the same breath says Israel has a right to exist.

John Bell, Heidelberg Heights, Vic

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is correct in not recognising a Palestinian state while Hamas is still in charge.

However, Palestinians themselves will have to be convinced that a two-state solution is best for all concerned. For generations they have been conditioned to only want one state – their own – and for Israel to be eliminated. Albanese and Penny Wong are still ignoring this fact.

Julie Winzar, Palm Beach, Qld

While the cruel conflict continues to be played out in Gaza, it is becoming more apparent that it is because of Hamas that is holding its fellow citizens to ransom.

Every day we are confronted with the conflict in Gaza and with the heart-rending vision of children fighting for minimal nourishment, and babies dying a cruel death by starvation.

Public sentiment may no longer take into account that it is Hamas, which has failed to return the remaining hostages, that caused the original disaster by attacking and killing Israelis in 2023. Hamas has its own agenda and cares nothing for the wellbeing of its fellow citizens, whose lives hang by a thread living and dying in Gaza.

Death and devastation are what Hamas will have achieved for Gaza when the guns are finally silenced?

Stephanie Summers, North Turramurra, NSW

It seems Israel has lost the propaganda war in the Middle East and, by its lack of response to the persistent lies of Hamas, handed victory in the court of public opinion to the terrorists.

Everyone knows Palestinian leaders since Yasser Arafat have lied and failed to honour their promises, yet every day we read in the media the republication of evidence-free stories from “Palestinian authorities” of how the Israelis are starving innocent Palestinians to death and shooting these same innocents while they stand in line for food handouts. No one questions why the IDF would do this, or who stands to gain from the reported deaths in food queues.

A moment’s thought provides the answer: Hamas, of course!

And as long as Israel fails to counter these false stories, it will continue to lose the war.

Hamas will fight to the last innocent man, woman and child and will never give up the hostages – its principal protection against defeat.

Yet no one ever reminds us that taking, keeping and maltreating hostages is itself a war crime.

Whatever happened to journalistic integrity?

MacDermott, Binalong, NSW

Israel must be the only country in the history of war that is required to give aid to the very people it is at war with.

On top of that, it is also required to warn them beforehand of any action so that the enemy can evacuate.

Who else would do that in a war? Seems the rules are very much different for Israel.

Ivan Cope, Tanunda, SA

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Recognising Palestine state would be a mistake

The Australian | Greg Sheridan | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=8d0a813c-75ad-48f3-9491-ee0e88b95e74&share=true

The Albanese government is likely to extend formal diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state some time in this term of parliament, though not as soon as at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

In my view, the considerations driving the government are almost entirely about managing domestic politics and avoiding a fresh bit of trouble with the Trump administration in Washington.

My guess would be that if the British Labour government of Sir Keir Starmer extends formal diplomatic recognition to Palestine, the Albanese government will follow. Whether done with Britain, or alone, such a move would be a mistake.

The PM was nonetheless at something approaching his best in his discussion of this issue with David Speers on the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday. Albanese said, inter alia: “How do you exclude Hamas from an involvement there? How do you ensure that a Palestinian state operates in an appropriate way which does not threaten the existence of Israel? So we (won’t) make any decision as a gesture. We will do it as a way forward if the circumstances are met.”

That’s perfectly sensible. If the government sticks to these requirements it will logically go back to the position of seeing the full, formal, diplomatic recognition of Palestine as something that can only satisfy the PM’s own criteria if it comes at the end of a negotiated agreement with Israel.

The big conceptual change the Albanese government made from the position of previous Australian governments has been outlined numerous times by Foreign Minister Penny Wong. It is that early recognition of a Palestinian state, though no such state exists, could be part of the peace process, could accelerate the peace process.

This defies all logic and sense.

The only idea behind it is that there’s a perfect two-state solution all ready to go, and only the intransigence of Israel stops it coming about.

In fact, if you include the initial UN partition into an Arab and a Jewish state in 1947 – rejected by the Arab world, which immediately launched a war of attempted annihilation on Israel – Palestinians have been offered a full state on four occasions.

They’ve rejected it each time.

For, as Albanese himself says, it’s necessary that such a state not pose a threat to Israel. That means no anti-Israel terrorism from that state, a complete acceptance of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, complete respect for its negotiated borders and an end of all other claims against Israel.

One practical problem is that any Palestinian leader who agreed to a state on anything like those terms would certainly be assassinated by Islamist extremists.

Therefore, for the moment, no two-state solution is available, although it’s the only solution in the long run. But you probably need 20 years of normalisation before you get to peace treaty territory.

Albanese is entitled to put public pressure on the Israeli government over the appalling humanitarian circumstances now prevailing in Gaza. Albanese’s government has, counterproductively, walked away from Australia’s historic friendship with Israel and undoubtedly Canberra now has less influence in Jerusalem than at any time since the disastrous Whitlam government.

Nonetheless, Israel is committing a grave moral and political error in its policies in Gaza today.

The overwhelming moral responsibility for the truly appalling suffering and tragedy of the people of Gaza rests with Hamas.

Remember, Hamas is a proscribed, deeply anti-Semitic, terrorist organisation, of grotesque blood-lust, funded since its inception by Iran. It shares with Tehran the desire to wipe Israel off the map.

The Hamas terrorist atrocities of October 7, 2023, were among the most depraved and savage the world has seen. Every civilised human being stood with Israel at that point. But Hamas conducted that barbarous savagery as an act of considered policy. It foretold that Israel would make a massive response and it also foretold that Israel would suffer gravely in its international standing as a result.

Even now, Hamas could end the terrible suffering of the people it claims to represent simply by releasing the 19 or 20 Israeli hostages believed to be alive that it’s still holding.

However, while the savagery of Hamas required a strong Israeli reaction, that doesn’t absolve Israel morally or politically for the responsibility it now has for the two million people in Gaza, and their basic human needs for food, etc.

Israel has no good options in Gaza but it must choose a policy and implement it. The Netanyahu government, to the chagrin of the Israel Defence Forces, has never outlined what it plans for Gaza after the fighting is over.

If Israel withdraws right now, Hamas reasserts control, which is plainly unacceptable. On the other hand, the international community would go berserk if Israel reoccupied Gaza altogether, but at least then Israel would be responsible for Gaza’s administration, providing food, education, vaccinations, etc.

There’s talk of an international Arab peacekeeping force but surely it’s acutely unlikely any Arab government would ever shoot a Gaza terrorist to prevent them attacking Israel. Some Israelis talk of empowering local clans to fight Hamas, but that would be chaotic. Benjamin Netanyahu hates the option, but eventually it will probably be necessary for the Palestinian Authority, hopefully reformed, to resume administration of Gaza.

Israel cannot allow the present situation to continue.

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Blasted over Gaza Carr crash

Daily Telegraph (Herald-Sun) | James Morrow | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.dailytelegraph.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=d7528cb1-3351-41e4-924d-61b69a174724&share=true

Former premier Bob Carr has been slammed for comparing Israel’s actions in Gaza to the behaviour of 20th century tyrants Mao Tse-Tung and Josef Stalin, with critics saying he just wanted to “provoke outrage” and return to “relevance”.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said “anyone who has shared a conversation with Bob Carr knows the only thing that really matters to him is Bob Carr”.

“There is so much needless suffering and it is squarely the fault of the terrorist force that invaded a sovereign country, committed sickening atrocities, dragged 250 innocent people into dungeons and still refuses a ceasefire,” Mr Rychin told The Daily Telegraph.

“Carr just wants to provoke outrage from the Jewish community to propel him back to relevance. It is a shame he didn’t exhibit such vigour during his brief and forgettable tenure as foreign minister.

“But the Jewish community is unconcerned by Carr’s provocations. We have genuine concerns and he is not among them. And the desperate manner of his unsolicited interventions just shows he is manipulating the tragedy of war for his own interests.”

Mr Carr, a long-time advocate for a Palestinian state, said Israel’s actions in Gaza “really demands comparison with the worst of the last 100 years, of Stalin’s Ukraine, of the Warsaw Ghetto, of Mao’s Great Leap Forward.”

“Unspeakable cruelty is being visited against babies and children in the enforcement of something not seen in the modern world, that is an advanced state using mass starvation as a weapon of war and giving effect to a genocide,” he told the ABC’s Radio National.

Labor Friends of Israel co-convener Nick Dyrenfurth accused Mr Carr of “wilfully lying and deliberately stoking community tensions with extremist language”.

Dr Dyrenfurth said Mr Carr did not “speak for Labor” and declared that while “war is an awful thing … there is no genocide taking place”.

“There is room for robust debate on Israel’s actions – it is instructive that Carr’s first response to the October 7 pogrom was to note ‘Hamas has won a tactical success’ and he has had little to say about this fascist terror group since without resorting to equating a vibrant democracy that protects the rights of people of all faiths, minorities and LGBT citizens with past totalitarian regimes.”

Dr Dyrenfurth told Mr Carr to “promptly apologise to Australia’s Jewish community and to his fellow ALP members”.

Despite concerns about humanitarian aid and food shortages in Gaza, Israeli officials denied at a briefing in Canberra there was any starvation.

Deputy Israeli ambassador Amir Meron blamed images of starvation on Hamas propaganda. “This is a false campaign that is being (led) by Hamas, taking advantage of sick children in order to show a false claim … of hunger and starvation,” he said.

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Israel halts fighting to allow aid

Daily Telegraph (Herald-Sun) | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.dailytelegraph.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=6d7a8cda-bdc0-42e7-840f-9188978c8e6d&share=true

GAZA CITY: Jordanian and Emirati planes dropped food into Gaza on Sunday, as Israel began a limited “tactical pause” in some military operations to allow the UN and aid agencies to tackle a deepening hunger crisis.

UN emergency relief coordinator Tom Fletcher welcomed Israel’s tactical pauses, saying his teams “will do all we can to reach as many starving people as we can.”

The Israeli decision came as international pressure mounted on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prevent mass starvation in Gaza.

Accusing the UN of fabricating “pretexts and lies about Israel” blocking aid, Mr Netanyahu said “there are secure routes” for aid.

“There have always been, but today it’s official. There will be no more excuses,” he added.

The Palestinian territory is gripped by dire humanitarian conditions created by 21 months of war and made worse by Israel’s total blockade of aid from March to May.

Since the easing of the blockade, the levels of aid to Gaza have been far below what aid groups say is needed.

The World Health Organisation said that of the 74 recorded malnutrition-related deaths in 2025, 63 were in July.

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No negotiation until hostages freed

Daily Telegraph | Editorial | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.dailytelegraph.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=4a986bbc-1cc3-4ed1-90b2-3111d53fdeed&share=true

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is holding firm against his own government’s activist left wing and for now is not calling for official Australian recognition of Palestine.

This places Australia on the correct side of things, again for now, in comparison with the likes of pro-recognition France.

There are many reasons to reject Palestinian recognition at this point, the most obvious being that Hamas is still holding innocent Israeli hostages.

Any capitulation to Hamas, and that is what recognition would amount to, would endorse Hamas’s kidnapping – and the terror group’s murderous October 7 atrocities.

A supplementary issue involves the psychological pressure being exerted on the West by supporters of Palestinian statehood.

Put simply, much of the so-called “news” that has emerged from the Gaza Strip since Israel began attacks on Hamas following October 7 has been pure terrorist propaganda.

It is worth asking why, if Israel’s actions towards Hamas are held to be obviously evil, so many lies are continuously told.

As well, we should ask why Hamas is presented as a credible source of neutral information. They are killers, nothing more.

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Time to intervene to stop protests

Herald-Sun | James Campbell | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.heraldsun.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=9196593a-e145-4beb-ae38-e247618b13ca&share=true

It’s hard to know what is more frightening – that a state government minister won’t criticise a protest that caused the closure of Australia’s greatest art gallery or a state government minister won’t condemn protesters for targeting a gallery because it accepted money from Jews.

For more than a year, Victorians have wondered why despite clear evidence the Premier gets it, her government is taking so long to crack down on the
anti-Semitic protests that have blighted the city.

Listening to the performance of her Minister for Multicultural Affairs Ingrid Stitt on Monday as she went out of her way to avoid criticising protesters for shutting the NGV, as well as their decision to target the institution because of its connection to the Gandel family, that inactivity became easier to understand.

Because hearing it, it was hard not to wonder if Stitt’s heart is not with the protesters rather than the public or the Jewish community who feel the state has deserted them.

Stitt told reporters: “We want to make sure people can move around the city with confidence and safely.”

Ask yourself if that is what happened on Sunday.

Then ask yourself why can’t our government say what happened is acceptable.

It is unfortunate for Stitt – and by extension Allan – that the closure of one of the symbols of our city should have come at the same time as the NSW Premier Chris Minns has made it clear that he is not going to allow
pro-Palestinian protesters to shut down the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

And make no mistake the symbolism is important.

The “rally” on the steps of the Sydney Opera House in the days after the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 sent a powerful message around the world.

Not only that, the failure of the NSW police to intervene after the crowd started
anti-Jewish slogans (the nature of which is disputed) sent a message that anything goes, a message that Premier Minns has struggled for almost two years to underdo.

It has been said before and unfortunately still needs saying that it is long past
time for the state to intervene to stop these protests that have long since morphed into anti-Semitism.

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Vizard rages at ‘rampant racism’

Herald-Sun | Carly Douglas | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.heraldsun.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=57b3139c-c99c-47af-9c96-62f41883c029&share=true

Former head of the National Gallery of Victoria Steve Vizard has urged the Allan government to crack down on a “growing culture of lawlessness” after anti-Israel extremists targeted Jewish philanthropists and sent the state’s premier arts institution into lockdown.

Mr Vizard, the former president of the NGV and a Monash University professor, said it was “outrageous” that protesters had targeted the Gandels and sent the NGV into lockdown.

Melbourne’s CBD erupted into chaos again on Sunday as about 1000 protesters, some chanting “Death to the IDF” and “Socialism now”, rallied outside the NGV, blocking the path of families with little kids.

As Victoria’s Multicultural Minister Ingrid Stitt defended the Melbourne protest on Monday, NSW Premier Chris Minns rejected a pro-Palestine march across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge under the state’s protest permit system.

But Premier Jacinta Allan could not commit yesterday to blocking future rallies outside iconic Melbourne venues.

Victorian protesters had targeted the NGV following a gala dinner at which a hall was renamed in honour of well-known Jewish philanthropists John and Pauline Gandel.

Protesters labelled the couple “genocidal Zionists” and “long-time associates” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, warning they would “keep disrupting until NGV drops the Gandels”.

Mr Vizard said he was “all for free speech and protest and debate”, but never at the cost of the “freedoms of most law-abiding Melburnians”.

“These protesters do their own causes no good by attacking good citizens on the basis of race or religion,” he said.

“We put a government in charge to foster harmony, to protect us.

“They’re good at protecting the protesters. How about the rest of us?”

Ms Allan condemned the “anti-Semitic” targeting of the Jewish donors at the protest.

“Philanthropy is the lifeblood of the arts and the Gandels are among Victoria’s most prolific givers and supporters,” she said. “Targeting Jewish philanthropy is not activism, it’s anti-Semitism.”

It came as Mr Minns said on Monday he would not support the shutdown of the Sydney Harbour Bridge for a major pro-Palestine protest this weekend.

Unlike in Victoria, where protesters do not have to warn authorities, protest organisers in NSW must apply for a protest permit or risk their attendees being arrested under anti-protest laws.

Mr Minns said unplanned disruptions on one of the city’s most critical pieces of infrastructure risked “significant inconvenience” and “public safety”.

The Allan government has repeatedly refused to introduce a permit system, while the state’s opposition has pledged to introduce a similar system to NSW.

New Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush, who has rejected the idea of a permit system, said he had watched the “peaceful” rally from the “start to the finish”.

“It was peaceful as I walked through Swanston St, it was loud, there were a lot of people there, they were entitled to do that,” he said.

“Yes there was an inconvenience (at the NGV) to the public … in front of the gallery, I’m proud of how they (police) did that to prevent any disturbance, or harm or violence.”

But opposition police spokesman David Southwick said police must be given stronger move-on powers.

“When they target galleries … when they target synagogues, that is one step way too far,” he said.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin also slammed the protesters as he called for a police crackdown.

“(Sunday’s) disgusting protest targeted two Jewish Australians in their 90s, who have devoted their lives to Holocaust education and philanthropy,” he said.

Ms Stitt defended the protesters on Monday, saying it was their right.

“In Victoria, people do have the right to protest peacefully and the vast majority of people do protest peacefully,” she said.

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Chilling theme in anti-Israeli attack videos

Herald-Sun | Carly Douglas | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.heraldsun.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=ba369dab-32f0-4239-b3b4-bf2225daa0a6&share=true

Masked anti-Israel terrorists launched a series of attacks on one of Australia’s biggest logistics companies, smashing office windows with sledgehammers and bragging about their destruction online.

Chilling footage has emerged of three violent attacks on Toll Group facilities across Melbourne between July 18 and 22, with vandals boasting about their lawlessness and calling for “Death to Australia” and “Death to America”.

In one video, the terrorists – dressed in black – march up to Toll’s Collins St office before smashing the front windows and spraying red paint across the front of the building. They then enter the foyer where they continue to spray red paint on the walls and floor.

The terrorists accuse Toll of partnering with global munitions company NIOA Group and defence contractor Thales to supply ammunition to the Israeli military.

“Toll transports weapons and munitions from Australian manufacturers to America where they are used as a second supply line to support Israel’s genocidal occupation of Palestine,” the video reads.

The video shows the phrases “Death to Israel”, “Death to America”, “Death to Australia” flashing across the screen as the vandals finish off their attack and run from the scene.

In another video, a group of masked vandals clad in black can be seen walking up to Toll’s Campbellfield office with sledgehammers and smashing the glass doors in.

“Toll will pay for its colonialist violence,” the video reads. A third video appears to have been taken at Global Toll Forwarding in Westmeadows.

The dark footage shows vandals again spraying red paint across the building.

A police spokesperson said detectives believed the three incidents were linked.

No arrests have been made.

It comes just weeks after a disturbing video was released by a terrorist “cell” claiming responsibility for the firebombing of three cars at a Lovitt Technologies in Greensborough.

The anti-Israel terrorists, who threatened workers at the machine manufacturing company, claim Lovitt has ties to the Israeli Defence Force.

Victoria Police are investigating whether the attacks on Lovitt Technologies and Toll Group are linked. The Lovitt video, which has been compared to footage released by al-Qaeda, threatened to release personal information about Victorian Lovitt Technologies workers to “underground networks” and warns them the “cell” will “decide your fate”.

A Toll Group spokesperson said the company was assessing the damage and assisting police with their investigations. “Toll Group is aware of recent incidents at several of its Melbourne locations and is co-operating fully with authorities,” she said.

“In response to the vandalism we continue to monitor and maintain security levels at all Toll facilities and places of work, with our employees as our top priority.”

She said Toll provided logistics services “compliant with all applicable laws and regulations” and that the company was committed to operating “safely, responsibly, and in full compliance with legal and regulatory” rules.

Opposition police spokesperson David Southwick said the fact the thugs were flaunting the attacks online pointed to a “complete breakdown in law enforcement”.

“Victoria is spiralling into lawlessness when extremists can openly incite violence, promote criminal damage, and encourage anarchy without consequence,” he said.

“This isn’t a protest. It’s calculated thuggery.”

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Carr: Israel like Nazis, Stalin

Hobart Mercury | Jessica Wang | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.themercury.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=32dcbe49-2e3b-47e3-bab6-3a8aebee2a6a&share=true

Former Labor foreign minister Bob Carr has likened Israel’s actions in Gaza to war crimes committed by the Nazis, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.

The former NSW premier and Labor heavyweight said Israel was using “mass starvation against the civilian population as a weapon of war”.

“There’s a pattern of behaviour here that really demands comparison with the worst of the last 100 years, of Stalin’s Ukraine, of the Warsaw Ghetto, of Mao’s Great Leap Forward,” he said. “Unspeakable cruelty is being visited against babies and children in the enforcement of something not seen in the modern world, that is an advanced state using mass starvation as a weapon of war and giving effect to a genocide.”

Israel has started a “tactical pause” to allow aid agencies to tackle the hunger crisis in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government was not to blame for the situation, adding there were “secure routes” for aid.

Mr Carr urged the Prime Minister to follow French President Emmanuel Macron to recognise Palestinian statehood at the United Nations in September.

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Who’s the terrorist?

Hobart Mercury | Quick Views | 29 July 2025

https://todayspaper.themercury.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=464870f4-243d-4a99-ae78-ca64ce307b01&share=true

Who’s the terrorist?

A population is being starved to death in Gaza. Well may we ask who the terrorist organisation is.

Ross

Gaza atrocities

People are dying of starvation in Gaza. Is there any limit to Israel’s animosity towards Palestinian people?

Ike Naqvi, Sandy Bay

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Trump says many starving in Gaza, vows food centres

Canberra Times | 29 July 2025

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9027246/trump-says-many-starving-in-gaza-vows-food-centres/

US President Donald Trump says many people are starving in the Gaza Strip and has suggested Israel could do more on humanitarian access, as Palestinians struggled to feed their children a day after Israel declared steps to improve supplies.

As the death toll from two years of war in the enclave nears 60,000, a growing number of people are dying from starvation and malnutrition, Gazan health authorities say, with images of starving children shocking the world and fuelling international criticism of Israel over sharply worsening conditions.

Describing starvation in the Gaza Strip as real, Trump’s assessment put him at odds with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said on Sunday “there is no starvation in Gaza” and vowed to fight on against the Palestinian militant group Hamas – a statement he reposted on X on Monday.

Trump, speaking during a visit to Scotland, said Israel has a lot of responsibility for aid flows and that a lot of people could be saved.

“You have a lot of starving people,” he said.

“We’re going to set up food centres,” with no fences or boundaries to ease access, Trump said.

Trump said he would not comment on a push by French President Emmanuel Macron to back Palestinian statehood.

The United States would work with other countries to provide more humanitarian assistance to the people of the Gaza Strip, including food and sanitation, Trump said.

On Monday, the Gazan health ministry said at least 14 people had died in the past 24 hours of starvation and malnutrition, bringing the war’s death toll from hunger to 147, including 88 children, most in just the last few weeks.

Israel announced several measures over the weekend, including daily humanitarian pauses to fighting in three areas of the enclave, new safe corridors for aid convoys and airdrops.

The decision followed the collapse of ceasefire talks on Friday.

Two Israeli defence officials said the international pressure prompted the new Israeli measures, as did the worsening conditions on the ground.

United Nations agencies said a long-term and steady supply of aid was needed.

The World Food Programme said 60 trucks of aid had been dispatched – short of target.

Almost 470,000 people in the Gaza Strip are enduring famine-like conditions, with 90,000 women and children in need of specialist nutrition treatments, it said.

“Our target at the moment, every day is to get 100 trucks into Gaza,” WFP regional director for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe, Samer AbdelJaber, told Reuters.

Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Reuters the situation is catastrophic.

“At this time, children are dying every single day from starvation, from preventable disease. So time has run out.”

Netanyahu has denied any policy of starvation, saying aid supplies would be kept up whether Israel was negotiating a ceasefire or fighting.

In his statement on Sunday, Netanyahu said Israel would continue to fight until achieving the release of remaining hostages held by Hamas and the destruction of its military and governing capabilities.

Trump said Hamas had become difficult to deal with in recent days but he was talking with Netanyahu about “various plans” to free hostages still held in the enclave.

The war began on October 7, 2023 when Hamas militants attacked communities across the border in southern Israel, killing about 1200 people and taking another 251 hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

The Gazan health ministry said that 98 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the past 24 hours.

Some of the trucks that made it into the strip were seized by desperate Palestinians, and some by armed looters, witnesses said.

“Currently aid comes for the strong who can race ahead, who can push others and grab a box or a sack of flour. That chaos must be stopped and protection for those trucks must be allowed,” said Emad, 58, who used to own a factory in Gaza City.

Qatar said it had sent 49 trucks that arrived in Egypt en route for the strip.

Jordan and the United Arab Emirates airdropped supplies.

Israel cut off all supplies to the Gaza Strip from the start of March, reopening the territory with new restrictions in May.

Israel says it abides by international law but must prevent aid from being diverted by militants, and blames Hamas for the suffering of the Gaza Strip’s people.

“Israel is presented as though we are applying a campaign of starvation in Gaza. What a bald-faced lie. There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza,” Netanyahu said on Sunday.

Media Report 2025.07.26

Posted on 26 Jul 20252 Aug 2025 by admin

Donald Trump says Hamas doesn’t want Gaza ceasefire deal and will be ‘hunted down’

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-26/netanyahu-trump-appear-to-abandon-gaza-ceasefire-negotiations/105575888

Donald Trump spoke to reporters about Gaza ceasefire talks as he prepared to leave Washington for the UK. (Reuters: Kent Nishimura)

In short:

US President Donald Trump has said Hamas does not want to make a Gaza ceasefire deal and he believes the group’s leaders will be “hunted down”.

The US and Israel ended talks in Doha this week, with Benjamin Netanhayu saying Israel will consider “alternative options” to achieve its aims of bringing the hostages home and ending Hamas rule in the territory.

Meanwhile, a Hamas official accuses the US negotiating team of distorting reality and international aid organisations say mass hunger has arrived among Gaza’s 2.2 million people.

US President Donald Trump says Hamas “didn’t want” a ceasefire deal in Gaza and that he believes the militant group’s leaders will now be “hunted down”.

It comes a day after Steve Witkoff, the US envoy to the Middle East, cut short indirect talks with the Palestinian militant group in Doha.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also pulled negotiators, has said that Israel and its allies will pursue “alternative options” to bring the remaining October 7 hostages home and end Hamas rule in the territory.

“It was too bad. Hamas didn’t really want to make a deal. I think they want to die,” Mr Trump told reporters, as he prepared to fly to the UK.

“And it’s very bad. And it got to a point where you’re going to have to finish the job.”

Referring to Hamas’s leaders, the president added: “I think they will be hunted down.”

The remarks appeared to leave little to no room to resume ceasefire negotiations, at a time when international concern is mounting over the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Israel recalled negotiators from Qatar just hours after Hamas submitted its response to a truce proposal on Thursday.

Sources initially said that the Israeli withdrawal was only for consultations and did not necessarily mean the talks had reached a crisis.

But Mr Netanyahu’s latest remarks suggested Israel’s position had hardened overnight on Friday.

Responding to a statement from Mr Witkoff blaming Hamas for the impasse and accusing them of acting in bad faith, Mr Netanyahu posted on X he had “got it right”.

“Hamas is the obstacle to a hostage release deal. Together with our US allies, we are now considering alternative options to bring our hostages home, end Hamas’s terror rule, and secure lasting peace for Israel and our region.”

A Hamas official on Friday accused Mr Witkoff of reneging on Washington’s positions and distorting reality.

“The negative statements of the US envoy Witkoff run completely counter to the context in which the last negotiations were held, and he is perfectly aware of this, but they come to serve the Israeli position,” said Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim, in an interview with AFP.

The proposed ceasefire would suspend fighting for 60 days, allow more aid into Gaza, and free some of the 50 remaining hostages held by militants in return for Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel.

It has been held up by disagreement over how far Israel should withdraw its troops and the future beyond the 60 days if no permanent agreement is reached.

France’s declaration ‘doesn’t carry weight’, says Trump

Mr Trump also reacted to French President Emmanuel Macron announcing that France would be the first major Western power to recognise an independent Palestinian state.

″Given its historic commitment to a just and sustainable peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognise the state of Palestine,” Mr Macron had posted on X.

“Peace is possible.”

Responding to the statement, the US president said: “He’s [Macron] a very good guy, I like him, but that statement doesn’t carry weight.”

He added: “What he says doesn’t matter. It’s not going to change anything.”

Mr Netanyahu, meanwhile, called the decision by the French president a “reward for terrorism”.

Western countries have been committed for decades to an eventual independent Palestinian state but have long said it should arise out of a negotiated peace process.

Europe’s two other big powers, Britain and Germany, made clear there were no plans to act on Palestinian statehood right away.

Israel says Gaza aid drops to resume

The news comes amid growing concern over starvation and the lack of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, as the enclave reels from 21 months of war.

Gaza medical authorities said nine more Palestinians had died over the past 24 hours from malnutrition or starvation. Dozens have died in the past few weeks as hunger worsens.

An Israeli official said on Friday that aid drops would resume soon.

“Humanitarian aid air drops on the Gaza Strip will resume in the upcoming days. They will be managed by the UAE and Jordan,” the official told AFP.

International aid organisations say mass hunger has now arrived among Gaza’s 2.2 million people, with stocks running out after Israel cut off all supplies to the territory in March, then reopened it in May but with new restrictions.

PM labels Gaza a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’

The prime minister says the conflict in Gaza has stolen “far too many innocent lives”, repeating his desire to see a two-state solution after France moved to recognise a Palestinian state.

On Friday, the leaders of Britain, France and Germany said the “humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip “must end now”.

“We call on the Israeli government to immediately lift restrictions on the flow of aid and urgently allow the UN and humanitarian NGOs to carry out their work in order to take action against starvation,” they said in a joint statement released by Berlin.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that “the most basic needs of the civilian population, including access to water and food, must be met without any further delay”.

“Withholding essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable,” they said.

Israel said it had let enough food into Gaza and accused the United Nations of failing to distribute it, in what the Israeli foreign ministry called on Friday “a deliberate ploy to defame Israel”.

The UN says it is operating as effectively as possible under Israeli restrictions.

UN agencies said on Friday that supplies were running out in Gaza of specialised therapeutic food to save the lives of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

The ceasefire talks have been accompanied by continuing Israeli offensives on the ground.

Palestinian health officials said Israeli air strikes and gunfire had killed at least 21 people across the enclave on Friday, including five killed in a strike on a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City.

Israel launched its assault on Gaza after Hamas-led fighters stormed Israeli towns near the border, killing some 1,200 people and capturing 251 hostages on October 7, 2023.

Since then, Israeli forces have killed nearly 60,000 people in Gaza, health officials there say, and reduced much of the enclave to ruins.

Reuters/AFP

PM labels Gaza a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ and reaffirms aspiration for Palestinian statehood.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-25/pm-gaza-humanitarian-catastrophe-france-recognise-palestine/105572972

By political reporter Tom Lowrey

In short:

The prime minister has warned Israel to comply with international law, in some of his strongest language on the Gaza conflict to date.

Anthony Albanese reaffirmed his desire to see a two-state solution, following France’s move to recognise Palestine.

The prime minister has labelled the conflict in Gaza a “humanitarian catastrophe”, while reaffirming an existing commitment to a two-state solution.

France has announced it will formally recognise Palestine later this year, becoming the largest and most influential European nation to do so.

In some of his strongest language on the conflict yet, Anthony Albanese said the conflict has gone “beyond the world’s worst fears”.

“Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe. Israel’s denial of aid and the killing of civilians, including children, seeking access to water and food, cannot be defended or ignored,” he said.

“We call on Israel to comply immediately with its obligations under international law.”

A line of Palestinian men and women walking in single-file along a dirt track next to a large mound of concrete debris

The UN says thousands of aid trucks are unable to enter Gaza. (AP: Jehad Alshrafi)

It follows Australia joining 27 other countries in a joint statement earlier this week demanding an immediate end to the war.

Israel labelled those joint calls “disconnected from reality”, arguing the attention of those countries should be focused on the actions of Hamas.

Australia does not recognise a Palestinian state, instead referring officially to the West Bank and Gaza as the “Occupied Palestinian Territories”, though it does have diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority.

Albanese pushed to follow France

The new comments from Mr Albanese do not refer directly to France’s moves to recognise Palestine, but point to Australia’s long-standing ambitions around recognition.

“Recognising the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for a state of their own has long been a bipartisan position in Australia,” he said.

“The reason a two-state solution remains the goal of the international community is because a just and lasting peace depends upon it.

“Australia is committed to a future where both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples can live in peace and safety, within secure and internationally recognised borders.”

Former Labor minister and MP Ed Husic said the Australian government should follow France’s lead and formally recognise Palestine.

Speaking on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, Mr Husic said Australia had “the perfect opportunity” to do so.

“We should move to recognise Palestine now, standing alongside France, because there will be a number of countries that will do so,” he said.

“The time is now for us to stand and step forward and say we will recognise the State of Palestine now.”

Israel’s ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon, said pressure “must be placed where it belongs, on Hamas”.

“To condemn Israel for defending itself is wrong,” he said on X.

“It deflects attention from the real perpetrators of this horror: Hamas.”

Last year, Foreign Minister Penny Wong indicated Australia was considering recognising a Palestinian state as part of a peace process, rather than at the endpoint.

More than 140 countries recognise Palestine

More than 140 countries globally recognise Palestine, however, the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia are not among them.

France will become the first G7 country — a powerful bloc of some of the world’s most advanced economies — to do so.

Speaking on Friday in Sydney, Penny Wong made clear Australia remains committed to a two-state solution, and would not be following France’s lead.

However she said Australia would continue calls — alongside allies — for a ceasefire and a more substantial flow of aid into Gaza.

“We all are distressed by the ongoing violence, the deaths of so many innocent civilians, the innocent children surviving, the humanitarian catastrophe that’s worsening before our eyes and we all want it to stop,” she said.

Senator Wong met on Friday with her UK counterpart, Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who is in Australia for annual “AUKMIN” talks.

The UK also does not recognise a Palestinian state, but Mr Lammy said both countries remain firmly committed to the pursuit of a two-state solution.

“The belief in a two-state solution is steadfast in both of our countries, that is the only solution to the long standing issues that we see in the region,” he said.

The Coalition has criticised the prime minister’s statement, with Shadow Foreign Minister Michaelia Cash arguing it disregards Hamas’s responsibility for the conflict.

“It is disappointing that Prime Minister Albanese’s statement about Gaza once again fails to place any blame on Hamas, a listed terrorist organisation, for the delays in aid reaching the people of Gaza,” she said.

“Any moral outrage about the situation in Gaza should be directed at Hamas. Hamas and its allies have tried to disrupt the flow of aid into Gaza and have stolen humanitarian aid for their own purposes.”

Hamas has denied these allegations.

But Senator Cash said Israel must also work to get more aid into Gaza.

“The Coalition acknowledges that the delay in aid entering Gaza is unacceptable and that the Israeli government needs to urgently work with international bodies to allow aid to flow freely to those that need it,” she said.

“However, the right system must be in place so that it can be distributed without Hamas intervening in the process.”

Which countries recognise the state of Palestine. What would statehood look like?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-25/palestinan-statehood-explainer-state-of-palestine-future/105572128

By Zena Chamas

As of 2025, there are about 147 countries that officially recognise the state of Palestine.

France is set to recognise a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September, bringing the total to 148 countries.

France to recognise Palestinian state in September

Photo shows A headshot of Emmanuel Macron with a neutral expression in front of a French and European Union flag. A headshot of Emmanuel Macron with a neutral expression in front of a French and European Union flag.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement, posted on X, includes a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas about the decision.

Currently, there is no Palestinian state.

Instead, there are the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which include Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Only the Jewish state — Israel — exists.

Some Palestinians live in Israel as citizens. Others live as refugees in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt.

Which countries recognise Palestinian statehood?

As of March 2025, the state of Palestine has been recognised as a sovereign nation by 147 of 193 member states of the United Nations, about 75 per cent.

In 2024, a group of UN experts called on all United Nations member states to recognise the State of Palestine, in order to bring about an immediate ceasefire in Gaza amid the Israel-Gaza war.

Since then, nine countries — Armenia, Slovenia, Ireland, Norway, Spain, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Barbados — formally recognised the State of Palestine.

Most of the Middle East, Africa and Asia recognise Palestinian statehood.

On Thursday, France’s President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would recognise a Palestinian state in hopes it would bring peace to the region.

In response to Mr Macron’s move, Mr Netanyahu said that such a move “rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy”

“A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel — not to live in peace beside it,” Mr Netanyahu said in a post on X.

In other parts of Europe, Slovenia, Malta and Belgium are yet to recognise Palestinian statehood.

Australia, the United States, Canada, Japan and South Korea also do not.

What’s Australia’s position?

Australia does not recognise a Palestinian state.

On its website, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade states Australia is: “Committed to a two-state solution in which Israel and a future Palestinian state coexist, in peace and security, within internationally recognised borders.”

Australia condemns Israel as civilian death toll climbs

Public outrage as the Palestinian death toll has climbed has been followed only slowly by official statements from governments reluctant to criticise Israel — until now.

The Australian Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) has argued that Australia symbolically recognising Palestinian statehood would mean “establishing a formal diplomatic relationship with Palestine”.

Australia currently has an ambassador to Israel, but only a representative to Palestine.

In recent comments, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did not refer directly to recognising Palestine, but pointed to Australia’s long-standing ambitions around recognition.

“Recognising the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for a state of their own has long been a bipartisan position in Australia,” Mr Albanese said.

“The reason a two-state solution remains the goal of the international community is because a just and lasting peace depends upon it.

“Australia is committed to a future where both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples can live in peace and safety, within secure and internationally recognised borders.”

Last year, Foreign Minister Penny Wong indicated Australia was considering recognising a Palestinian state as part of a peace process, rather than at the endpoint.

This week, Australia joined 27 other countries demanding an immediate end to the war.

In November 2024, Australia voted in favour of a draft United Nations resolution recognising “permanent sovereignty” of Palestinians and the Golan Heights to natural resources in the Occupied Territories for the first time in more than two decades.

A total of 159 countries voted in favour of the draft resolution in a UN committee, including Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, France, Germany and Japan.

What would Palestinian statehood look like?

The State of Palestine was formally declared by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) on November 15, 1988.

It claims sovereignty over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

According to senior lecturer in law at the University of South Australia, Juliette McIntyre, a state has certain defining features under international law.

These features include a permanent population, a determinate territory, an “effective” government and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.

“In some ways, the most important thing is recognition by other states — this enables entering into diplomatic relations, and membership of international organisations,” Dr McIntyre said.

She added that the governance of a Palestinian state could look like “free and fair elections for all Palestinians exercising their right of self-determination”.

“It is up to the Palestinian people to elect their representatives and decide on their form of governance,” she said.

Recognising a Palestinian state could mean the beginning of a “two-state solution” where both a Jewish state and an Arab state would exist at the same time.

“A two-state solution requires two states. Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory has been found to be unlawful.

“Recognition of Palestine is not hostile to Israel, Israel is an established state and recognition of Palestine does nothing to impact on this,” Dr McIntyre said.

Is there a way out of this conflict? Ben Knight looks at the possible solutions to the crisis.

The two-state solution is still widely regarded by world leaders as the only way to end the conflict, but is not as popular in Israel and parts of the occupied Palestinian territories.

“The territorial integrity of both states should be respected, and new borders could only come about by treaty agreement between both states,” Dr McIntyre said.

What are the one-state and two-state solutions?

Photo shows Benjamin Netanyahu stands in front of two Israeli flags. Benjamin Netanyahu stands in front of two Israeli flags.

For decades world leaders have agreed the only way to bring about peace between Israelis and Palestinians is through a two-state solution. So why hasn’t it happened?

On Wednesday, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, voted 71-13 in favour of annexation of the West Bank, raising questions about the future of a Palestinian state.

The non-binding vote was backed by members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, as well as some opposition members of parliament.

In a recent post on X, Mr Netanyahu said: “Let’s be clear: the Palestinians do not seek a state alongside Israel; they seek a state instead of Israel.”

Both Mr Netanyahu and other members of Israel’s parliament have shown their lack of support for a two-state solution.

This year, the UN, which largely supports a two-state solution, will hold an international conference on the question of Palestine and the implementation of the two-state solution in New York from July 28 to 29.

The United States has opted out of attendance.

Israel’s actions in Gaza put it at risk of becoming a global pariah

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-26/israel-starvation-aid-global-pressure-gaza/105555092

By Laura Tingle

Israel’s parliament — the Knesset — this week voted 71-13 in favour of annexing the occupied West Bank.

It was a symbolic, non-binding vote but one that gives a window into the mindset within Israel that is feeding the humanitarian disaster the world is witnessing in Gaza.

That is a disaster with no end in sight following yet another breakdown in ceasefire talks in Qatar on Thursday night, and despite the escalation in international pressure this week, first in a statement from 28 countries attacking Israel’s approach to allowing aid into the strip and, early on Friday Australian time, French President Emanuel Macron’s announcement that France would recognise a Palestinian state.

The significance of the French president’s intervention lies in the fact that he is the first of the G7 nations to commit to recognise Palestine — a step that many, including Australia, have argued until now needed to await a ceasefire and a clarification that Hamas would not have a role in its governance.

International community condemns aid denial

Macron’s move was followed by a further ramping up of pressure, with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer convening an “emergency call” with France and Germany to “discuss what we can do urgently to stop the killing and get people the food they desperately need”.

Starmer said “the suffering and starvation unfolding in Gaza is unspeakable and indefensible”.

PM labels Gaza a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’

The prime minister says the conflict in Gaza has stolen “far too many innocent lives”, repeating his desire to see a two-state solution after France moved to recognise a Palestinian state.

He hinted that the UK, too, may consider recognising the state of Palestine, calling statehood “the inalienable right of the Palestinian people”.

Anthony Albanese joined the chorus with his own statement on Friday, saying that “tens of thousands of civilians are dead, [and] children are starving” (though not going as far as to advocate recognising the state of Palestine).

“Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe,” he said.

“Israel’s denial of aid and the killing of civilians, including children, seeking access to water and food cannot be defended or ignored.

“We call on Israel to comply immediately with its obligations under international law.”

But Macron’s statement revealed just how immune to international pressure the Netanyahu government seems to be.

The vote on annexing the West Bank — an idea originally proposed by far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who himself lives in an illegal Israeli settlement — may only have been symbolic, but clearly placed the issue formally on the agenda for the future.

But this escalated rapidly in the wake of the Macron statement, with Deputy Prime Minister Yariv Levin immediately saying Israel’s response must be to annex the West Bank.

“It is time to apply Israeli sovereignty to Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley [the biblical terms Israel uses for the West Bank],” Levin said.

“This is the response of historical justice to the shameful decision of the French president.”

The Times of Israel reports that the Yesha Council, representing West Bank settlement municipal authorities, made the same call after Macron’s announcement.

“The Knesset has supported [annexation], now it’s the turn of the government,” the Yesha Council said.

At odds with a ceasefire

The active pursuit of the idea of annexing the West Bank does not suggest a mindset that is seriously considering a ceasefire in Gaza, let alone a two-state solution.

A two-state solution without the West Bank hardly seems a viable proposition.

Equally, the now-deliberate physical destruction of much of Gaza by Israel can only be seen to be directed at destroying its viability as a place for anyone to live.

‘Major starvation’ takes hold in Gaza

In a ward of Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, multiple children and some adults can be found emaciated from the lack of food. Doctors say the rate of death from starvation is rapidly rising.

BBC Verify this week produced shocking pictures of the systematic destructions of large sections of Gaza by Israel — not just buildings damaged by earlier rocket strikes but whole neighbourhoods and villages.

The parliamentary pressure from the far right on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his precarious minority government has been intense, and one of the few positive lights is that the parliament is next week going into recess until October, reducing the threat that it can be toppled.

That’s not an endorsement of the government, just an observation that a sense of imminent threat from the far right when the parliament is in session must only intensify the pressure on Netanyahu to up his aggression towards the Palestinians even further.

But none of that pressure can alone explain what the rest of the world sees day by day in terms of the extent of the aggression of the Israeli government’s strategy, or how it is prosecuted by the Israel Defense Forces against civilians in Gaza, in what Albanese on Friday described as “a humanitarian catastrophe in the denial of aid and the killing of civilians, including children, seeking access to water and food” which he said “cannot be defended or ignored”.

Journalist breaks down after woman collapses from starvation in Gaza

Man-made mass starvation

The Economist observed this week that the war against Hamas had become “militarily pointless” and was “turning Israel into a pariah”.

“The IDF control about 70 per cent of the strip. Hamas is defeated,” The Economist’s editorial said.

“Its leaders are dead, its military capacity is a tiny fraction of what it was on October 7, 2023 and its fighters are contained in pockets making up 10-20 per cent of the territory.

“Hamas’s backer, Iran, is humbled. Operations by the IDF are achieving little.”

Yet Israel continues to imply that Hamas is the lethal force that it was even 12 months ago, and that it is Hamas, rather than Israel, that is stopping aid getting into Gaza: a proposition firmly disputed and rejected by both aid agencies and the United Nations.

Palestinians gathering to receive food this week. (Reuters: Dawoud Abu Alkas)

“A large proportion of the population of Gaza is starving,” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this week.

“I don’t know what you would call it other than mass starvation. And it’s man-made”, he said, asserting the man-made cause of the mass starvation was the aid blockade imposed by Israel.

Man-made mass starvation is considered a crime against humanity, as is the forced displacement of people.

The reality of the situation on the ground in Gaza, and the spectre of children dying of malnutrition or starvation, sits at such extraordinary odds with the language of spokespeople for both the Netanyahu government and the IDF.

In the face of growing international outrage about growing signs of widespread starvation in Gaza, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said that, “in Gaza today there is no famine caused by Israel”.

“There is, however, a man-made shortage engineered by Hamas. Now, too often the full story is not being told. The suffering exists because Hamas has created it. The suffering exists because Hamas has made it.”

A young girl with a food bowl on her head waiting in line.

The human toll of the situation in Gaza is growing. (Reuters: Dawoud Abu Alkas)

Campaign for sanctions ramps up

One of the world’s most lethal military and security forces — forces that can run operations that wipe out large sections of the leadership of Hezbollah in precision operations in Iran and Lebanon — regularly tell us that their operations in Gaza are planned with equal precision, yet somehow manage to kill and maim thousands of civilians as well as aid workers, doctors and journalists.

The United States and, for that matter, some Arab states that might be able to exert some influence on Israel remain deafeningly silent.

Gaza’s aid looting gangs

Violent gangs have been raiding convoys of aid as they are trucked through Gaza, and behind one of the largest groups is a criminal who has reportedly been armed and protected by Israel.

The international community beyond the United States has clearly been trying to coordinate a gradual ramp up in pressure on Israel — and for that matter the Trump administration — on the basis that it needs to have further sanctions in reserve against administrations in Tel Aviv and Washington with little care for what others think.

But the human crisis in Gaza has made such a cautious approach look much too weak.

Analysts watching how Donald Trump has behaved in the various international crises in which he has intervened, or promised to intervene, believe he is happiest when he can make a short, sharp, effective intervention (like the stealth bombing operation in Iran) and can then claim some success.

But they also believe that the US president likes to be seen to be running things.

The question, therefore, is whether the push by other countries to ramp up the pressure on Israel will provoke him to act, lest he be perceived to not be directing events.

Whatever now happens, Israel’s actions not only risk it appearing to be a pariah, but potentially a rogue state.

And if that is correct, it implies a very different treatment by the rest of the world than the one it has received until now.

Laura Tingle is the ABC’s Global Affairs Editor.

‘Catastrophe must end now’: European leaders unite on Gaza, divide on statehood

https://www.theage.com.au/world/europe/catastrophe-must-end-now-european-leaders-unite-on-gaza-divide-on-statehood-20250726-p5mhye.html

David Crowe

Frankfurt: European leaders have split over whether to recognise a Palestinian state after French President Emmanuel Macron made an urgent case to do so, highlighting divisions over the war in Gaza despite shared concern over civilian deaths.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer chose not to back the French call after they spoke with Macron, amid competing pressures on each leader over relations with Israel.

Palestinians gather to receive food from a charity distribution point in the city of Gaza.

Palestinians gather to receive food from a charity distribution point in the city of Gaza.Credit: Bloomberg

But they sought to intensify pressure on Israel to end the attacks on Gaza and send urgent humanitarian aid to stop the starvation of Palestinian civilians.

“The humanitarian catastrophe that we are witnessing in Gaza must end now,” the three leaders said in a joint statement.

“The most basic needs of the civilian population, including access to water and food, must be met without any further delay.

“Withholding essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable.”

In a significant warning to Israel about its obligations under international law, the three leaders said the United Nations and non-government organisations should be allowed to distribute aid.

“Israel must uphold its obligations under international humanitarian law.”

They also rejected the actions of Israelis who claim land in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

“Threats of annexation, settlements and acts of settler violence against Palestinians undermine the prospects for a negotiated two-state solution,” they said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has condemned Israel’s denial of aid into the Gaza Strip as indefensible.

Macron, Starmer and Merz have worked closely on the war in Ukraine, calling themselves the E3 as representatives of major nations in Europe, but their differences on Palestine highlight the vexed debate over Macron’s declaration.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has also held out against recognising Palestine, with her government saying the move could only come if the Palestinian state simultaneously recognised Israel.

Starmer is under growing political pressure from some of his colleagues to show more support for Palestinians, with 110 Labour MPs signing a letter calling for swift recognition.

Another 111 MPs from other parties have also signed the letter, organised by Labour MP Sarah Champion, so the call has the support of more than one third of the members of the House of Commons.

French President Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz and British Prime

The letter, issued on Friday in London, cited Britain’s pivotal mandate in 1917 to call for a Jewish state in Palestine – known as the Balfour Declaration after the foreign secretary at the time – as a reason to support the Palestinian people.

“Since 1980 we have backed a two-state solution,” said the letter.

“Such a recognition would give that position substance as well as living up to a historic responsibility we have to the people under that mandate.”

Smoke and fire rise to the sky following an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, on Thursday.

Israel and US condemn ‘reckless’ French decision to recognise Palestine, as Gaza talks break down

European leaders have condemned the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tightened military control of the narrow territory.

Macron went further than other major European leaders on Thursday by declaring that France would recognise the state of Palestine.

“We need an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and massive humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza,” he said.

“We must also ensure the demilitarisation of Hamas, secure and rebuild Gaza.

“And finally, we must build the State of Palestine, guarantee its viability, and ensure that by accepting its demilitarisation and fully recognising Israel, it contributes to the security of all in the region.”

France is expected to take the formal step toward recognition at the UN General Assembly in September, setting up a significant debate when US President Donald Trump has dismissed Macron’s statement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the French president’s call on the grounds that Hamas or others would inflict more terror on Israel under the statehood idea, acting as proxies for Iran.

“A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel — not to live in peace beside it,” he said.

“Let’s be clear: the Palestinians do not seek a state alongside Israel; they seek a state instead of Israel.”

Starmer responded to Macron’s declaration by saying he wanted a pathway to peace, with several steps.

“Recognition of a Palestinian state has to be one of those steps. I am unequivocal about that,” he said.

“But it must be part of a wider plan which ultimately results in a two-state solution and lasting security for Palestinians and Israelis.”

The German government also indicated it saw statehood as one of the final steps toward a two-state solution, and that it would have to be part of an outcome that brought security to both sides.

with Reuters, AP

‘We have crossed the line’: Gaza hunger crisis turns into death spiral

https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/we-have-crossed-the-line-gaza-hunger-crisis-turns-into-death-spiral-20250725-p5mhq4.html

By Wafaa Shurafa, Sarah El Deeb and Lee Keath

Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip: Five starving children at a Gaza City hospital were wasting away, and nothing the doctors tried was working. The basic treatments for malnourishment that could save them had run out under Israel’s blockade. The alternatives were ineffective. One after another, the babies and toddlers died over four days.

In greater numbers than ever, children hollowed up by hunger are overwhelming the Patient’s Friends Hospital, the main emergency centre for malnourished kids in northern Gaza.

Having dropped from 9 to 6 kilograms, 1½-year-old Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq faces life-threatening malnutrition as the humanitarian situation in Gaza worsens. This photo was taken on July 21.

The deaths last weekend also marked a change: the first seen by the centre in children who had no pre-existing conditions. Symptoms are getting worse, with children too weak to cry or move, Dr Rana Soboh, a nutritionist, said. In past months, most improved, despite supply shortages, but now patients stay longer and don’t get better, she said.

“There are no words in the face of the disaster we are in. Kids are dying before the world … There is no uglier and more horrible phase than this,” Soboh, who works with the US-based aid organisation Medglobal, which supports the hospital, said.

This month, the hunger that has been building among Gaza’s more than 2 million Palestinians passed a tipping point into accelerating death, aid workers and health staff say. Not only are children – usually the most vulnerable – falling victim under Israel’s blockade since March, but also adults.

In the past three weeks, at least 48 people died of causes related to malnutrition, including 28 adults and 20 children, the Gaza Health Ministry said on Thursday. That’s up from 10 children who died in the five previous months of 2025, according to the ministry.

Humanitarian groups warn that “mass starvation” is spreading and the situation is rapidly worsening.

The United Nations reports similar numbers. The World Health Organisation said on Wednesday it has documented 21 children under the age of five who died of causes related to malnutrition in 2025. The UN humanitarian office, OCHA, said on Thursday at least 13 children’s deaths were reported in July, with the number growing daily.

“Humans are well-developed to live with caloric deficits, but only so far,” Medglobal co-founder and paediatrician Dr John Kahler said. He has volunteered twice in Gaza during the war.

“It appears that we have crossed the line where a segment of the population has reached their limits.

“This is the beginning of a population death spiral.”

The UN’s World Food Program says nearly 100,000 women and children urgently need treatment for malnutrition. Medical workers say they have run out of many key treatments and medicines.

Israel, which began letting in only a trickle of supplies over the past two months, has blamed Hamas for disrupting food distribution. The UN counters that Israel, which has restricted aid since the war began, simply has to allow it to enter freely.

Hundreds of malnourished kids brought daily

The Patient’s Friends Hospital overflows with parents bringing in scrawny children – 200 to 300 cases a day, Soboh said.

On Wednesday, staff laid toddlers on a desk to measure the circumference of their upper arms – the quickest way to determine malnutrition. In the summer heat, mothers huddled around specialists, asking for supplements. Babies with emaciated limbs screamed in agony. Others lay totally silent.

The worst cases are kept for up to two weeks at the centre’s 10-bed ward, which this month has had up to 19 children at a time. It usually treats only children under five, but has begun taking some as old as 11 or 12 because of worsening starvation among older children.

Hunger gnaws at staff as well. Soboh said two nurses put themselves on IV drips to keep themselves going. “We are exhausted. We are dead in the shape of the living,” she said.

The five children died in succession last Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

Four of them, aged 4 months to 2 years, suffered gastric arrest: their stomachs shut down. The hospital no longer had the right nutrition supplies for them.

The fifth – 4½-year-old Siwar – had alarmingly low potassium levels, a growing problem. She was so weak she could barely move her body. Medicine for potassium deficiency has largely run out across Gaza, Soboh said. The centre had only a low-concentration potassium drip.

The little girl didn’t respond. After three days in intensive care, she died on Saturday.

“If we don’t have potassium supplies, we will see more deaths,” she said.

Australia has joined 27 other nations in condemning Israel’s “drip-feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic need of water and food”. This image was taken in Gaza City on Tuesday.

A two-year-old is wasting away

In the Shati Refugee Camp in Gaza City, two-year-old Yazan Abu Ful’s mother, Naima, pulled off his clothes to show his emaciated body. His vertebrae, ribs and shoulder blades jutted out. His buttocks were shrivelled. His face was expressionless.

His father, Mahmoud, who was also skinny, said they took him to the hospital several times. Doctors just say they should feed him. “I tell the doctors, ‘You see for yourself, there is no food,’” he said.

Naima, who is pregnant, prepared a meal: two eggplants they bought for $US9 ($14) cut up and boiled in water. They will stretch out the pot of eggplant-water – not even a real soup – to last them a few days, they said. Several of Yazan’s four older siblings also looked thin and drained.

Holding him in his lap, Mahmoud Abu Ful lifted Yazan’s limp arms. The boy lies on the floor most of the day, too weak to play with his brothers. “If we leave him, he might just slip away from between our fingers, and we can’t do anything.”

Adults, too, are dying

Starvation takes the vulnerable first, experts say: children and adults with health conditions.

On Thursday, the bodies of an adult man and woman with signs of starvation were brought to Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia said. One suffered from diabetes, the other from a heart condition, but they showed severe deficiencies of nutrients, gastric arrest and anaemia from malnutrition.

Many of the adults who have died had some sort of pre-existing condition, like diabetes or heart or kidney trouble, worsened by malnutrition, Abu Selmia said. “These diseases don’t kill if they have food and medicine,” he said.

Deaths come after months of Israeli siege

Israel cut off the entry of food, medicine, fuel and other supplies completely to Gaza for 2½ months starting in March, saying it aimed to pressure Hamas to release hostages. During that time, food largely ran out for aid groups and in marketplaces, and experts warned Gaza was headed for an outright famine.

In late May, Israel slightly eased the blockade. Since then, it had allowed in about 4500 trucks for the UN and other aid groups to distribute, including 2500 tonnes of baby food and high-calorie special food for children, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

That is an average of 69 trucks a day, far below the 500 to 600 trucks a day the UN says are needed. The UN has been unable to distribute much of the aid because hungry crowds and gangs take most of it from its trucks. Separately, Israel has also backed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which opened four centres distributing boxes of food supplies. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed trying to reach the sites.

On Tuesday, Israeli prime minister’s office spokesman David Mencer denied there was a “famine created by Israel” in Gaza and blamed Hamas for creating “man-made shortages” by looting aid trucks.

The UN denies Hamas siphons off significant quantities of aid. Humanitarian workers say Israel just needs to allow aid to flow in freely, saying looting stops whenever aid enters in large quantities.

I saw starving children every day in Gaza. It makes you question humanity

https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/i-saw-starving-children-every-day-in-gaza-it-makes-you-question-humanity-20250725-p5mhrx.html

Claire Manera

July 25, 2025 — 7.30pm

When you hold a starving baby in your hands, you feel how fragile life is.

I saw starving children every day in Gaza, either in the medical facilities or in the streets with their mothers, begging for food. The toddlers look like babies, and older children are the size of toddlers. If they have enough energy to move, they’re not playing because they’re so traumatised by the bombing, and they’re just looking for water or scraps of food. The mothers keep going because they have to survive – they can’t let their children die; they’re distraught by the state their children are in.

But they’re all wasting away, and they don’t have to. There are hundreds of trucks at the border with all the food that is needed, all the infant formula, all the medical supplies. They’ve been there for months with everything that’s needed for the people of Gaza, especially for the infants, to survive. It makes you question humanity and really wonder: What has gone wrong with the world, that we’re still in this situation where there is so much hatred against people who are defenceless?

The longer-term medical effects of being deprived of food include stunting and wasting. The children will not reach their potential in life if they’re severely malnourished as infants. They won’t develop properly, physically and physiologically, and it can affect mental development, being deprived of all the nutrients that they need. These children don’t have the start in life that they should, and this will affect the whole population.

We haven’t received any medical supplies since March 2, apart from nine trucks that were allowed in by the Israeli authorities. But then they made the trucks come on roads that were very unsafe, in the middle of the night, and eventually they were attacked. And this makes it impossible to continue bringing in medical supplies.

I’ve worked in conflict zones for 20 years. And although the people of Gaza are some of the bravest and most determined that I’ve ever met, they are also a defenceless population: children, infants, women, the disabled, the elderly, all the vulnerable and young adults who are missing their limbs. They’re having to run and hide, and they’re being bombed and starved. It could be stopped by the world, but nothing’s being done about it.

The people of Gaza have been through hell, not just for the past two years but for decades. So they can tell when you’re giving false hope; if a child is not going to survive, then we must be honest. I remember standing by while a five-year-old girl had her dressings changed on third-degree burns, without enough pain medication. She was screaming in agony, and all her parents could do was stand by and watch. And even then, we had to tell the parents that we did not know if the girl would survive – especially without adequate nutrition to heal and recover.

At Nasser Hospital I would see emaciated babies in the neonatal ICU and a paediatric ICU. But while I was there, the Israeli forces attacked the hospital twice – they’d send rockets through the windows of the hospital to target certain individuals who they wanted dead. One of them was said to be an extremely brave journalist who was a patient in the hospital at the time.

But when Nasser Hospital started being surrounded by the Israeli forces, we had to move our burns unit, operating theatres, various departments, physiotherapy and mental health services into a field hospital. But MSF couldn’t move the children and babies from the ICU because you can’t provide intensive care in a field hospital. It felt like we were leaving these babies behind.

But apart from attacking the hospitals, the Israeli forces make it impossible for us to work there. They give displacement orders to the population with warnings and say, “All of this area has to get out of their homes because we’re going to bomb and destroy everything within those boundaries”; it’s called a red zone. So it means you can’t go there because it’s now designated as an area that will be under attack until further notice. One of these warnings was put all around the hospital.

The Israeli authorities would tell MSF that we could go through the red zones but we had to co-ordinate with them. So we would have to tell them exactly what time we were going, and then they would tell us which road we could go on, and we’d have to wait at a checkpoint to get into the hospital, and they would make us wait for hours and hours in the middle of very busy areas where it wasn’t safe. We could hear the bombing around us. They would do this every day. That meant our staff doing 24-hour shifts would have to stay on and do 48 hours or 72 hours because we just couldn’t get in and out properly.

Sometimes there are no warnings given at all before the bombing starts. A bomb was dropped without warning in front of the MSF clinic in Gaza City. By some miracle, none of our staff were killed. Instead, the staff rushed out to the street to save the lives that they could, without even knowing if the bombing had stopped. They saved 28 lives that day.

More than 85 per cent of Gaza is now a red zone, so the population is being forced into a small area that the Israeli authorities call a “concentration zone”. I’m worried because I don’t know what’s going to happen when they have everyone in that area. It’s scary to think what they’re planning once they have people in there. It could be a way to get rid of the whole population.

Labor figures demand Palestinian statehood as PM criticises Israel over famine in Gaza

What I witnessed on the ground is that every time there was talk of a ceasefire, that is when the bombings would increase and the treatment of the civilians would get worse. As soon as there could be a glimmer of hope and a diplomatic solution, more people would start to die in more ways. There’d be more bombings. There’d be tanks coming in faster and faster, destroying buildings. And the shootings, at the distribution sites as well, increase. So we were also receiving cases of people at these distribution sites that are run by the Israeli authorities, people who are shot in the head and in the chest.

You start to lose hope eventually when you can see that the world is not responding, and especially our own government. To go back and do work is easier if you know that the world is behind you and that they’re going to look at a longer solution, but otherwise it’s really heartbreaking. To keep doing that long-term is what breaks your spirit eventually. And this is what is breaking the spirit of our Palestinian staff in Gaza: you can see them becoming more and more depressed, day by day, because they know that the world is not doing anything to help them. Collectively, it’s really hard to keep going.

I’m going back in the coming months and I don’t know how I will be able to do my job and help the people of Gaza. The situation is becoming more and more unsafe.

If people are appalled by these recent photos of starving children and they make their voices heard, they can make a difference and the politicians will have to act. The decision to do something is in the hands of the powers that control the weapons and the money behind it. It is urgent that we speak up now and do everything we can to prevent further deaths of innocent people.

Claire Manera is a Medecins Sans Frontieres Australian emergency co-ordinator. She has worked in conflict zones for the past 20 years, most recently in Gaza.

High schoolers allegedly hurl antisemitic abuse at Jewish children at Melbourne Museum

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/10-year-olds-allegedly-targeted-by-antisemitic-abuse-at-melbourne-museum-20250725-p5mhsa.html

By Noel Towell and Bridie Smith

Updated July 25, 2025 — 3.20pmfirst published at 12.54pm

The state Education Department has launched an investigation into the alleged antisemitic abuse of a group of primary school students, some as young as 10, during an excursion at the Melbourne Museum on Thursday.

The museum says it too is investigating the incident involving year 5 children from Mount Scopus Memorial College and a group of high school students from Gladstone Park Secondary College.

Education Minister and Deputy Premier Ben Carroll contacted the principal of the Burwood Jewish school after reports that some of high schoolers had called the younger children “dirty Jews” as the two groups undertook a shared activity while visiting the museum.

In a letter to parents, seen by The Age, Mount Scopus deputy principal Greg Hannon said a small group of students from the high school chanted “free Palestine” at some Mount Scopus students.

“Our group leader immediately confronted the senior school educators to address the behaviour of their students,” he said.

Hannon said the Mount Scopus students were quickly moved away from the other school group.

Mount Scopus principal Dan Sztrajt said it was particularly concerning to hear reports of inaction by one of the other school’s educators when asked to stop their students vilifying the Mount Scopus students.

Sztrajt said he had contacted Gladstone Park Secondary College principal Veronica Hoy seeking an explanation and to ask how the incident would be investigated.

“No child should ever be made to feel unsafe or targeted because of their identity or background,” he said.

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A city grappling with antisemitism and the blaming of weekly pro-Palestine protests

Sztrajt said Hoy had expressed concern over the incident and was open to “educational opportunities” to address the matter.

“Mount Scopus Memorial College has offered to work together with the other school to ensure that an appropriate educational response to this incident is made available,” he said.

Hoy did not respond on Friday to a request for comment from The Age.

Mount Scopus parent Tristan Sternson said his 10-year-old boy had been subjected to a “terrifying experience” by the high schoolers.

“He and his classmates were targeted by high school students from a different school,” Sternson wrote in an online post.

“They were tapped on the shoulder and then chanted at by these … students [saying] ‘free Palestine’ and then, as they walked away, were called ‘dirty Jews’ and other racist comments.

“This is not a political debate; this is pure, unadulterated antisemitism and hate.”

Museums Victoria chief executive Lynley Crosswell said an investigation had been launched.

“I am so deeply sorry that this has happened to your son and his classmates at Melbourne Museum,” Crosswell wrote online in response to Sternson’s post.

“An investigation has commenced and we will be in contact with your son’s school and the other school concerned.

“There is no place for racism or vilification in our museums.”

Carroll said he had offered support to the school during a conversation with Sztrajt.

“[I] conveyed my disgust at the antisemitic attacks on their students yesterday,” Carroll said.

“It is unacceptable that students or staff feel unsafe in the community where they learn, work and play.”

Jewish Community Council of Victoria chief executive Naomi Levin confirmed the Education Department had been in touch following Thursday’s incident, after the council raised concerns on behalf of Mount Scopus parents.

“It is completely unacceptable that our youngest community members are being targeted,” she said.

A Victoria Police spokesperson said they were not aware of any reports about the incident.

The incident comes after Jillian Segal this month released her report into combatting antisemitism in Australia.

The blueprint highlighted education as a key area of focus to help stop antisemitism becoming normalised among young people

“We are on a dangerous trajectory where young people raised on a diet of disinformation and misinformation about Jews today risk becoming fully fledged antisemites tomorrow,” the report says.

Letters The Age

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/children-in-gaza-starve-while-we-watch-in-silence-20250725-p5mhw1.html

I feel sick. Sick to read that three-month-old Baraa, weighing just three kilograms, is dying of hunger in Gaza (″⁣Children in Gaza face starvation″⁣, 25/7). Sick to know that her mother can’t breastfeed because she too is starving. And sicker still to watch our government’s inaction.

According to UNICEF, more than 5000 children were diagnosed with malnutrition in a single month – a figure that has doubled since January. Clinics report babies with no calcium in their bodies, unable to walk, or even cry. At least 33 people, including 12 children, have died from malnutrition according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry report this week.

This is not a natural disaster. It is the result of a manmade siege. The UN says 600 aid trucks a day are needed to feed Gaza’s population. At last count, only 28 were getting through. All food aid is now funnelled through just four centres across the entire Strip – centres where more than 1000 people have been killed by military strikes while simply trying to collect food.

And what does the Australian government do in response? Offers more fruitless words of condemnation – then punishes a senator for holding up a placard that read: “Gaza is starving. Words won’t feed them. Sanction Israel.“

Nothing says ″⁣democracy″⁣ like silencing the one elected official demanding we do something.

Fernanda Trecenti, Fitzroy

~~~~

World leaders should be ashamed

Why? Why? Why? What have the children of Gaza done to deserve the starvation and pain?

If food shortage and famine were to strike any nation on the planet on this scale, past history tells us the world would show compassion and decency, getting life-saving aid to these poor innocent kids.

Virtually bedridden this week to deal with an issue which is a mere scratch and watching television news around the clock due to an inability to sleep, the images out of Gaza have made me weep.

So-called world leaders everywhere hang your heads in shame, as you too watch those children die. Forget what started all this. Do something, anything, to save those children now.

Alan McLean (Secretary General, Australian Red Cross, 1988-1993)

~~~~

What have we learnt from history?

Re ″⁣Children in Gaza face starvation″⁣ (25/7). Yet another appalling article about the starvation of the people in Gaza. This totally inhumane war must stop. This is unquestionably genocide. The lessons of history have been ignored.

Laima Novackis, Carlton

~~~~

Cartoon tells story

A thank you to my favourite Australian newspaper The Age for finally displaying the horrors taking place daily in Gaza at the hands of the Natanyahu Government and the IDF. I should also thank cartoonist Cathy Wilcox (25/7) for yet another brilliant cartoon, which captures what a thousand words could not.

Roger Christiansz, Wheelers Hill

~~~~

Shame and grief

The front-page image of a mother and starving child in Gaza, (25/7), made me wish every member of parliament had supported and joined Senator Mehreen Farqi’s silent protest in parliament against the genocide in Palestine. What better place and time to register our shame and grief.

Kay Moulton, Surrey Hills

~~~~

Stop assisting

It’s time for Australia to announce and impose sanctions on exports of components for military hardware to Israel immediately.

Cecilia Cairns, North Carlton

~~~~

Out of proportion

While truckloads of donated stockfeed make their way to drought-stricken southern Australian farms, the Israeli government continues to confound distribution of aid to its neighbours in Gaza. After ceaseless bombardment from US-manufactured weapons of destruction, starvation has been added to the arsenal. The events of October 7, 2013 were shocking, but the response is not proportional. No more war.

David Harris, Ivanhoe

~~~~

Crisis of Hamas’ making

Rodger Shanahan (“Overkill in Gaza: Penny Wong was right to call out Israel”, 25/7) overlooks the important fact that Israel agreed to the ceasefire deal proposed by the mediators, but Hamas refused. Even Qatar now says it’s Hamas holding up a deal.

A different Israeli offer to immediately stop the war and allow safe passage to a third country for Hamas leaders in exchange for Hamas releasing the hostages and surrendering weapons has long been on the table.

Hamas refuses because it is determined to retain control in Gaza, rebuild, and attack Israel again. It uses the humanitarian crisis to get pressure on Israel.

In what other conflict would a government whose people are starving because of a war it started not be the one under pressure to end it?

Danny Samuels, Malvern

Ahmad’s wife and three kids all have Australian visas. They still can’t come in

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/ahmad-s-wife-and-three-kids-all-have-australian-visas-they-still-can-t-come-in-20250722-p5mgw4.html

Mostafa Rachwani

July 26, 2025 — 5.00am

Last year, Ahmad Badra received a visa to enter Australia. Safely arriving to stay with his sister in Greenacre, in western Sydney, the next step was to have his family join them.

But despite successfully receiving the same visas months later, Badra’s wife and three children, aged 10, 12 and 13, remain stuck in Gaza. He remains in Sydney, praying.

Weeks of waiting have become months, and hope has turned to despair as Badra applies and reapplies for their visas.

“We’ve tried to get them out multiple times, but they’re never allowed out,” he said. “They just get the visas and sit and wait, hoping a crossing will be opened, and they can leave.

“They can die at any time, and I am just sitting here, waiting. There’s no food and no safety, they can die of starvation or bombing, and I can do nothing.

“If I had known they wouldn’t be able to leave, I never would have left. I’d prefer to die there together than live here in suffering.”

The federal government has a special visa pathway for Palestinians arriving from Gaza, which involves applicants arriving in Australia on a visitor visa and then applying for a humanitarian one.

But the program is dependent on Gazans making their own way to Australia, and since Israel took control of the Rafah crossing in May 2024, the flow of refugees has slowed. Of the 94 successful applicants this year, only 33 have arrived in Australia.

The situation has left refugees split from their families, with very little hope of a reunion any time soon.

Haba AlSabaawi arrived in Australia in May 2024, after her husband’s family applied on her behalf. Her visa allowed her to leave Gaza, but without her two children from her first husband.

Since then, she has been able to speak to them only in spurts when the internet connects. She says she is unable to help them and unable to protect them from the death that surrounds them in Gaza.

Palestinian refugee Haba AlSabaawi, photographed at her home in Brisbane, cannot get her two children and her mother to Australia despite the group successfully receiving visas.

Palestinian refugee Haba AlSabaawi, photographed at her home in Brisbane, cannot get her two children and her mother to Australia despite the group successfully receiving visas. Credit: Dan Peled

“They live in a tent with my mother, without food, without safety, with nothing. And I can’t stop thinking about them, I can barely function these days,” she said.

“I spend my days in despair, my thoughts with them. Sometimes I scream, sometimes I cry. All I feel is my suffering, but I can’t do anything to get them out.”

AlSabaawi says she is afraid her children will die in Gaza and there is nothing she can do about it.

Aid organisations have warned that 2 million Gazans are being pushed to the verge of famine amid Israel’s ongoing aid blockade.

It will soon be two years since Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1200 people and taking 251 others hostage. Fifty hostages remain in Gaza, but fewer than half are thought to be alive.

Since then, Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 58,800 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, more than half of whom have been women and children.

AlSabaawi and Badar’s lawyer, Amina Youssef, said the refugee intake had slowed after Israel took control of the Rafah border crossing in May last year.

The Australian doctors saving lives in Gaza

Youssef, who has spent the past year applying and reapplying for visas for Gazans, said the only way visa holders could leave was if Australia pressured Israel to allow them to exit Gaza.

“Australia has standing with Israel: it can pressure them to at least get these people through the Rafah crossing. It’s the most important part of this process, just getting them out,” she said.

Youssef accused the federal government of having the capacity but “lacking motivation” to take such actions, arguing that, while it would be unusual for Australia to pressure a foreign government in this way, the extraordinary circumstances of the conflict warranted extraordinary steps.

“It’s terrible that these people are left to their fate. There is no reasonable prospects of them to get out on their own.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it “recognises that this is an incredibly distressing time” for those with family in Gaza and that it was doing all it could to support those with immediate family members, including parents, still in Gaza “who wish to depart but are unable to do so”.

“It continues to be very difficult for people to depart Gaza,” they said.

“The border crossings are controlled by local authorities, not the Australian government. Throughout the conflict there have been tight restrictions on who can cross.

“While we are doing all we can, the Australian government must work within this system, as do other countries with nationals in Gaza. DFAT is in ongoing communication with regional governments as well as like-minded countries.

Letters SMH

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/please-end-the-suffering-and-feed-gaza-s-poor-starving-children-20250725-p5mhq6.html

Forty-five children died of starvation or malnutrition in Gaza on Thursday. Reports vary between 100 and 300 in the past six weeks, including a six-week-old baby. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by IDF gunfire meant to “disperse crowds” at aid distribution sites, all located in militarised zones. Freelance journalists in Gaza are reporting widespread hunger. The World Health Organisation says 25 per cent of Gaza’s population is facing “famine-like conditions”, and director Tedros Adhanom Gadbreyesus has said it’s a “mass starvation, and it’s man-made”. Let’s call a spade a spade: Israel is starving Palestinians to death.

Marilyn Lebeter, Smiths Creek

~~~~

After the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong announced that Israel had a right to defend itself but that the response should be measured and proportional. There was the expected pile-on against her by the usual suspects. If only her sentiments had been followed. Article 33 of Geneva Convention IV identifies the collective punishment of a people as a war crime. We learn today that one in five children in Gaza are suffering from malnutrition. People are dying of starvation daily, while tons of aid remains blocked at the borders. In the years to come, this will be recognised as the crime against humanity that it is. It needs to be stopped today.

Jack Amond, Cabarita

~~~~

With the fox in charge of the henhouse, the Israel and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) will deny seeing any starvation on its watch. Which is strange really, given the IDF performs military strikes with almost pinpoint accuracy. The death toll of civilians in those misnamed “humanitarian aid” lines has risen to more than 1000. How has the GHF allowed this to happen? It’s a despicable state of affairs and needs universal condemnation, and action.

Helen Lewin, Tumbi Umbi

~~~~

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so how poignant that the Herald front page carries the photo of one-year-old Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, who is facing life-threatening malnutrition (“Suffer the children”, July 25). When will the world take more decisive action to bring an end to this catastrophic war in Gaza and allow aid to flow? When will all the folk who talk about antisemitism raise their voices to rein in Netanyahu’s tyrannical quest for power and domination of the Palestinians? I hope Muhammad’s picture will be seared into people’s consciousness, just like the “Napalm Girl” picture taken during the Vietnam War.

Rhonda Seymour, Castle Hill

~~~~

I’m totally distraught from the shocking images of starvation emerging from Gaza. I don’t care what the rest of the world is doing – I want the Australian government to be courageous and place immediate sanctions on the Israeli government now. It is not a Zionist thing or a Jewish thing or an Israeli thing. It’s a humanitarian thing.

Matt Bower, Green Point

~~~~

The heartbreaking front page picture of an emaciated child and mother reduced me to tears of utter despair. How can this be allowed to happen? So much rhetoric from world leaders to absolutely no avail, as the appalling carnage continues.

Elizabeth Kroon, Randwick

~~~~

Your front-page photo is today’s real-life version of Michelangelo’s The Pieta. Shame on those countries enabling Netanyahu’s behaviour. Shame on the rest of us for standing idly by and watching the humanitarian crisis in Palestine, illustrated starkly by the photo.

Meg Pickup, Ballina

~~~~

A picture, or a cartoon, tells a thousand words. The front-page photo of a mother cradling her starving child, together with the Wilcox cartoon highlighting the fate of Gazans at the hands of Israel, make clear the horrors now experienced by the Palestinian people. The denial of humanitarian aid and the killing of those seeking it is obscene, immoral and a crime against humanity.

Michael Healy, Raworth

~~~~

I looked at the Herald’s front-page photo today and wept yet again. How much longer before the world stops talking and does something about removing Benjamin Netanyahu? How is it that this man is allowed to continue, day by day, wreaking death and starvation on the defenceless? Enough talking.

Margaret Ryan, Bexley

~~~~

The children of Gaza are being starved to death. They are paying the ultimate price for the 1200 people killed by Hamas in October 2023. There is a moral obligation for Australia to join South Africa in filing the case of genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice.

Mark Porter, New Lambton

~~~~

To accompany your front-page headline “Suffer the children”, a reference to the so-called mass starvation in Gaza, you feature a photo of an emaciated child and a very healthy, well-fed woman, purportedly the child’s mother. How is it that the child is cachectic, yet the mother is well nourished?

George Fishman, Vaucluse

~~~~

It is morally indefensible for Australia to remain silent while thousands of civilians in Gaza are bombed, starved and displaced. The deliberate targeting of hospitals, schools and aid convoys has been widely documented and condemned by the UN and humanitarian organisations. As an Australian, I am ashamed that our government has yet to call for sanctions or even a permanent ceasefire. Silence is not neutrality – it is complicity. We must not stand by while war crimes are carried out. Australia must act.

Deborah Nestola, Brighton (Vic)

~~~~

Starvation and malnutrition are growing alarmingly in Gaza. Shame on the world’s leaders for remaining so passive for so long. Only now, when images of skeletal children emerge and the weight of public pressure grows, are they saying something. Enough of the meek voices and the moral relativism – concrete, consequential action to stop this atrocity is needed now.

Alexander Lane, Thornleigh

~~~~

Day after day we hear resolutions from nations, the UN and the International Criminal Court condemning the actions of the Israel Defence Forces. We hear terms such as mass starvation, genocide and war crimes, yet the situation in Gaza rages on with no sign of ending, and the world looks on helplessly. Similarly, the war in Ukraine continues after three years, with the US and European nations seemingly powerless to intervene to bring a halt to this unjust war. Given all of this, it is difficult to imagine how the world would respond in any meaningful way to any action by China to seize Taiwan.

Phil Peak, Dubbo

~~~~

Waleed Aly exposes a painful conundrum in the debate over antisemitism (“Segal’s antisemitism plan takes us down a path we should fear to tread”, July 25). Considering the events in Gaza and the West Bank right now, it is to be expected that compassionate people will condemn unbearable cruelty. While we argue over whether criticism of Israel or Zionism is antisemitic or not, innocent men, women and children are dying every day in Gaza from weaponised starvation or being shot for approaching a food convoy. Israel controls the food shipments into Gaza, so Israel is responsible for the present catastrophe. Israel, not Jewish people in general. Just how does one object to these inhumane events without being called antisemitic?

Bruce Spence, Balmain

~~~~

I defy anyone to remain dry-eyed after seeing the photo published with Waleed Aly’s article – children holding saucepans forward in the hope of getting a little bit of food, but the look of resignation on their faces is heartbreaking. I had just answered a survey regarding the food that gets delivered to my door, do you mind, and the contrast hit hard. Please, powers that be, get food and water to the starving people of Gaza. Now.

Pen Layton-Caisley, Marrickville

‘Children starving’: Israel condemned over aid denial

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9025271/children-starving-israel-condemned-over-aid-denial/

By Kat Wong and Tess Ikonomou

July 25 2025 – 5:08pm

Australians are distressed by the images of children starving as a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza worsens, Foreign Minister Penny Wong says.

The comments followed a strongly-worded statement from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese who said the situation in Gaza, where vision of emaciated children has become the norm as Israel denies aid to civilians, had “gone beyond the world’s worst fears”.

The escalation in rhetoric has added intrigue as to whether Australia will follow France’s lead in recognising Palestine.

Asked about Australia’s intentions for a UN General Assembly in September, Senator Wong would not rule out support for statehood.

“We all are distressed by the ongoing violence, the deaths of so many innocent civilians, the images of children starving, the humanitarian catastrophe that is worsening before our eyes, and we all want it to stop,” she told reporters in Sydney on Friday.

The prime minister earlier urged Israel to comply with its obligations under international law.

“Israel’s denial of aid and the killing of civilians, including children, seeking access to water and food cannot be defended or ignored,” he said.

“Every innocent life matters. Every Israeli. Every Palestinian.”

Mr Albanese stopped short of saying Australia would immediately join France in recognising Palestinian statehood after the European nation became the largest Western power to signal it would make the announcement.

Mr Albanese instead said recognising the “legitimate aspirations of Palestinian people for a state of their own” was a bipartisan position.

“Australia is committed to a future where both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples can live in peace and safety, within internationally recognised borders,” he said.

“Until that day, every effort must be made here and now to safeguard innocent life and end the suffering and starvation of the people of Gaza.”

Ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, a designated terrorist organisation, have collapsed after Israel and the US withdrew from talks.

With aid being throttled at the border and all entry points to Gaza controlled by Israel, former USAID official Jeremy Konyndyk said Australia and the other nations must do more as the situation in Gaza was “purely a political famine”.

“Nothing about this is natural or organic – it’s 100 per cent man-made,” the Refugees International president told ABC Radio.

“We are at – if not past – a tipping point.”

The Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which began operations in May, has been accused of obstructing operations by the United Nations and other aid groups, and putting starving Palestinians in danger.

According to Mr Konyndyk, its aid packages were small and insufficient and the foundation’s facilities were located far from population centres.

“The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a farce,” he said.

Israel, which began letting in only a trickle of supplies to Gaza in recent months, has previously blamed Hamas for disrupting food distribution and accused it of using stolen aid to fund its war effort.

While the coalition said it had “strong concerns” about the worsening humanitarian situation, opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Michaelia Cash said it was disappointing Mr Albanese’s statement did not place any blame on Hamas

“Any moral outrage about the situation in Gaza should be directed at Hamas,” she said.

Israel has enforced a complete embargo on humanitarian aid and medical supplies for almost three months after a ceasefire deal broke down earlier in 2025.

The opposition says it is disappointing the prime minister’s statement placed no blame on Hamas.

In recent months, more than 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid, many of them shot by the Israeli military, UN sources have found.

Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in Gaza.

Its military campaign was launched after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1200 people and taking 251 hostages.

Mr Albanese also condemned the “terror and brutality” of Hamas and repeated calls for the release of the remaining hostages.

Australian Associated Press

Anthony Albanese closes in on Palestinian recognition shift

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/anthony-albanese-closes-in-on-palestinian-recognition-shift/news-story/3b325929f91d3bb04470608a6cd3abf8

Sarah Ison

Anthony Albanese, who is under growing pressure from within the Labor Party to recognise Palestine, has accused Israel of killing civilians just hours after French President Emmanuel Macron revealed Paris would formally recognise Palestine by September.

France’s commitment sets the stage for the September UN General Assembly meeting in New York – which Australia will also attend – to become a flashpoint in the Middle East conflict.

But the move, along with the following statement by the Prime Minister containing some of the strongest language yet against Israel, sparked alarm from members of Australia’s Jewish community. Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Rubenstein described the shifting position as “disturbing”.

“Mr Albanese and his government have rightly stated on many occasions that Hamas can have no future role in Gaza, but now he is demanding a ceasefire that would leave it in power there,” Dr Rubenstein said.

“And he is failing to attribute the blame for the distressing Gaza situation toward this banned terror group – which started the war and openly says it sees the suffering of Gaza’s civilians as ‘necessary sacrifices’.”

Dr Rubenstein’s comments – echoed by opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Michaelia Cash who said “moral outrage should be aimed at Hamas” – followed the shock announcement by Mr Macron on Friday that his country would recognise Palestine by September.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Picture: AP

“True to its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognise the state of Palestine,” Mr Macron said in a statement. “I will make this solemn announcement at the United Nations general assembly next September.”

Soon after Mr Macron’s comments, and a statement from UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer criticising the suffering and starvation in Gaza as “indefensible”, Mr Albanese released a formal statement condemning Israel.

It also come a day after the US and Israel ditched ceasefire talks due to Hamas showing a “lack of desire” for peace.

“Tens of thousands of civilians are dead, children are starving,” the Prime Minister said. “Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe. Israel’s denial of aid and the killing of civilians, including children, seeking access to water and food cannot be defended or ignored.

“We call on Israel to comply immediately with its obligations under international law. This includes allowing the United Nations and NGOs to carry out their lifesaving work safely and without hindrance.”

The shift from France and statements from other western leaders were attacked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said the move to recognise Palestine “rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became”.

“A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel – not live in peace beside it,” Mr Netanyahu said in a statement on X. “Let’s be clear: the Palestinians do not seek a state alongside Israel; they seek a state instead of Israel.”

While Mr Albanese’s comments on the Middle East situation were welcomed within Labor, MPs and branch members urged the Prime Minister to follow suit with France and commit to recognising Palestine. Recently demoted Labor MP Ed Husic, a Muslim, said on ABC: “The time is now. This is a fairly comprehensive statement that France has put out and I think it is one that Australia has the perfect opportunity now to stand with the French to recognise the state of Palestine.”

His comments echoed those of former Labor foreign minister and long-time Palestinian advocate Bob Carr who said recognising Palestine would “send a message” to Israel.

“We call on the Australian government to implement official platform policy and immediately and unconditionally recognise a Palestinian state on the pre-June 4, 1967 borders.”

More than 100 aid and rights groups this month warned of “mass starvation” in Gaza, with reports of dozens of people – including children – succumbing to malnutrition.

Deputy Prime Minister and leading Labor Right faction figure Richard Marles said the party had “always” been in support of a two-state solution but that a Palestinian state could not have the involvement of Hamas. “We have seen what Hamas has done in terms of the terror that it has brought to bear and the appalling acts that it conducted on October 7,” the Defence Minister said.

Despite this, Mr Marles said that “ultimately the only way to have enduring peace in the Middle East is if there is a two-state solution”.

Standing beside her UK counterpart on Friday, Foreign Minister Penny Wong reiterated her view that she no longer saw recognition “at the end of a presupposed peace process”, but rather as something that could be achieved before such a process was concluded.

Senator Wong said there were “signs” the Palestinian Authority was seeking to “play its part as a partner of peace”, raising hopes the group could be in a position to govern the territory rather than this being done by Hamas.

However, Israel and other Jewish groups have long pointed to the widespread community support for Hamas leaders over those in the Palestinian Authority, prompting concerns over who would lead a recognised Palestinian state after its first democratic election.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said there was a “clear risk” of international humanitarian law being breached.

“On that basis, the UK government decided to suspend arms sales that could be used in Gaza,” Mr Lammy said in Sydney.

“We remain very concerned about the malnourishment, the starvation that we’re seeing. We have just recently increased our funding to UK-Med to support medical needs in Gaza.”

Australia, the UK and France were among 27 countries that signed a statement this week condemning Israel for “drip-feeding” aid as people of Gaza starved, citing reports that more than 800 Palestinians had been killed while seeking aid. “We condemn the drip-feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food,” the statement read.

The UK is set to discuss the matter of Palestinian recognition when it meets with German and French leaders in Turkey tomorrow, as part of the E3 grouping, during which time it will also take part in discussions with Iranian officials.

Sir Keir has been under sustained pressure from his cabinet to formally recognise Palestine, with the move by France all but expected to force the UK leader into following suit.

The UK will also join a number of other nations, including France, at a UN forum held to discuss the prospect of a two-state solution next week.

Israel to allow foreign countries to parachute aid into Gaza

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/israel-to-allow-foreign-countries-to-parachute-aid-into-gaza/news-story/bc8c77d41ce30bbde56705bb206ea640

AFP and Staff writers

Israel will allow Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to parachute food into Gaza as aid groups warned of surging numbers of malnourished children and Donald Trump lashed Hamas for refusing a ceasefire deal.

The aid air-drops will resume in “upcoming days”, an Israeli official confirmed after Doctors Without Borders said that a quarter of the young children and pregnant or breastfeeding mothers it had screened at its clinics last week were malnourished.

Hopes of a new ceasefire in Gaza faded this week when Israel and the United States quit indirect negotiations in Qatar with Mr Trump saying Hamas did not want a truce.

“It was too bad. Hamas didn’t really want to make a deal. I think they want to die,” the US President said.

“Now we’re down to the final hostages, and they know what happens after you get the final hostages. And basically because of that, they really didn’t want to make a deal.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said Hamas was obstructing a deal.

“Together with our US allies, we are now considering alternative options to bring our hostages home, end Hamas’s terror rule, and secure lasting peace for Israel and our region.”

With fears of mass starvation growing, Britain, France and Germany held an emergency call to push for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and discuss steps towards Palestinian statehood.

“Withholding essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable.

“Israel must uphold its obligations under international humanitarian law.”

Israel has rejected accusations it was responsible for the chronic shortage of food in Gaza, instead accusing Hamas of deliberately creating a crisis.

Mohammed al-Mutawaq, an 18-month-old Palestinian boy suffering from medical issues and displaying signs of malnutrition, lies on a mattress inside a tent in the Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City on Thursday. Picture: Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP

Mr Macron said France would formally recognise a Palestinian state in September, with Anthony Albanese and the UK’s Sir Keir Starmer facing growing pressure within their parties to do the same.

Some 220 British MPs, including dozens from the ruling Labour party, demanded Friday that the UK government formally recognise a Palestinian state.

Mr Trump dismissed Mr Macron’s move as pointless.

“He’s a very good guy, I like him, but that statement doesn’t carry weight,” Mr Trump said.

Mr Netanyahu has long opposed a Palestinian state, calling it a security risk and a potential haven for “terrorists”.

On Wednesday, a large majority in Israel’s parliament passed a symbolic motion backing annexation of the occupied West Bank, the core of any future Palestinian state.

‘Mass starvation’

More than 100 aid and human rights groups warned this week that “mass starvation” was spreading in Gaza.

Israel has rejected accusations it is responsible for the deepening crisis, which the World Health Organisation has called “man-made”.

Israel placed the Gaza Strip under an aid blockade in March, which it only partially eased two months later.

A senior IDF official told Sky News UK on Friday: “Starting today, Israel will allow foreign countries to parachute aid into Gaza.

“Starting this afternoon, the WCK organisation began reactivating its kitchens.”

‘We cannot deny Hamas’ role in this’: Albanese’s condemnation of Israel analysed

Australia and Jewish Affairs Council’s Joel Burnie discusses Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s

Aid group World Central Kitchen halted operation in Gaza in November after a number of its workers were killed in an Israeli air strike.

The Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has been distributing aid since May. Witnesses, health officials and the UN human rights office say Israeli forces have repeatedly fired on crowds seeking aid from GHF, killing more than 1000 people.

Israel has refused to return to the former UN-led aid system, saying that it allowed Hamas to hijack aid for its own benefit.

Accusing Israel of the “weaponisation of food”, MSF said that: “Across screenings of children aged six months to five years old and pregnant and breastfeeding women, at MSF facilities last week, 25 per cent were malnourished.” It said malnutrition cases had quadrupled since May 18 at its Gaza City clinic and that the facility was enrolling 25 new malnourished patients every day.

YOUNG STUDENTS TAUNTED WITH ANTI-SEMITIC SLURS

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=f72da8dd-635f-4938-8f1c-4a2c6035d032&share=true

Lily McCaffrey

Year-five students from a Jewish primary school have been subjected to anti-Semitic slurs while attending a class excursion at the Melbourne Museum.

The 10 and 11 year-old children were allegedly verbally abused with anti-Semitic and political slurs by older students from Gladstone Park Secondary College who were also at the museum on Thursday, Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Dan Sztrajt wrote in a letter to parents, seen by The Australian.

“Our understanding from discussions with our students and the accompanying staff is that the comments included ‘Free Free Palestine’, ‘Dirty Jews’ and ‘Free Hezbollah’,” the letter, sent on Friday, reads.

“One of our accompanying staff members immediately confronted an educator from Gladstone Park asking them to address the behaviour of their students.

“Unfortunately, it appears that their educator did not respond appropriately, allegedly claiming this is ‘just their beliefs’ and asking ‘what do you want me to do about it?’, among other comments.”

Mr Sztrajt said he had spoken with the principal of Gladstone Park Secondary College.

“She conveyed her sincere regret, apologised on behalf of her school, and expressed a willingness to work collaboratively with Mount Scopus,” he wrote.

Victorian Minister for Education Ben Carroll said he had spoken with Mr Sztrajt and conveyed his “disgust at the anti-Semitic attacks”.

“I have offered every support possible to help them through this incident,” Mr Carroll said.

“It is unacceptable that students or staff feel unsafe in the community where they learn, work and play.

“Hate has no place in Victoria. Our strength is our diversity.”

A statement from Mount Scopus said it was “deeply concerned and disappointed by the incident”.

“Of particular concern was the report of inaction by one of the other school’s educators when asked to stop his students from vilifying the Mount Scopus students,” it read.

A spokesperson for Museums Victoria said racism, discrimination and hatred had no place at its museums and that it was “deeply sorry” the incident had occurred at one of its venues.

“We have contacted the parties involved and appreciate they are handling this matter privately and respectfully,” the spokesperson said.

“Museums Victoria is committed to creating an accessible, inclusive, and safe environment for all members of the community regardless of cultural background.”

Parent Tristan Sternson wrote on social media that the excursion had been a “terrifying experience” for his 10-year-old son and his classmates.

“They were tapped on the shoulder and then chanted at by these 16- and 17-year-old students ‘free Palestine’ and then, as they walked away, were called ‘dirty Jews’ and other racist comments,” Mr Sternson wrote on LinkedIn. “This is not a political debate; this is pure, unadulterated anti-Semitism and hate.”

Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said the high school students involved had “brought disgrace to themselves, their school and their country”.

“Where would Australian high school students learn this behaviour? Form the belief that it is OK, even righteous to see a Jewish symbol on the uniforms of eight- and nine-year-olds and subject them to chants about Palestine?” Mr Ryvchin wrote on X.

“It comes from a certain moral collapse brought about by nearly two years of normalised abuse and violence, where anyone who holds an opposing view on the war is a Nazi and a baby-killer, where anything done to Jews living peacefully on the other side of the world is justified, or if impossible to defend, it’s a false flag.”

Zionist Federation of Australia CEO Alon Cassuto said the incident spoke to “a deeper sickness, where Jewish identity becomes a provocation, and anti-Semitism is excused as activism”.

“Ten-year-olds on an innocent excursion were harassed and targeted not for what they did, but for who they are,” Mr Cassuto said.

Lynda Ben-Menashe, president of the National Council of Jewish Women Australia, said a member’s 10-year-old granddaughter was “among the Jewish children publicly accosted and vilified for actions taking place thousands of miles away”.

Gladstone Park Secondary College declined to comment and referred questions to the Department of Education. It’s understood the department is investigating the incident.

It follows a spate of anti-Semitic attacks in Melbourne, including the attempted firebombing attack on the East Melbourne Synagogue and the violent storming of Israeli restaurant Miznon in the city’s CBD earlier this month.

In May last year, Mount Scopus’s Burwood campus was targeted with anti-Semitic graffiti, with the words “Jew die” scrawled on its fence.

GLOBAL SNOWBALL EFFECT FOR PALESTINE STATE: PM WILL ROLL WITH IT

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=800d8ce1-927e-4e6a-a706-11810dd50606&share=true

GEOFF CHAMBERS

Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong are laying the ground for an imminent and significant change to Australia’s long-held position that commits to progressing a two-state solution but does not recognise a Palestinian state.

After months of backroom diplomacy and talks among officials across an alliance of Western countries, the Prime Minister is preparing to follow French President Emmanuel Macron and other world leaders in formally recognising Palestinian statehood.

Ahead of the Labor leader’s expected attendance at the 80th session of the UN General Assembly in September, Albanese and Wong are on the brink of fulfilling the wishes of their ALP Left faction in recognising Palestine as a state.

The 2023 ALP national conference enshrined as an “important priority for the Australian government” two key commitments: recognising Palestine as a state and the “right of Israel and Palestine to exist as two states within secure and recognised borders”.

With Labor caucus dominated by Albanese’s Left faction following the government’s May 3 election landslide victory, pro-Israel Labor MPs and supporters knew the major shift was inevitable.

In what senior government figures describe as a global snowball effect, the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and inability to maintain a ceasefire has galvanised a bloc of countries, which excludes Donald Trump’s US, to form a unity ticket that believes a separate Palestinian state would deliver “enduring peace” in the Middle East.

Wong on Friday repeated the lines she has used in recent months that the government no longer sees recognition as only occurring at the end of a peace process.

Wong, Albanese and Richard Marles have said they want a Palestinian state in which Hamas has no involvement.

Countries pursuing recognition of Palestine can hardly rely on the Palestinian Authority to oust murderous Hamas terrorists who butchered innocent Israelis on October 7, 2023. There is every chance that Hamas or a Hamas-backed group would rise as the dominant force inside a Palestinian state.

It will take other countries, including Britain, to follow Macron’s lead before Albanese changes Australia’s foreign policy settings. With Trump a staunch supporter of Israel and his administration refusing to participate in any French or UN-led push for Palestinian statehood, Albanese must manage the timing of any Palestine shift as he seeks his first in-person meeting with the US President.

Albanese will meet with Trump soon. Amid planning for a heavy schedule of international summits across the globe over the next five months, the pair could cross paths before the UN leaders’ week in New York in September.

Amid ongoing concerns around US tariffs, defence spending and AUKUS, Albanese must tread a careful path as he seeks from Trump positive outcomes for Australia.

Memo to Wong: When terrorists praise you, it’s bad

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=bbe78807-7f4a-4192-922a-1d7c214444cb&share=true

GEMMA TOGNINI

“Hamas welcomed the joint statement.”

As I read that line in various media outlets across Australia and the world this past week, there was a moment of disbelief. The statement Hamas was referring to was signed by Australia, among others, and called on Israel to end the war in Gaza.

Hamas, a terrorist death cult responsible for wholesale slaughter and unspeakable sexual violence, a group of ideological maniacs that doesn’t believe Jews have the right to exist, was looking at Australia and saying: bravo, Penny Wong, well played. If ever there were a statement that condemned Australia’s foreign policy position on the Middle East and exposed the shocking moral bankruptcy of the Albanese government, this was it: being praised by an organisation that our country and countless others have deemed a proscribed terrorist group.

Sometimes the important things get lost in the big statements.

The detail, if you will. Ending the war in Gaza? Everyone wants that.

But this statement infers Israel is to blame. The US described it as “disgusting”. The Israeli government called it “disconnected from reality”. Both assessments are true.

To be explicit here, it is right to call for an end to this war. Every sane person wants this. The problem lies with the implication in words that place the burden of responsibility entirely on Israel to end a war it didn’t start, never wanted and has been fighting alone for nearly two years.

It is a piece of political virtue signalling that ignores context and the basic facts, such as that there is a ceasefire deal on the table right now. A deal agreed to by Israel, brokered by the US and the Qataris.

Hamas again says no.

The same Hamas that paraded the semi-naked, broken and twisted body of German-Israeli woman Shani Louk through the streets of Gaza on October 7, 2023.

The same creatures of evil who ripped Ariel and Kfir Bibas and their mother Shiri from their home, then murdered the children with their bare hands and boasted about it.

The same demons who even the hopeless, Jew-hating UN has admitted conducted a brutal campaign of systemic sexual violence against the women slaughtered on October 7 and the hostages it took that day. Hostages. Remember them? There are 50 still being held.

Still. Only half are said to be alive.

A reminder: taking hostages is, of course, a war crime.

The Australian government, in signing this statement, has exposed itself as morally without compass and strategically deficient.

The signs have been there from October 7, 2023. Wong’s first response to the atrocities was to tell Israel to show restraint. Neither she nor Anthony Albanese has bothered to go to the site of the Nova massacre or to meet the released hostages. The Foreign Minister hung out on the West Bank and the Prime Minister prefers to hang out in China.

Among the cosignatories to the statement is the Canadian government.

Seven of its citizens were slaughtered on October 7. The French, unsurprisingly, signed this letter. The French who recently hosted former al-Qa’ida terrorist turned Syrian leader Ahmed al- Sharaa in an official capacity in May. Ah, the French. Seems like yesterday they were rolling out the red carpet for the ayatollahs after the fall of the shah of Iran. Everything old is new again.

More than 1000 Christians and Druze have been slaughtered in Syria in the past few weeks in a brutal episode of ethnic cleansing.

Witnesses have described the same horrifying brutality that played out in Israel on October 7.

And is it any wonder? Al-Qa’ida is Islamic State is Hamas, and they are playing the Western world like a two-buck recorder. Who has gone to the aid of the Syrian Druze? Not the UN but Israel.

What this government can’t seem to understand is that many things can be true in tension, and often are. When it comes to this war, this is absolutely the case, yet Albanese and Wong remain obsessed with Israel, with demonising the only democracy in the Middle East. So let me help them.

This war is terrible. There is tremendous suffering in Gaza among Palestinians who have only recently begun to demand an end to Hamas. These fledging uprisings have met with killings and brutal reprisals.

Yet again the Prime Minister shows how little connection he has with the reality on the ground. On Friday he said Israel was denying aid and killing children to seek access to water and food.

The Prime Minister does not acknowledge that Hamas has been weaponising the distribution of aid since the start. It’s a strategy.

Hamas has targeted and killed Gazans accessing aid via the USbacked Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and has threatened Gazans not to take food from this group.

The UN also has a vested interest in undermining the GHF. The non-government organisation sector relies heavily on aid funding.

After rejecting the ceasefire deal this week, Hamas then demanded full control over aid distribution.

The current proposal backed by Qatar, the US and Israel is for a split in aid distribution between the UN and the GHF. Hamas says no, it’s all or nothing.

At the time of writing, geoconfirmed images show hundreds of UN aid trucks sitting idle inside Gaza, aid undelivered. The GHF has offered to distribute the aid as a matter of urgency and it says the UN refused. Is there anything more sickening than politics? All of this matters. It’s detail that took me a little while to find but it’s not that hard. I’m one person.

The Foreign Minister presumably has a capable team that can read and research? This is the detail the Australian public deserves to know.

‘Turned inside out with disgust’: Australia must sanction Benjamin Netanyahu, Bob Carr urges

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/25/australia-must-sanction-benjamin-netanyahu-israel-bob-carr-ntwnfb

Former Labor foreign affairs minister says Canberra must seek to be a world leader – not wait for the US or UK – and recognise a Palestinian state

Josh Butler and Ben Doherty

The former Labor foreign affairs minister Bob Carr says the federal government should sanction the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and move quickly to recognise Palestinian statehood, saying it would send “a message that we are turned inside out with disgust by what appears the deliberate starvation” of Gaza.

Carr, the former New South Wales state premier and Labor elder, praised Anthony Albanese’s latest statement condemning Israel, which accused Netanyahu’s government of denying aid and killing civilians – including children – seeking water and food.

But Carr said Australia should seek to be a world leader in responding to the humanitarian disaster and follow the example of France in pledging to recognise a Palestinian state.

Palestinians hold on to an aid truck returning to Gaza City

Albanese says Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza ‘cannot be defended or ignored’ in strongest condemnation yet

“The PM’s instinct is right, but I reckon the Australian public wants him to push further and harder. Any notion in Dfat [the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade] that we should wait till the UK moves on recognition is just us being too supine,” Carr told Guardian Australia.

“We should move decisively, now the French have, and get credit in Asia and elsewhere for having a mind of our own, not just waiting for the UK – or, God help us, a signal from Washington.”

Carr’s call was echoed by Labor MP and former cabinet minister Ed Husic, who said: “The time is now.”

Albanese on Friday made his strongest condemnation yet of the starvation in Gaza, where international humanitarian organisations have pleaded for attention on starvation and malnutrition concerns.

At least 45 people have died of hunger in the past four days. The UN and aid groups blame Israel’s blockade of almost all aid into the territory for the lack of food.

But Albanese’s statement did not pledge any new actions or concrete responses.

Noting Australia had imposed travel bans and financial sanctions on two far-right Israeli ministers in June, Carr suggested the government take similar action on Netanyahu.

“They need to sanction Netanyahu. He’s directing this operation … subjecting the civilian population to collective punishment, including mass starvation,” he said.

Amir Maimon, Israel’s ambassador to Australia, released a statement on Friday saying his country was “not only entitled but obligated under international law” to defend its citizens.

“To condemn Israel for defending itself is wrong. It deflects attention from the real perpetrators of this horror: Hamas,” Maimon wrote.

“The international community must stop equivocating and start acting. Pressure must be placed where it belongs, on Hamas, the terrorist group responsible for this war and the suffering it continues to inflict.”

The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said the withholding of vital food aid from Palestinian children was “indefensible”, describing the situation in Gaza as “beyond the world’s worst fears”.

In a press conference in Sydney alongside the defence minister, Richard Marles, and their British ministerial counterparts, Wong said: “Children are starving, civilians are dying.”

She said Australia would continue “to press for a ceasefire, for hostages to be released, for aid to flow and for international humanitarian law to be upheld”.

Wong said Australia remained committed to a two-state solution, and reiterated that Australia no longer saw Palestinian statehood “at the end of a peace process only”.

“It [a two-state solution] is ultimately the only hope of peace and breaking the cycle of violence and assuring the security and aspirations and peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.”

Carr, the NSW premier from 1995 to 2005 and then federal foreign affairs minister from 2012 to 2013 in the Rudd and Gillard governments, said recognition of a Palestinian state had been Labor policy for many years.

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He noted that he had moved such a motion at the 2014 NSW Labor conference. Carr believed the move would have majority support in Australian society.

“Recognition sends a message that we are turned inside out with disgust by what appears the deliberate starvation of the nation, identified as drip feeding,” he said.

“I have not the faintest doubt it has majority support. People are coming up to me regularly and saying, ‘keep up what you’re doing on Palestine’. That’s unusual. The message has gotten out there.

“Israel is seen increasingly as a pariah, due to its sheer indifference of the suffering of babies and children.”

Carr said he believed the Labor party rank-and-file membership were “virtually unanimous on this”.

Husic told the ABC that Australia should recognise Palestinian statehood immediately.

“There will be a number of countries that will do so, and given our party has said we want to do this, it seems right that the time is now for us to step forward and say we will recognise the state of Palestine now,” he said.

Guardian Australia has reported on growing outrage in Labor’s membership ranks about the Gaza crisis.

The Labor Friends of Palestine, an internal pressure group, has written a motion calling for Australia to sanction the Israeli government, which has been adopted by 80 local branches, according to co-convener Peter Moss

“Labor members fought long and hard through the party’s democratic structures to establish in 2018 recognition as official policy that was to be delivered by the next Labor government,” Moss said.

“We call on the Australian government to implement official platform policy and immediately and unconditionally recognise a Palestinian state on the pre-4 June 1967 borders. There has never been a more urgent time to assert the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, dignity, safety, and equal rights.”

Labor sources say a similar motion may be debated at the Victorian state conference in August.

ABC sounds alarm over Gaza famine, saying its Palestinian freelancers now too weak to work

https://www.theguardian.com/media/commentisfree/2025/jul/25/abc-alarm-gaza-famine-palestinian-journalists-freelancers-weekly-beast-ntwnfb

Amanda Meade

International media denied access to Gaza rely on Palestinian freelancers, who are ill and exhausted. Plus: Henderson’s watchdog lives another day

Fri 25 Jul 2025 13.00 AEST

The Palestinian journalists and videographers working with Australia’s national broadcaster to bring us the stories from inside Gaza are hungry and weak, the ABC’s Middle East correspondent Matthew Doran said this week. One colleague “does not have the strength to hold a camera any more”, has lost 34kg and can hardly talk on the phone, Doran wrote.

“And it could seriously impact how we can tell the broader story of the Gaza war.”

The scenes of aid seekers scrambling for food, babies lying silently in hospital beds and Palestinians protesting against Hamas for prolonging the war would be impossible without these Palestinian freelancers, Doran warned.

The ABC correspondent was among some of the world’s biggest news outlets, including BBC News, Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Associated Press and Reuters who said they were “desperately concerned” about the journalists in Gaza after widespread warnings of mass starvation.

People wait to receive food from a charity kitchen in Gaza.

BBC, AFP and other news outlets warn journalists in Gaza at risk of starvation

With Israel denying international reporters access to Gaza, most of the world’s news outlets rely on Palestinian freelancers to inform the world, but hunger and lack of clean water is making them ill and exhausted, with some telling agencies they are too weak to work.

“One of the biggest and most important stories in the world … will soon be more difficult to tell, as our colleagues struggle to help us tell it,” Doran said.

Doran’s online analysis was accompanied by several broadcast reports on starvation on the 7pm bulletin across the week. “The ABC has worked with a variety of independent journalists in Gaza over the past two years, but in recent weeks that has become increasingly difficult as displacement and starvation make it harder for journalists in Gaza,” a spokesperson for ABC News told Weekly Beast.

Victoria Police powerless to lay charges over “Death to the IDF” chant

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/victoria-police-powerless-to-lay-charges-over-death-to-the-idf-chant/news-story/bf359ca5cfddf68f5d9c007054582ebc

Police say they have no power to lay charges over the “Death to the IDF” chant being used at Melbourne pro-Palestine rallies, as officers brace for protest tensions to reach boiling point this weekend.

Mark Buttler and Olivia Jenkins

Police say they are powerless to lay charges over the “Death to the IDF” chant being used at Melbourne pro-Palestine protests.

The anti-Israeli Defence Force chant has become widespread in recent months at CBD demonstrations opposing the 21-month military action in Gaza.

A Victoria Police statement said independent advice had been received stating that the chant was not an offence under the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act or the Crimes Act.

The statement said matters would now have to be considered on a case-by-case basis to determine whether it met the threshold for an offensive behaviour charge under the Summary Offences Act.

“We will now assess any past or future chants to determine if a prosecution would be successful against any individuals,” the statement said.

Former Victorian Governor Linda Dessau this week said chants like “Death to the IDF” should come under hate speech laws.

“I really think a stand needs to be taken,” Ms Dessau said in a podcast by broadcaster Neil Mitchell.

“In other instances, these things have been stopped right at the source and they should have been here, too.”

Those using the chant are aping punk-rappers Bob Vylan, who employed it at Britain’s huge Glastonbury music festival last month.

UK police later launched a criminal investigation of the performance.

It comes as police brace for protest tensions to reach boiling point this weekend, with several hundred additional officers understood to have been rostered to patrol a major pro-Palestine rally planned for Sunday.

Police sources told the Herald Sun that uniform members were anticipating potential counter protests by Zionist activists.

A Victoria Police spokeswoman said police would be patrolling Sunday’s protest.

“There will be a visible police presence to keep the peace and ensure community safety,” she said.

“Victoria Police respects the rights for individuals to protest however we ask that they do so peacefully.”

Up to 300 additional officers are believed to have been designated to patrol this weekend’s rally.

Pro-Palestine activists have staged weekly rallies since October 7 that have called for a ceasefire in Gaza and for Israel to leave other Israeli-occupied territories such as the West Bank.

Pro-Israel groups, including Lions of Zion, have previously staged counter protests at pro-Palestine events, which have largely remained peaceful.

But earlier this month, “Death to the IDF” chants and signs, as well as depictions of the swastika were seen at a pro-Palestine rally in the CBD.

Police were then working to determine whether one sign depicting the swastika and its meanings in other cultures outside the western world was a criminal offence.

In 2023, it became illegal in Victoria to publicly display hate symbols such as the Nazi swastika.

Ceasefire talks collapse – what does that mean for the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza?

https://tinyurl.com/4ukes9dc

Published: July 25, 2025 2.20pm AEST

Ali Mamouri

Research Fellow, Middle East Studies, Deakin University

does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff says it would appear Hamas never wanted a deal:

While the mediators have made a great effort, Hamas does not appear to be coordinated or acting in good faith. We will now consider alternative options to bring the hostages home and try to create a more stable environment for the people in Gaza

State Department spokesman Tommy Piggott reads Steve Witkoff’s statement on the collapse of the Gaza peace talks.

The disappointing development coincides with mounting fears of a widespread famine in Gaza and a historic decision by France to formally recognise a Palestinian state.

French President Emmanuel Macron says there is no alternative for the sake of security of the Middle East:

True to its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognise the State of Palestine

What will these developments mean for the conflict in Gaza and the broader security of the Middle East?

Help us share expert knowledge.

‘Humanitarian catastrophe’

The failure to reach a truce means there is no end in sight to the Israeli siege of Gaza which has devastated the territory for more than 21 months.

Amid mounting fears of mass starvation, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says Gaza is in the grip of a “humanitarian catastrophe”. He is urging Israel to comply immediately with its obligations under international law:

Israel’s denial of aid and the killing of civilians, including children, seeking access to water and food cannot be defended or ignored.

According to the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, more than 100 people – most of them children – have died of hunger. One in five children in Gaza City is malnourished, with the number of cases rising every day.

A dark haired malnourished two year old boy sitting with other children

Two year old malnourished boy Yazam Abu Ful in a refugee camp in Gaza City. Jehad Alshrafi/AAP

Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini says with little food aid entering Gaza, people are

neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses […] most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak and at high risk of dying if they don’t get the treatment they urgently need.

The UN and more than 100 aid groups blame Israel’s blockade of almost all aid into the territory for the lack of food.

Lazzarini says UNRWA has 6,000 trucks of emergency supplies waiting in Jordan and Egypt. He is urging Israel – which continues to blame Hamas for cases of malnutrition – to allow the humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

Proposed ceasefire deal

The latest ceasefire proposal was reportedly close to being agreed by both parties.

It included a 60-day truce, during which time Hamas would release ten living Israeli hostages and the remains of 18 others. In exchange, Israel would release a number of Palestinian prisoners, and humanitarian aid to Gaza would be significantly increased.

During the ceasefire, both sides would engage in negotiations toward a lasting truce.

While specific details of the current sticking points remain unclear, previous statements from both parties suggest the disagreement centres on what would follow any temporary ceasefire.

Israel is reportedly seeking to maintain a permanent military presence in Gaza to allow for a rapid resumption of operations if needed. In contrast, Hamas is demanding a pathway toward a complete end to hostilities.

A lack of mutual trust has dramatically clouded the negotiations.

From Israel’s perspective, any ceasefire must not result in Hamas regaining control of Gaza, as this would allow the group to rebuild its power and potentially launch another cross-border attack.

However, Hamas has repeatedly said it is willing to hand over power to any other Palestinian group in pursuit of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. This could include the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), which governs the West Bank and has long recognised Israel.

Support for a Palestinian state

Israeli leaders have occasionally paid lip service to a Palestinian state. But they have described such an entity as “less than a state” or a “state-minus” – a formulation that falls short of both Palestinian aspirations and international legal standards.

In response to the worsening humanitarian situation, some Western countries have moved to fully recognise a Palestinian state, viewing it as a step toward a permanent resolution of one of the longest-running conflicts in the Middle East.

Macron’s announcement France will officially recognise a full Palestinian state in September is a major development.

France is now the most prominent Western power to take this position. It follows more than 140 countries – including more than a dozen in Europe – that have already recognised statehood.

While largely symbolic, the move adds diplomatic pressure on Israel amid the ongoing war and aid crisis in Gaza.

However, the announcement was immediately condemned by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who claimed recognition “rewards terror” and

risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became. A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel – not to live in peace beside it.

Annexing Gaza?

A Palestinian state is unacceptable to Israel.

Further evidence was recently presented in a revealing TV interview by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak who stated Netanyahu had deliberately empowered Hamas in order to block a two-state solution.

Benjamin Netanyahu surrounded by other people

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says France has empowered terrorism by recognising a Palestinian state. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AAP

Instead there is mounting evidence Israel is seeking to annex the entirety of Palestinian land and relocate Palestinians to neighbouring countries

Given the current uncertainty, it appears unlikely a new ceasefire will be reached in the near future, especially as it remains unclear whether the US withdrawal from the negotiations was a genuine policy shift or merely a strategic negotiating tactic.

Media Report 2025.07.21

Posted on 21 Jul 2025 by admin

Palestine Israel Media Report Monday 21 July 2025

1/ 73 Palestinians killed while waiting for humanitarian aid across Gaza, health ministry says (The Age, SMH, 21/7/2025) [link to article]

2/ A fight at the opera as performer unfurls Palestine flag on stage (The Age, SMH, 21/7/2025) [link to article]

3/ Online hate report exposes ‘overt effort to normalise antisemitism’ (The Age, SMH, 21/7/2025) [link to article]

4/ Letters (SMH, 21/7/2025) [link to article]

5/ Scuffle on stage at London opera as performer unfurls Palestinian flag (The Australian, 21/7/2025) [link to article]

JOIN THE MEDIA WATCH GROUP >> Search Google Groups “Palestine Israel Media Monitoring” group.