What’s On July 21-27 2025
What’s On around Naarm/Melbourne & Regional Victoria: July 21-27, 2025
With thanks to the dedicated activists at Friends of the Earth Melbourne!
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See also these Palestine events listings from around the country:
Blog
Media Report 2025.07.20
At least 36 shot dead near Gaza food site: hospital
Canberra Times / AAP | 20 July 2025
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9020190/at-least-36-shot-dead-near-gaza-food-site-hospital/
At least 36 people have been killed by Israeli fire while they were on their way to an aid distribution site in the Gaza Strip at dawn, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
The Israeli military said it had fired warning shots at suspects who approached its troops after they did not heed calls to stop, about a kilometre away from an aid distribution site that was not active at the time.
Gaza Strip resident Mohammed al-Khalidi said he was in the group approaching the site and heard no warnings before the firing began.
“We thought they came out to organise us so we can get aid, suddenly (I) saw the jeeps coming from one side, and the tanks from the other and started shooting at us,” he said.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US-backed group which runs the aid site, said there were no incidents or fatalities there on Saturday and that it has repeatedly warned people not to travel to its distribution points in the dark.
“The reported IDF (Israel Defence Forces) activity resulting in fatalities occurred hours before our sites opened and our understanding is most of the casualties occurred several kilometres away from the nearest GHF site,” it said.
The Israeli military said it was reviewing the incident.
GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to get supplies into the Gaza Strip, largely bypassing a United Nations-led system that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led militants loot aid shipments intended for civilians.
Hamas denies the accusation.
The UN has called the GHF’s model unsafe and a breach of humanitarian impartiality standards, which GHF denies.
On Tuesday, the UN rights office in Geneva said it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks in the vicinity of aid sites and food convoys in the Gaza Strip – the majority of them close to GHF distribution points.
Most of those deaths were caused by gunfire that locals have blamed on the Israeli military.
The military has acknowledged that civilians were harmed, saying that Israeli forces had been issued new instructions with “lessons learned”.
At least 50 more people were killed in other Israeli attacks across the enclave on Saturday, health officials said, including one strike that killed the head of the Hamas-run police force in Nuseirat in the centre of the Gaza Strip and 11 of his family members.
The Israeli military said that it had struck militants’ weapon depots and sniping posts in a few locations in the enclave.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1200 people, mostly civilians and taking 251 hostages back to the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military campaign against Hamas in the strip has since killed about 58,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians according to health officials, displaced almost the entire population and plunged the enclave into a humanitarian crisis, leaving much of the territory in ruins.
Israel and Hamas are engaged in indirect talks in Doha aimed at reaching a US-proposed 60-day ceasefire and a hostage deal mediated by Egypt and Qatar, although there has been no sign of any imminent breakthrough.
At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages are believed to still be alive.
Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan was kidnapped from his kibbutz home and is held by Hamas, urged Israel’s leaders to make a deal with the militant group.
“An entire people wants to bring all 50 hostages home and end the war,” Zangauker said in a statement outside Israel’s defence headquarters in Tel Aviv.
“My Matan is alone in the tunnels,” she said, “He has no more time”.
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At least 32 Palestinians killed in Gaza as IDF fires on crowds seeking food
Witnesses say scenes near Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid hubs in the south of the territory resembled a massacre
The Guardian | Donna Ferguson | 20 July 2025
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/19/gaza-israel-palestinians-killed-idf-fires-on-crowds
At least 32 people were killed and more than 100 injured on Saturday morning when Israeli troops opened fire on crowds of Palestinians seeking food from two aid distribution hubs in southern Gaza, according to witnesses and hospital officials.
People on the scene described it as “a massacre”, and claimed Israel Defense Forces fired “indiscriminately” at the groups of Palestinians – reported to be mostly young men – who were making their way towards the hubs run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Most of the deaths, which civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal attributed to “Israeli gunfire”, occurred in the Teina area, about two miles from a GHF aid distribution centre east of Khan Younis.
Medical sources told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that many of the wounded are in a serious condition, while witnesses at the scene said many of the dead and injured were children and teenagers.
The Nasser hospital in Khan Younis received 25 bodies, as well as dozens of wounded people, while nine others were killed near a centre north-west of Rafah, the civil defence agency said.
Dr Atef al-Hout, director of Nasser hospital, described the situation as “an unprecedented number of casualties in a very short time”, warning that the actual death toll could be higher.
“We’re unable to provide adequate medical treatment as we lack equipment, medicine and personnel,” he told Haaretz.
In a statement, GHF, which was set up to replace the traditional UN-led aid distribution system in Gaza, said there were no incidents at or near its sites. It said the reported Israeli shootings occurred far from its sites and hours before they opened. “We have repeatedly warned aid seekers not to travel to our sites overnight and early morning hours,” the group said.
The Israeli military said it had fired “warning shots” near Rafah after a group of suspects approached troops and ignored calls to keep their distance. It said it was investigating reports of casualties, but noted the incident occurred overnight when the distribution centre was closed.
Mahmoud Mokeimar told Associated Press reporters he was walking with masses of people – mostly young men – towards the food hub. Troops fired warning shots as the crowds advanced, before opening fire on the marching people.
“It was a massacre,” he said. “The occupation opened fire at us indiscriminately.” He said he managed to escape but saw at least three motionless bodies lying on the ground, and many other wounded people fleeing.
Akram Aker said troops fired machine guns mounted on tanks and drones. He said the shooting happened between 5am and 6am.
“They encircled us and started firing directly at us,” he told AP. He said he saw many casualties lying on the ground.
Sana’a al-Jaberi, a 55-year-old woman, said she saw many dead and wounded as she fled the area.
“We shouted: ‘food, food’, but they didn’t talk to us. They just opened fire,” she said.
Four other witnesses also accused Israeli troops of opening fire, according to news agency AFP.
“They started shooting at us and we lay down on the ground. Tanks and Jeeps came, soldiers got out of them and started shooting,” said Tamer Abu Akar, 24.
More than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza are living through a catastrophic humanitarian crisis and the entire population is at risk of famine, according to food security experts, while distribution at the GHF sites has been described as “lethal chaos”.
Last Wednesday, 19 people were killed in a crush in a stampede near a GHF hub and one person was stabbed. GHF blamed the incident on Hamas, describing it as “a calculated provocation, part of a pattern of targeted efforts by Hamas and its allies to dismantle our life-saving operations”.
Dr Mohamed Saker, the head of Nasser’s nursing department, told AP that most of the people who died on Saturday were shot in the head and chest, and that some were placed in the already overwhelmed intensive care unit.
“The situation is difficult and tragic,” he said, adding that the hospital desperately needs medical supplies to treat the daily flow of casualties.
Israeli and Hamas negotiators have been discussing an interim truce in the Gaza war, which would see 10 surviving hostages and the bodies of 18 others returned to Israel in exchange for the release of a number of Palestinians.
On Friday, President Donald Trump said at a dinner that 10 hostages would “very shortly” be released from Gaza, but provided no further details.
Speaking to lawmakers at the White House, Trump – who has been predicting for weeks that a US-led ceasefire and hostage-release deal was imminent – said: “We got most of the hostages back. We’re going to have another 10 coming very shortly, and we hope to have that finished quickly.”
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Conflicting interests
Herald-Sun | Letters | 20 July 2025
Columnist Peta Credlin correctly identified the key element of anti-Semitism in Australia as a tactical partnership between recent immigrant bigotry and the destructive forces of cultural Marxism, complicated by the floundering of a government with conflicting interests and loyalties (“Albo fiddles while our synagogues are burning”, SHS, 13/7).
The allusion to the Roman Emperor Nero was quite appropriate, as the fires fitted his plans for what we now call urban renewal.
Electoral considerations and long-standing Socialist-Left dogma get in the way of this government’s duty to uphold the law and protect Jewish citizens, resulting in empty words and ambivalent responses.
It’s only now that Labor can use the term anti-Semitism without referring to a hitherto absent Islamophobia.
Special envoy Jillian Segal’s recommendations of enforcing existing laws and deporting spreaders of hate are now on the table, but the test of the Albanese government and the states will be their willingness to implement them.
We shouldn’t hold our breath.
John Morrissey, Hawthorn
Our Jewish population in many cases came here to escape the wars in the Middle East and live in peace. The Hamas sympathisers want to bring the war to our shores and attack the innocent. Everyone feels the pain of the Palestinians and Israelis who are caught up in war, but this anti-Semitic violence in our peaceful country must be dealt with swiftly and severely.
Ric, Lara
Media Report 2025.07.19
Palestine Israel Media Report Saturday 19 July 2025
ABC News
Anthony Albanese calls recent actions in Gaza ‘completely indefensible’ in interview from China [link to article]
Top church leaders meet in Gaza as Israel strikes kill several in Khan Younis [link to article]
Who are the Druze and why does Israel say it is bombing Syria for their sake? [link to article]
The Age
Letters [link to article]
The Australian
‘My pain has become inconvenient’: Iranian Greens councillor Tina Kordrostami quits minor party [link to article]
IRAN QUICK TO REARM PROXIES IN MIDDLE EAST [link to article]
TRUMP ‘DID NOT SUPPORT ISRAEL ATTACKS’ [link to article]
US FUMES AT STRIKE ON GAZA CHURCH [link to article]
Delaying action on anti-Semitism based on poor understanding [link to article]
News Corp tabloids
Herald Sun Letters [link to article]
ISRAEL BOMBS CATHOLIC CHURCH [link to article]
STAND UP TO HATRED [link to article]
Canberra Times
Letters [link to article]
The Guardian
More violence erupts in Syria’s Druze heartland as tribal groups reinforce local Bedouin [link to article]
Christian patriarchs make joint visit to shelled church in Gaza [link to article]
Two UK charities donate millions to Israeli settlement in occupied West Bank [link to article]
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JOIN THE MEDIA WATCH GROUP >> Search Google Groups “Palestine Israel Media Monitoring” group.
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Media Report 2025.07.18
Palestine Israel Media Report Friday 18 July 2025
PEARLS AND IRRITATIONS
- Despite denials, Australia has exported F-35 parts to Israel [link to article]
THE AGE
- Israel bombs the Gaza church that late pope called every day [link to article]
- Tony, Peta and the gang gather for solidarity supper at Israeli restaurant [link to article]
THE AUSTRALIAN
- Louise Adler criticisms of Segal report would warm any anti-Semite’s heart [link to article]
- Israel acts to secure its border [link to article]
- Donald Trump demands answers over tank strike on Gaza’s only Catholic Church [link to article]
ABC NEWS
- Israeli strike on Gaza’s only Catholic church kills three, injures priest who spoke to the late Pope Francis daily [link to article]
HERALD SUN
- Israel PM voices regret after three killed at Catholic church in Gaza [link to article]
- Jewish group expresses frustration after 20yo arrested over the Adass Israel Synagogue firebombing [link to article]
A Jewish group has shared its ‘frustration’ the masterminds behind the firebombing of a Melbourne synagogue are yet to be found by police.
THE GUARDIAN
- Israeli strike on Gaza church kills three and injures priest Pope Francis called daily [link to article]
Pope Leo renews ceasefire call after strike on territory’s only Catholic church
CANBERRA TIMES
- Deadly Israeli strike on Gaza Catholic church condemned [link to article]
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JOIN THE MEDIA WATCH GROUP >> Search Google Groups “Palestine Israel Media Monitoring” group.
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Statement on the Freedom Flotilla and the Safety of Australian Citizen Robert Martin
17 July 2025: Free Palestine Melbourne is deeply concerned by the Australian government’s silence regarding the Freedom Flotilla vessel Handala, carrying desperately needed humanitarian supplies to the besieged, brutalised people of the Gaza Strip.
Media Report 2025.07.16
FPM Media Report Wednesday 16 July 2025
Why Israel is conducting strikes in Syria as sectarian violence rages
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-16/why-israel-is-conducting-air-strikes-in-syria/105536098
Just over six months since the downfall of Syria’s long-time leader, Bashar al-Assad, the country’s fragile post-war order is on the brink.
The country is deeply divided as it tries to emerge from decades of dictatorship and nearly 14 years of civil war.
In recent days, Israel has carried out strikes within Syria amid clashes between various factions.
The strikes came in response to clashes between a religious minority sect, the Druze, another group known as the Bedouin tribes, and Syrian government forces.
Dozens of people have so far been killed.
Here’s what you need to know about the conflict and what it means for the survival of Syria’s new government.
Downfall of a dictator
Syria is currently led by a transitional government, established after the Assad family’s decades-long rule over the country collapsed in December last year.
Before then, the country had been torn apart by 14 years of civil war between forces loyal to president Bashar al-Assad and those who wanted to oust him.
Foreign Correspondent looks inside the new Syria.
But under the Assad family’s tight rule, religious freedom was guaranteed as the country then boasted about its secular and Arab nationalist system.
However, the new transitional government is more Islamist in nature, with President Ahmad al-Sharaa himself a former member of Al Qaeda.
Minority group in the middle
Among the groups now navigating a vastly changed landscape in Syria is the Druze religious sect.
The Druze began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam, and more than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria.
Syrian government forces are accused of fighting against the Druze, a minority sect based near the country’s border with Israel. (AP: Omar Sanadiki)
In Syria, they largely live in the southern Sweida province and some suburbs of Damascus, mainly in Jaramana and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya to the south.
The transitional government has promised protections and to include the Druze in decision-making, but so far, only one of the 23 members of the government is Druze.
The Druze have been divided over how to deal with their issues with the new status quo in the country.
Many Druze support a dialogue with the government, while others want a more confrontational approach.
Fragile Syria fraying
The latest violence began when members of another group, the Bedouin tribe in Sweida province, set up a checkpoint and then attacked and robbed a Druze man.
This led to tit-for-tat attacks and kidnappings between the two sides.
Government security forces deployed to the area to restore order, but were seen as taking the side of the Bedouin tribes against Druze factions.
The skyline of a Syrian city showing smoke rising from streets.
Smoke can be seen rising from the city of Sweida after clashes between Syrian government forces and Druze militias. (AP: Omar Sanadiki)
The clashes raise fears of another spiral of sectarian violence that has flared already since the ejection of Assad.
In March, sectarian and revenge attacks between Assad loyalists and government security forces killed hundreds of civilians.
There have also been rising tensions between authorities in Damascus and Kurdish-led authorities controlling the country’s north-east.
Emboldened Israel conducts strikes
The most recent clashes between the Druze and Bedouin have captured the attention of neighbouring Israel.
Israel does not want Islamic militants near the country’s northern border.
Since Assad’s fall, Israeli forces have seized control of a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone in Syria near the border with the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and have carried out hundreds of air strikes on military sites.
Israel has periodically intervened in support of the Druze, who are seen within Israel as a loyal minority.
The Israel Defense Forces on Monday announced it had struck military tanks in southern Syria on Monday to help the Druze.
That was followed by further Israeli strikes on Syrian government forces on Tuesday.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is ordering strikes against Syria’s military in Druze-majority areas. (Reuters: Jack Guez)
Dozens killed in clashes
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz said the strikes hit “regime forces” and weaponry brought to Sweida to be used against the Druze.
“Israel is committed to preventing harm to the Druze in Syria due to the deep brotherhood alliance with our Druze citizens in Israel,” the pair said in a statement.
“We are acting to prevent the Syrian regime from harming them and to ensure the demilitarisation of the area adjacent to our border with Syria.”
Syrian Defence Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra says a ceasefire between the government, the Bedouin and the Druze remains in place.
The Druze spiritual leadership said in a written statement on Tuesday morning that it would allow Syrian forces to enter Sweida city to stop the bloodshed, calling on armed groups to surrender their weapons and cooperate with incoming troops.
But hours later, influential Druze Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajri, a vocal opponent of the new Syrian leadership, said the statement had been “imposed” on them by Damascus and that Syrian troops had breached the arrangement by continuing to fire on residents.
Dozens of people have been killed in fighting in the region since Sunday.
ABC/AP
Netanyahu’s governing coalition is fracturing. Here’s what it means for Israel and Gaza
By Tia Goldenberg
Tel Aviv: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government suffered a serious blow when an ultra-Orthodox party announced it was bolting the coalition.
While this doesn’t immediately threaten Netanyahu’s rule, it could set in motion his government’s demise, although that could still be months away. It also could complicate efforts to halt the war in Gaza.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, surrounded by ministers from the government attends a session of the Knesset – Israel’s parliament – in Jerusalem, on Monday.Credit: AP
United Torah Judaism’s two factions on Tuesday, Jerusalem time, said they were leaving the government because of disagreements over a proposed law that would end broad exemptions for religious students from enlistment into the military.
Military service is compulsory for most Jewish Israelis, and the issue of exemptions has long divided the country. Those rifts have only widened since the start of the war in Gaza as demand for military manpower has grown and hundreds of soldiers have been killed.
The threat to the government “looks more serious than ever”, said Shuki Friedman, vice president of the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.
Netanyahu is on trial for alleged corruption, and critics say he wants to hang on to power so that he can use his office as a bully pulpit to rally supporters and lash out against prosecutors and judges. That makes him all the more vulnerable to the whims of his coalition allies.
If the exit goes ahead, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be left with a razor-thin majority in parliament.Credit: Bloomberg
Here is a look at Netanyahu’s political predicament and some potential scenarios:
The ultra-Orthodox are key partners
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving leader, has long relied on the ultra-Orthodox parties to prop up his governments.
Related Article
Relatives carry the body of 13-year-old Seraje Ebrahim, who was killed in an Israeli strike on a drinking water distribution point on Sunday.
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Israeli missile kills six children collecting water in Gaza
Without UTJ, his coalition holds just 61 out of parliament’s 120 seats. That means Netanyahu will be more susceptible to pressure from other elements within his government, especially far-right parties who strongly oppose ending the war in Gaza.
The political shake up isn’t likely to completely derail ceasefire talks, but it could complicate how flexible Netanyahu can be in his concessions to Hamas.
A second ultra-Orthodox party is also considering bolting the government over the draft issue. That would give Netanyahu a minority in parliament and make governing almost impossible.
The ultra-Orthodox military exemptions have divided Israel
A decades-old arrangement by Israel’s first prime minister granted hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men exemptions from compulsory Israeli service. Over the years, those exemptions ballooned into the thousands and created deep divisions in Israel.
The ultra-Orthodox say their men are serving the country by studying sacred Jewish texts and preserving centuries’ old tradition. They fear that mandatory enlistment will dilute adherents’ connection to the faith.
Israel’s prime minister has wrapped up his visit to the United States, saying there is a “good chance” of a ceasefire in Gaza.
But most Jewish Israelis see the exemption as unfair, as well as the generous government stipends granted to many ultra-Orthodox men who study instead of work throughout adulthood. That bitterness has only worsened during nearly two years of war.
The politically powerful ultra-Orthodox parties have long had outsized influence in Israel’s fragmented political system and used that status to extract major concessions for their constituents.
But a court last year ruled Netanyahu’s government must enlist the ultra-Orthodox so long as there is no new law codifying the exemptions.
Netanyahu’s coalition has been trying to find a path forward on a new law. But his base is largely opposed to granting sweeping draft exemptions and a key lawmaker has stood in the way of giving the ultra-Orthodox a law they can get behind, prompting their exit.
The political shake up comes during Gaza ceasefire talks
The resignations don’t take effect for 48 hours, so Netanyahu will likely spend that time seeking a compromise. But that won’t be easy because the Supreme Court has said the old system of exemptions amounts to discrimination against the secular majority.
That does not mean the government will collapse.
Netanyahu’s opponents cannot submit a motion to dissolve parliament until the end of the year because of procedural reasons. And with parliament’s summer recess beginning later this month, the parties could use that time to find a compromise and return to the government.
Cabinet Minister Miki Zohar, from Netanyahu’s Likud party, said he was hopeful the religious party could be coaxed back to the coalition. “God willing, everything will be fine,” he said. A Likud spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Once the departures become official, Netanyahu will have a razor-thin majority. The far-right parties within it could threaten to leave the coalition, further weakening him, if he gives in to too many of Hamas’ demands.
Hamas wants a permanent end to the war as part of any ceasefire deal. Netanyahu’s hard-line partners are open to a temporary truce, but say the war cannot end until Hamas is destroyed.
If they or any other party leave the coalition, Netanyahu will have a minority government, and that will make it almost impossible to govern and likely lead to its collapse. But he could still find ways to approve a ceasefire deal, including with support from the political opposition.
Israel may be on the path toward early elections
Netanyahu could seek to shore up his coalition by appeasing the far-right and agreeing for now to just a partial, 60-day ceasefire with Hamas, promising his governing partners that he can still resume the war once it expires.
But Netanyahu is balancing those political constraints with pressure from the Trump administration, which is pressing Israel to wrap up the war.
Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said she expected Netanyahu to work during any ceasefire to shift the narrative away from the draft exemptions and the war in Gaza, toward something that could potentially give him an electoral boost – such as an expansion of US-led normalisation deals between Israel and Arab or Muslim countries.
Once any 60-day ceasefire is up, Netanyahu could bend to US pressure to end the war and bring home the remaining hostages in Gaza – a move most Israelis would support.
Elections are currently scheduled for October 2026. But if Netanyahu feels like he has improved his political standing, he may want to call elections before then.
The latest in the war in Gaza
Israeli strikes overnight and into Tuesday killed more than 90 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, including dozens of women and children, health officials said.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said in a daily report Tuesday afternoon that the bodies of 93 people killed by Israeli strikes had been brought to hospitals in Gaza over the past 24 hours, along with 278 wounded.
One strike in the northern Shati refugee camp killed a 68-year-old Hamas member of the Palestinian legislature. Mohammed Faraj al-Ghoul, was a member of the bloc of representatives from the group that won seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council in the last election held among Palestinians, in 2006.
One of the deadliest strikes hit a house in Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa district on Monday evening and killed 19 members of the family living inside, according to Shifa Hospital. The dead included eight women and six children. A strike on a tent housing displaced people in the same district killed a man and a woman and their two children.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strikes.
Israel has killed more than 58,400 Palestinians and wounded more than 139,000 others in its retaliation campaign since Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Just over half the dead are women and children, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its tally.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after its attack 20 month ago, in which militants stormed into southern Israel and killed some 1200 people, mostly civilians. They abducted 251 others, and the militants are still holding 50 hostages, fewer than half of them believed to be alive.
AP
What is the controversial definition of antisemitism that institutions are being told to adopt?
Nick Newling
Antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal released a plan last week with 49 steps to tackle rising discrimination against Jewish Australians. At the core of the report is a definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which has become a lightning rod for criticism.
Segal’s recommendation to embed the alliance’s definition in all public institutions last week came after a host of antisemitic attacks across Australia this year, including the doors of the East Melbourne synagogue being set alight earlier this month, and children at Jewish schools in Sydney being harassed with calls of “Heil Hitler”.
However, pro-Palestinian and some human rights organisations fear the definition may stifle legitimate criticism of Israel and its government by tying antisemitism to anti-Zionism, limiting free speech.
So what is the definition? How widely used is it? And why has it become controversial?
What is the IHRA, and its definition of antisemitism?
The alliance was established by the Stockholm International Forum, a series of conferences held between 2000 and 2004, and convened by then-Swedish prime minister Göran Persson.
The conferences were held to combat “the growth of extreme right-wing groups” that were spreading propaganda in schools, and to address a survey of Swedish young people that found knowledge of the Holocaust “was deficient and that a large number of teenagers were not even certain that it had taken place”, according to the Swedish government.
There are now 35 member states of IHRA, including Australia, Israel, the UK and the US, all of which adopted a “non-legally binding working definition” of antisemitism in May 2016.
The definition adopted by the alliance states:
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
While the definition itself has largely been viewed as uncontroversial, subsequent “examples of antisemitism in public life” published alongside the definition have been criticised as limiting freedom of speech.
Among the 11 examples provided by IHRA are “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination … by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”, “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”, and “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel”.
Where is the definition already used?
In February, following recommendations from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, 39 universities represented by Universities Australia “unanimously endorsed” a definition of antisemitism that, while different, drew heavily from the IHRA definition. However, some universities have not yet adopted the definition.
The Universities Australia definition states that criticism of Israel is not “in and of itself antisemitic”, but that “criticism of Israel can be antisemitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes”.
‘Now we can all exhale’: Synagogue replaces darkness of hate with light
Almost every nation in Europe has adopted the definition, with the UK taking it on as a non-legally binding “tool” in 2016. They were followed by France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Switzerland. The United States has also adopted the definition in a similar capacity.
What is the government’s definition of antisemitism?
Australia does not have a codified definition of antisemitism. However, in 2021, the Morrison government and Labor, under then-opposition leader Anthony Albanese, endorsed the definition.
During a Zoom meeting hosted by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry in 2021, Albanese said the IHRA definition “is one that we have reaffirmed”.
“The Labor Party has [endorsed the definition] and that is our view. It is critical that there be leadership on those issues. Leadership against any form of racism,” he said.
Defence industry minister Pat Conroy, speaking on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday, reaffirmed the government’s support for the definition.
But the government has largely avoided questions about how it would apply the definition to examples. Conroy said he “wouldn’t get into” conversations regarding whether it was racist to call for a one-state solution.
A one-state solution would see the unification of Israel and Palestinian territories into a single nation. What form that would take is contested by various groups.
Calls for a one-state solution could be seen to be antisemitic through an interpretation of the examples provided in the IHRA definition, which include “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination.”
Who supports and opposes the definition?
Both the Zionist Federation of Australia and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry support Segal’s recommendations, with the co-CEO of the latter, Alex Ryvchin, saying the IHRA definition was “a very useful guide”.
“The definition recognises the fact that antisemitism comes in various forms, that historically it’s been directed to Jews as a people or a religious group, and that the same sort of conspiracies and stereotypes can now be redirected towards Israel, and the way that the Jewish people as a collective are spoken about,” Ryvchin said.
Ryvchin called framing of the definition as one that stifles free speech “a nonsense”, pointing to an example provided alongside the definition which says that “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”.
“It’s protecting people who want to legitimately criticise a government, government policies, politicians, and it says that cannot be considered antisemitic,” said Ryvchin. “But it also recognises the fact that things are said, when it comes to Israel, that are said about no other country on Earth.”
He claimed pushback against the definition’s adoption was part of a “deliberate campaign” to undermine the “fight against antisemitism”.
The Jewish Council of Australia released a statement rejecting Segal’s plan, with specific reference to IHRA’s definition, which it described as “widely discredited” and said “has been used to silence legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism”.
Amnesty International Australia released a statement last week calling the IHRA definition “deeply flawed”, while condemning recent attacks on the Jewish community.
The human rights organisation said the definition’s adoption would embolden governments to “stifle growing opposition to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza” and that the broader plan could be “weaponised to censor protest and dissent”.
Why are people concerned about the weaponisation of the definition?
Kenneth Stern, the lead drafter of the definition, who has subsequently become a vocal critic of its formalised adoption, described the Australian government’s perceived adoption of the definition as a “disaster”.
“When you make things a free-speech fight, that’s a problem. What I started seeing, back around 2010 in the United States, is the definition was being weaponised to go after pro-Palestinian speech,” Stern said on ABC’s RN Breakfast on Monday morning.
Jewish groups back antisemitism report, while critics warn of curbs on free speech
“When you start having official definitions of what is a particular type of hatred that leads to, you know, problems that are, in my country at least, the United States, reminiscent of McCarthyism.”
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said that Stern was “probably right that any definition will be weaponised”.
“But I think it’s also true that in the current climate, even if there were no definition, it would be weaponised in different ways.”
Speaking on ABC’s 7.30 on Monday, Burke said that he found the definition helpful as a tool to ensure decisions taken by his department were “in no way involving antisemitism”, particularly when it came to the application of double standards.
Responding to earlier criticism from Stern, Segal told ABC RN Breakfast last week that “Kenneth Stern has been left behind”.
“That definition is the globally accepted definition of antisemitism. Of course, there are always criticisms, but there are criticisms of everything,” Segal said, adding that she had not sought views from Stern on adopting the definition.
Letters SMH
We certainly should oppose all forms of bigotry and so Minister Tony Burke’s mention of misogyny, an evil as persistent as antisemitism, was welcome. Despite regrettable instances of antisemitism making Jews feel unsafe, it is women who are being killed in Australia at an average of one a week. Yet, there is no special envoy to combat misogyny, and if such an office were created, imagine the furious outcry about “wokeness” and “political correctness”.
Caroline Graham, Cromer
Letters The Age
Muslim and Jewish communities need own envoy
Your correspondent does not have her facts correct, (Letters ″Another envoy needed″ 15/7. Indigenous Australians have a federal minister representing them in cabinet. This minister has a huge budget and a department of 1200 public servants receiving and seeking and providing advice to the government on the needs for the Indigenous community. The Muslim and Jewish communities now have special separate envoys giving recommendations to the government on how to stop hate speech, incitement and terrorist acts against their respective communities.
Ian Fayman, Malvern East
~~~~
Israel does not get special treatment
All those who oppose antisemitism envoy, Jillian Segal’s recommendation to apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism claim the definition prevents or unduly restricts criticism of Israel.
However, the definition itself specifically states that “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”.
Those complaining about the definition want to criticise Israel in a way they wouldn’t criticise any other country. Perhaps they should explain why they want to apply such double standards to the Jewish state.
Mark Kessel, Caulfield North
Free speech concerns over defining anti-Semitism
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9016296/free-speech-concerns-over-defining-anti-semitism/
By Tess Ikonomou
A “problematic” definition of anti-Semitism would have ramifications for free speech and likely affect workplaces and university campuses, a legal expert says.
Anti-Semitism envoy Jillian Segal on Thursday handed down her report on combating hatred against Jewish people, recommending Australia adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of prejudice.
But Palestinian advocacy groups, in addition to the definition’s lead drafter Kenneth Stern, have questioned it being used to suppress free speech by conflating criticism of Israel with hatred.
The report also urges the government to cut funding to universities, programs or academics that enable or fail to act against anti-Semitism.
All public funding agreements with festivals or cultural institutions should include terms to allow for the termination of the agreement when they promote or facilitate hatred, it says.
Bill Swannie, a senior lecturer at ACU’s law school, said the IHRA’s definition was “problematic” and there wasn’t a need for any specific prohibition on anti-Semitism.
“If we’ve got a more expanded definition of anti-Semitism, for example, under university codes of conduct, it could mean that people were disciplined in the workplace, or students were disciplined in a university context for conduct which wouldn’t be prohibited under the national racial discrimination laws that we have,” he told AAP.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is mulling over Ms Segal’s findings, and is yet to commit to implementing the recommendations.
The General Delegation of Palestine to Australia said the call for adoption of the IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism was “deeply concerning”.
“All people of conscience must have the right to openly and legitimately criticise injustices and violations committed by any state, including Israel’s ongoing policies and practices of settler-colonial expansionism,” the delegation said in a statement.
“Speaking out against these violations is not an act of anti-Semitism, it is a duty and a moral obligation.”
Liberal Senator James Paterson said the IHRA definition was important, because what constituted anti-Semitism was highly contested.
“It has been a very helpful tool and helpful guideline. No one in Australia, though, is proposing that (it) should be legislated or that there should be consequences under the law for transgressing IHRA,” he told ABC radio.
Ms Segal has been called on to resign in recent days after revelations a trust linked to her husband made a donation to a right-wing lobby group.
Her husband, John Roth, is a director of Henroth Discretionary Trust, which gave $50,000 to Advance Australia in the 2023/24 financial year.
The envoy is not listed as a director or shareholder of the company, Henroth Investments Pty Ltd, which made the payment.
Ms Segal said she had no involvement with her husband’s donations.
Australian Associated Press
Anti-Israel ‘cell’ claims responsibility for Lovitt Technologies arson attack, issues threat to workers
An alarming video has emerged of a masked anti-Israel terrorist claiming to be part of a “cell” behind a firebombing attack on a Melbourne business and threatening its staff. But the Allan government and police are yet to brand it terrorism.
Carly Douglas
The Allan government and police are yet to brand a shocking video in which a masked terrorist calls for people to firebomb cars and threatens Victorian workers as terrorism.
In the alarming video, which has been compared to footage released by al-Qaeda, the terrorist encourages attacks, threatens to release personal information about Victorian workers to “underground networks” and warns them the “cell” will “decide your fate”.
But the state government on Tuesday was yet to label the material or the associated firebombing of three cars outside Lovitt Technologies Australia in Greensborough as terrorism,
Disturbing footage shows a person dressed in all black claiming to be part of a “cell” responsible for the firebombing of a Victorian weapons manufacturer and directly threatening its workers, saying they had their addresses.
The person, who wears blacked out glasses and uses an altered voice, accuses “every worker” at Lovitt Technologies Australia of being “complicit” in the “genocide” occurring in Gaza.
“We will decide your fate, as you have decided the fate of millions,” the masked figure says.
“For the past few months we have been closely watching you.
“We have your addresses.
“All the information we have about you will be distributed to our underground networks.
“Stop arming Israel or else.”
Three cars were graffitied with pro-Palestine messages and set on fire outside Lovitt in Greensborough earlier this month.
In the video, the masked terrorist provides detailed instructions on how to use fire starters to torch cars.
“If you are watching this you can do what we have done,” the terrorist says.
“Be mindful of fingerprints and DNA.”
The July 5 attack at Lovitt came just hours after a mob of pro-Palestine activists ambushed staff and patrons at Israeli restaurant Miznon in Melbourne’s CBD and after the East Melbourne Synagogue was set alight, forcing 20 people to flee.
Towards the end of the video, the anonymous person then calls for “death to Israel, death to Australia, death to America”.
“Every colony will burn,” they say.
“We are behind the enemy lines of this genocide.
“And it is our duty to attack the belly of this colonialist imperialist beast at every opportunity.”
Acting premier, police minister didn’t watch video
At a press conference on Monday afternoon, acting Premier Jaclyn Symes and Police Minister Anthony Carbines claimed that they had not yet watched the video.
Mr Carbines said he had spent Monday morning in meetings with senior police, but would not confirm whether the video was discussed in those meetings.
Ms Symes said she would “condemn any disturbing, racially motivated or hateful conduct” but said it was up to Victoria Police to take appropriate action.
She defended the government’s actions to stamp out extremism.
“When it comes to acting on hate and inappropriate conduct in this state we have acted,” she said.
“We have brought in anti-vilification legislation which will come into effect in September.”
Despite spending years crafting the laws in her previous role as the state’s attorney-general, Ms Symes, could not say whether “Death to the IDF” chants would constitute an offence.
“It is difficult for me to give you a definitive view, nor is it appropriate to be giving you a definitive review in relation to the applications of the laws,” she said.
“There is also constitutional protection for implied right to political freedom.”
She suggested that the death chants could fall under different federal or state laws.
“There are a range of offences, both at the federal level and the state level, that can apply independently of anti-vilification law, which was designed to deal with a lot of situations, but not all situations,” she said.
“If you’re inciting, if you’re asking people to commit violence, there are a range of other offences that also might be appropriate.”
Counter terror detectives probing video
A spokesperson for the Australian Federal Police and Victoria Police confirmed the video and firebombings were being investigated by counter terrorism detectives.
“The matter is now being investigated by the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team, which includes personnel from Victoria Police, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.
“This video is being reviewed as part of the ongoing investigation.”
The spokesperson said no links had yet established between the firebombings and the other incidents.
The activist in the video warns it should be taken as a serious threat.
“This was not an accident or thoughtless act of vandalism,” he says.
“If you continue making weapons components of any kind there will be consequences.
“Consider this a warning.”
The attack on Lovitt happened on the same weekend anti-Israel activists stormed a restaurant in Melbourne’s CBD. Picture: Supplied
Australian Jewish Association chief executive Robert Gregory said the video was a “clear incitement to domestic terrorism”.
“This is a deeply troubling escalation,” he said.
“Australian businesses and their employees are being threatened. Authorities must act urgently — before someone is seriously harmed or killed.”
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said the footage resembled material released by terrorist organisations as he called for those responsible to be met with the law.
“Seeing a group resembling an al-Qaeda terror cell openly pledging to carry out criminal acts is chilling and disturbing,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter that they think they’re doing something just and righteous – Islamist terrorists and neo-Nazis think that too.
“What matters is that we remain a country of laws and not allow bands of zealots to decide what is a legitimate target for violence and criminal acts.
“If we fail to confront this threat we risk becoming a nation of competing violent extremists and not a society under the rule of law.”
STARVING GAZANS REACH FOR FOOD
GAZA CITY: Desperately hungry Palestinians continue to scramble for food at community kitchens in Gaza as experts warn of famine and peace talks go nowhere.
Thousands come to the kitchens every day armed with pots and pans hoping for a serve of steaming broth or a morsel from the stacks of food containers. The Red Cross says its six kitchens in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis serve hot meals to over 19,200 people each day.
While Palestinians starve, the latest stuttering truce talks entered a second week and Israeli strikes continued on the territory, with reports of at least 20 people killed yesterday.
The negotiations in Qatar appear deadlocked after Israel and Hamas blamed the other for blocking a deal for the release of hostages and a 60-day ceasefire after 21 months of fighting.
An official with knowledge of the talks said they were “ongoing” in Doha yesterday, focused on the proposed areas for the deployment of Israeli forces in Gaza.
Israel strikes Syrian forces to protect Druze militias
OMAR SANADIKI, GHAITH ALSAYED and ABBY SEWELL
Clashes between Druze militia and Sunni Bedouin clans backed by Syrian government forces have killed at least 30 people in the southern province of Sweida. Picture: Getty
Israel’s army said on Monday (local time) it struck military tanks in southern Syria, where government forces and Bedouin tribes clashed with Druze militias in the latest escalation in the Middle East country struggling for stability after a 13-year civil war.
Dozens of people have been killed in the fighting between local militias and clans in Syria’s Sweida province. Government security forces sent to restore order on Monday also clashed with local armed groups.
Syria’s Interior Ministry has said more than 30 people died and nearly 100 others have been injured. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, reported at least 99 dead, including two children, two women and 14 members of the security forces.
The clashes in Syria initially broke out between armed groups from the Druze and Sunni Bedouin clans, the observatory said, with some members of the government security forces “actively participating” in support of the Bedouins.
Syrian Interior Ministry spokesman Noureddine al-Baba said government forces entered Sweida in the early morning to restore order.
“Some clashes occurred with outlawed armed groups, but our forces are doing their best to prevent any civilian casualties,” he told the state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV.
Mr Al-Baba told The Associated Press the “clashes are fundamentally not sectarian in nature”.
“The real conflict is between the state and bandits and criminals, not between the state and any Syrian community,” he said. “On the contrary, the state views the Druze community in Sweida as a partner in advancing the national unity project.”
Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the observatory, said the conflict started with the kidnapping and robbery of a Druze vegetable seller by members of a Bedouin tribe who set up a checkpoint, leading to tit-for-tat attacks and kidnappings.
The Interior Ministry described the situation as a dangerous escalation that “comes in the absence of the relevant official institutions, which has led to an exacerbation of the state of chaos, the deterioration of the security situation and the inability of the local community to contain the situation”.
UN Deputy Special Envoy for Syria Najat Rochdi expressed “deep concern” over the violence and urged the government and local groups to “take immediate steps to protect civilians, restore calm, and prevent incitement”.
She said in a statement the clashes underscored the “urgent need for genuine inclusion, trust-building and meaningful dialogue to advance a credible and inclusive political transition in Syria”.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that the Israeli military “attacked targets in Syria as a message and a clear warning to the Syrian regime – we will not allow harm to the Druze in Syria”.
In Israel, the Druze are seen as a loyal minority and often serve in the armed forces.
While many Druze in Syria have said they do not want Israel to intervene on their behalf, factions from the Druze minority have also been suspicious of the new authorities in Damascus after former president Bashar Assad fled the country in December during a rebel offensive led by Sunni Islamist insurgent groups. On several occasions, Druze groups have clashed with security forces from the new government or allied factions.
In May, Israeli forces struck a site near the presidential palace in Damascus, in what was seen as a warning to Syrian interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa. The strike came after dozens were killed in fighting between pro-government gunmen and Druze fighters in the town of Sahnaya and the Druze-majority Damascus suburb of Jaramana.
Over half of the roughly one million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.
A group led by Sheik Hikmat Al-Hijri, a Druze spiritual leader who has been opposed to the new government in Damascus, on Monday issued a statement calling for “international protection”, and accused government forces and the General Security agency of “supporting takfiri gangs” – using a term for extremist Sunni militants.
Syria’s Foreign Ministry called for “all countries and organisations to respect the authority of the Syrian Arab Republic and refrain from supporting any separatist rebel movements”.
In a statement, it called for Syrians to “cease acts of violence, surrender illegal weapons and thwart those seeking to dismantle the Syrian social fabric and sow discord and division”.
The Druze religious sect is a minority group that began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. In Syria, they largely live in the southern Sweida province and some suburbs of Damascus, mainly in Jaramana and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya to the south.
Deadly gun battles erupt in mainly Druze city in Syria
Dozens of people have been killed after gun battles between Bedouin tribes and local fighters in
The Druze developed their own militias during Syria’s civil war, during which they sometimes faced attacks by Islamic State and other militant groups.
Israel has taken an aggressive stance toward Syria’s new leaders since Assad’s fall, saying it does not want Islamic militants near its borders. Israeli forces earlier seized a UN-patrolled buffer zone on Syrian territory along the border with the Golan Heights, and have launched hundreds of air strikes on military sites in Syria.
The Trump administration has been pushing for the new Syrian government to move toward normalisation with Israel. Syrian officials have acknowledged holding indirect talks with Israel to attempt to defuse tensions, but have not responded to reports that the two sides have also held direct talks.
US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack told The Associated Press last week he believes normalising ties will happen “like unwrapping an onion, slowly”.
SECOND CHILLING LOVITT ATTACK VIDEO ONLINE
Brendan Kearns
A chilling video has emerged on social media claiming to show footage from the attack on a Melbourne business by activists.
The same social media page that posted a video on Monday from a person claiming credit for the attack posted the footage.
“TOP ARMING ‘ISRAEL’ OR ELSE,” the caption reads.
“Footage from the cell that hit imperialist weapons firm Lovitt Technologies in Greensborough on the 5th of July.”
The video appears to have been filmed by a body-worn camera and shows a fire being lit under the front wheel of a car.
The person in the footage then spray-paints a message on a car before running away. At least two others also run away.
Throughout the clip, the contentious protest chant “Death, death to the IDF” is played.
The previous video, still unverified, shows a person speaking with a digitally altered voice and dressed head to toe in black. It was posted by the same account as the new video as a “Communique from torching of three vehicles at Lovitt technologies”.
CCTV of the incident shows five people entering the businesses just before 4am on July 5 and setting fire to three cars.
“This is a clear and serious threat,” the person said in the video. “If you continue making weapons or components of any kind, there will be consequences. Consider this a warning.” The person then said their motives were anti-Israel, anti-American and anti-Australian sentiment.
The group claimed it was targeting Lovitt because the firm supplies components to weapons companies, including Lockheed Martin, BAE and Boeing. The company received a grant for work on the supply chain for F-35 fighter jets, a version of which is used by Israel.
The video threatened the Melbourne workers.
NEWSWIRE
ISRAELI ATTACKS TAKE OUT SYRIAN TANKS
OMAR SANADIKI – GHAITH ALSAYED – ABBY SEWELL
Israel’s army said on Tuesday (AEST) it struck military tanks in southern Syria, where government forces and Bedouin tribes clashed with Druze militias in the latest escalation in the Middle East country struggling for stability after a 13-year civil war.
Nearly 100 people have been killed in the fighting between local militias and clans in Syria’s Sweida province. Syrian government forces entered the majority Druze city of Sweida on Tuesday, the interior ministry said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported 99 people killed since the fighting erupted on Sunday – 60 Druze, including four civilians, 18 Bedouin fighters, 14 security personnel and seven unidentified people in military uniforms. The defence ministry reported 18 deaths among the ranks of the armed forces.
The clashes in Syria initially broke out between armed groups from the Druze and Sunni Bedouin clans, the observatory said, with some members of the government security forces “actively participating” in support of the Bedouins.
Syrian Interior Ministry spokesman Noureddine al-Baba said government forces entered Sweida to restore order. “Some clashes occurred with outlawed armed groups, but our forces are doing their best to prevent any civilian casualties,” he told the state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV.
Mr Baba told Associated Press the “clashes are fundamentally not sectarian in nature”.
“The real conflict is between the state and bandits and criminals, not between the state and any Syrian community,” he said. “On the contrary, the state views the Druze community in Sweida as a partner in advancing the national unity project.”
Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the observatory, said the conflict started with the kidnapping and robbery of a Druze vegetable seller by members of a Bedouin tribe who set up a checkpoint, leading to tit-for-tat attacks and kidnappings.
The Interior Ministry described the situation as a dangerous escalation that “comes in the absence of the relevant official institutions, which has led to an exacerbation of the state of chaos, the deterioration of the security situation and the inability of the local community to contain the situation”.
UN Deputy Special Envoy for Syria Najat Rochdi expressed “deep concern” over the violence and urged the government and local groups to “take immediate steps to protect civilians, restore calm, and prevent incitement”.
She said in a statement the clashes underscored the “urgent need for genuine inclusion, trust-building and meaningful dialogue to advance a credible and inclusive political transition in Syria”.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a statement the Israeli military “attacked targets in Syria as a message and a clear warning to the Syrian regime – we will not allow harm to the Druze in Syria”.
In Israel, the Druze are seen as a loyal minority and often serve in the armed forces. While many Druze in Syria have said they do not want Israel to intervene on their behalf, factions from the Druze minority have also been suspicious of the new authorities in Damascus after former president Bashar Assad fled the country in December during a rebel offensive led by Sunni Islamist insurgent groups. On several occasions, Druze groups have clashed with security forces from the new government or allied factions.
In May, Israeli forces struck a site near the presidential palace in Damascus, in what was seen as a warning to Syrian interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa. The strike came after dozens were killed in fighting between pro-government gunmen and Druze fighters in Sahnaya and the Druze-majority Damascus suburb of Jaramana.
More than half of the roughly one million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.
A group led by Sheik Hikmat al-Hijri, a Druze spiritual leader who has been opposed to the new government in Damascus, on Monday issued a statement calling for “international protection”, and accused government forces and the General Security agency of “supporting takfiri gangs” – using a term for extremist Sunni militants. The Druze developed their own militias during Syria’s civil war, during which they sometimes faced attacks by Islamic State and other militant groups.
AP
Letters the Australian
In name only
Nick Dyrenfurth’s expose of the Jewish Council of Australia was powerful (“Why the Jewish Council doesn’t care about Australian Jews”, 15/7). The JCA is clearly a misrepresentation. Its continued use of the name Jewish Council of Australia is misleading. A more honest name – such as Anti-Jewish Council of Australia – would reflect its true activities with at least some integrity.
Lee Smith, Kenmore, Qld
Ed Husic says Australia shouldn’t necessarily get ‘hung up’ on definition of antisemitism
Ed Husic says Australia shouldn’t “necessarily get hung up on definitions” amid a report from the federal antisemitism envoy calling on the government to adopt a working definition of it. Husic spoke to RN Breakfast about envoy Jillian Segal’s plan to address anti-Jewish hatred, saying he’d much prefer an effort to “bring people together without necessarily having to use sticks and threats of funding”.
‘I just think the issue of definition instantly brings into question whether or not people will be able to raise their concerns’, Ed Husic said. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
Segal has proposed universities and artists could have funding withheld if they fail to act against antisemitism, among other recommendations in a wide-ranging plan released this month. Husic said this morning:
I would much prefer us finding ways to bring people together rather than being heavy-handed in response. We should always be focusing on what brings us together. …
We shouldn’t necessarily get hung up on definitions. I understand the government will go through and take on board the recommendation that’s in the special envoy’s report. I just think the issue of definition instantly brings into question whether or not people will be able to raise their concerns about the actions, for example, of what the Netanyahu government is doing in Gaza and how that would be treated under a definition.
The controversy over Jillian Segal’s antisemitism plan – Full Story podcast
Media Report 2025.07.15
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke says he believes antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal did not know husband’s trust donated to Advance
ABC | Paul Johnson | 14 July 2025
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-14/tony-burke-antisemitism-envoy-jillian-segal-advance/105531310
- Australia’s antisemitism envoy says she had “no involvement” in a donation made by a trust linked to her husband that went to lobby group Advance.
- Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke says he believed her statement.
- Ms Segal has proposed universities have funding withheld if they fail to reduce hatred against Jewish students.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke says he believes antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal when she says she did not know about a $50,000 donation a trust linked to her husband John Roth made to right-wing political lobby group Advance.
Ms Segal had on Sunday distanced herself from the donation that was made public in a report by The Klaxon.
That report cited Australian Electoral Commission donation records from the 2023/24 reporting period.
Australian Security and Investments Commission (ASIC) records list Ms Segal’s husband and his brother Stanley Roth, as directors of Henroth Investments Pty Ltd.
“No one would tolerate or accept my husband dictating my politics, and I certainly won’t dictate his,” Ms Segal told SBS on Sunday.
“I have had no involvement in his donations, nor will I.”
Advance — formerly Advance Australia — is a right-wing lobby group that has previously accused left-leaning politicians of being “mostly on the same side as Hamas” when it comes to the war in Gaza.
“I wasn’t aware of it until the reports came out,” Mr Burke told 7.30 of the donation.
“Advance is an appalling organisation … and I have no time for that organisation at all.
“It’s a long time since we’ve been a country where you would blame a woman for decisions of her husband. And so with that in mind, I don’t think she’s answerable for her husband.
“She said she didn’t know about it, and I’ve got no reason to do anything other than believe her.”
Should universities face funding cuts?
One of the recommendations from Ms Segal’s recently released report into antisemitism is to withhold funding from universities that fail to reduce hatred against Jewish students.
Ms Segal, who was appointed to the envoy role by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last year, said her plan was a comprehensive, long-term approach to combating antisemitism and introducing a strategy already in place in many other nations.
“We cannot hope to really abolish antisemitism, but we can push it to the margins,” Ms Segal said.
Asked if he felt the government would accept the recommendation to strip funding Mr Burke said that was not the goal.
“The objective here is not to be stripping funding, it’s not to be cancelling people, the objective is actually to never fall foul of the need to make sure that we’re combating antisemitism,” Mr Burke said.
“Over the last year-and-a-half, we have seen a spike in antisemitism in Australia.
“We want to make sure that students can go to university and study without being harassed and some have been harassed.”
++++++
Israel said Hamas was looting aid — then it armed the gangs who were actually stealing it
ABC | Eric Tlozek & Chérine Yazbeck | 14 July 2025
Groups of men huddle around fires, waiting for aid trucks to roll through central Gaza.
Some of them used to be teachers and other professionals.
Now they have banded together to form gangs and raid aid convoys.
The scene is like one from the Mad Max movies, a dystopian setting where there are no rules.
“We are a group of men organised into crews — we call ourselves ‘the ones who block the roads’,” one of the men, Mohammad Salman, told the ABC.
“If you want to get aid and secure food, you have to come through here; otherwise you won’t eat.
“Today, all these people have become gangsters. They seize food from trucks and anything they find on the road. They’ll take food away from anyone. If someone grabs food from a truck and I don’t get my share, I’ll go after him.
“That’s how we have become. If someone gets something, I will take it from him to eat.
“Some people here die from stabbings and attacks — all over food. We’ve all turned into mafias and road blockers.”
Some of the men say they have worked with a gang leader named Yasser Abu Shabab.
‘Uncharismatic, illiterate’ gang leader
Once a wanted criminal, it’s now widely believed that Abu Shabab has been armed and protected by the Israeli government — to take control of the part of southern Gaza where his family holds sway.
Abu Shabab is apparently an unlikely figure to lead a resistance against Hamas’s rule in Gaza, Gazan analyst Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in The New Arab.
“Police in Gaza were perplexed when he emerged as a top gang leader. The security source told The New Arab that Abu Shabab is 35 years old, thin, weak, short [around 150 centimetres tall], uncharismatic, illiterate, has strabismus in one eye, and has never received military training,” he said.
“To them, he didn’t seem like someone with the leadership skills necessary to form a group of 300 armed militants, steal truckloads of aid, and store it under the radar.”
Israeli media have reported Abu Shabab escaped from jail with Israeli assistance early in the war.
“He was in a Hamas prison until October 2023 for theft and drug offences, and his release came under the cover of an Israeli attack on security facilities in the Strip at the beginning of the war. From that moment on, his name emerged as someone who would fill the security vacuum in eastern Rafah,” the Israeli newspaper Maariv wrote.
The United Nations has identified Abu Shabab’s gang as one of those raiding aid convoys when they entered Gaza, saying they were doing so with the apparent protection or indifference of the Israeli military.
Former French diplomat Jean-Pierre Filliu, who spent one month in Gaza with Doctors Without Borders from December 2024 to January 2025, said he witnessed the gang being protected by the IDF while looting trucks.
“The Israeli military recognised its inability to promote a clan-based alternative to Hamas and decided to rely more or less openly on organised crime,” he wrote in Le Monde.
“The key figure in this manoeuvre was a previously minor member of a Rafah family, Yasser Abu Shabab, whom Hamas had imprisoned in the past for his various trafficking activities. But Israeli protection allowed Abu Shabab to substantially expand its activities and poach, from other clans, some 100 loyalists ready for anything, often ex-convicts.
“What could only be called a gang operated under the eyes of the Israeli army … and it was equipped with brand-new weapons, an irrefutable indication of its collaboration with the occupiers.”
Gangs taking whatever they can
A gang member confirmed to the ABC that Abu Shabab’s group had been stealing and selling aid.
“People would work normally with Yasser just like employees. He had two shifts. It was easy,” the gang member said.
“We used to stand by the roadside to wait for trucks from Gaza to Kerem Shalom. I would take whatever I could — flour, sugar, anything we needed.”
The man explained that much of the looted food was then sold to merchants, although he insisted aid groups were given some of it.
“They would unload the goods, and traders would come to buy them. Half of the supplies were distributed to institutions like schools,” he said.
“The aid agency would arrive to collect its share and then distribute it to schools.”
The gang member alleged Hamas had previously been stealing some aid, something the group denies.
“He [Yasser] was working in security when he saw the government and Hamas members stealing from the aid trucks as they passed through central Gaza and Nuseirat,” he told the ABC.
“That’s when he decided to take action — stealing the trucks to distribute some of the aid himself, handing out money, flour … and that was it.”
Abu Shabab and his men, now calling themselves “the Anti-Terror Service” or the “Popular Forces”, have been accused by many Gazans of working with the Israeli government.
The Israeli government has said openly it has backed groups like the one Abu Shabab runs.
Netanyahu arms ‘clans’ in Gaza
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted in June that his government had “activated” clans in Gaza opposed to Hamas.
That sparked concerns from the opposition that their weapons could eventually be turned on the IDF, or used to create unmanageable chaos.
“In consultation with security officials, we made use of clans in Gaza that are opposed to Hamas,” he said in a video on social media.
“What’s wrong with that? It saves the lives of IDF soldiers.”
The Times of Israel said Defence officials had confirmed Mr Netanyahu was referring to the Abu Shabab gang.
“The sources confirmed that Israel has been arming the gang with Kalashnikov rifles, including some that were seized from Hamas during the ongoing war,” it wrote on June 5.
Former Israeli defence minister Avigdor Lieberman has alleged Abu Shabab had ties to the IS terrorist group.
“The Israeli government is giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons, identified with Islamic State, at the direction of the prime minister,” he told Israeli public radio.
The Abu Shabab group was alleged to be providing security for the new, Israeli and US-backed food distribution operation, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
It denied any links with the gang.
“GHF has no association with Yasser or the ‘Anti-Terror Service’,” it said in a statement sent to the ABC.
Hamas fighters have attacked the group, but said Israeli forces came to its defence, Israeli media reported.
The arrival of the new aid operation has changed conditions in the south of Gaza, but Hamas is still keen to kill or imprison Abu Shabab again.
On July 2, the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry in Gaza gave Abu Shabab 10 days to surrender himself and face trial for treason.
The ABC called and sent messages to Yasser Abu Shabab but did not receive a response.
Comment has also been sought from the Israeli government and the IDF.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government and military continue to dismiss United Nations reports of a worsening hunger crisis in Gaza.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is only distributing food parcels at limited locations in southern and central Gaza.
Israel’s government last month stopped allowing food shipments into the north.
The “men who block the roads” are still waiting by the aid routes, hoping for any chance to seize supplies and stay alive.
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Children among Palestinians killed by missile that IDF says malfunctioned
ABC / Reuters | 14 July 2025
- A missile strike, which the Israeli military says missed its target, has killed at least eight Palestinians, most of them children, central Gaza, according to local officials.
- The strike hit a water distribution point in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing eight and injuring 17 others, an emergency physician at Al-Awda Hospital said.
- Negotiations aimed at securing a ceasefire appear to be deadlocked, with the two sides divided over the extent of an eventual Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian enclave.
Warning: This story contains graphic details and imagery.
At least eight Palestinians, most of them children, have been killed and more than a dozen wounded in central Gaza while walking to collect water, local officials say.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said a missile missed its target and it “regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians”.
Six children and two adults were killed.
The IDF said the missile was intended to hit an Islamic Jihad militant in the area but a malfunction caused it to fall “dozens of metres from the target”.
It said the incident was under review.
The strike hit a water distribution point in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing eight and injuring 17 others, an emergency physician at Al-Awda Hospital said.
Water shortages in Gaza have worsened sharply in recent weeks, with fuel shortages causing desalination and sanitation facilities to close, making people dependent on collection centres where they can fill up their plastic containers.
Hours later, 12 people were killed by an Israeli strike on a market in Gaza City, including a prominent hospital consultant, Ahmad Qandil, Palestinian media reported.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the attack.
The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages into Gaza.
At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages there are believed to still be alive.
Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday that more than 58,000 people had been killed since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, with 139 people added to the death toll over the past 24 hours.
Ceasefire talks stalled
Negotiations aimed at securing a ceasefire appear to be deadlocked, with the two sides divided over the extent of an eventual Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian enclave, Palestinian and Israeli sources said at the weekend.
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said he was “hopeful” about Gaza ceasefire negotiations underway in Qatar.
He told reporters in Teterboro, New Jersey, that he planned to meet senior Qatari officials on the sidelines of the FIFA Club World Cup final.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to convene ministers late on Sunday to discuss the latest developments in the talks, an Israeli official said.
The indirect talks over a US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire are being held in Doha, but optimism that surfaced last week of a looming deal has largely faded, with both sides accusing each other of intransigence.
Mr Netanyahu said Israel would not back down from its core demands — releasing all the hostages still in Gaza, destroying Hamas and ensuring Gaza will never again be a threat to Israel.
The Israeli PM and his ministers were also set to discuss a plan on Sunday to move hundreds of thousands of Gazans to the southern area of Rafah, in what Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has described as a new “humanitarian city” but which would be likely to draw international criticism for forced displacement.
An Israeli source briefed on discussions in Israel said the plan was to establish the complex in Rafah during the ceasefire, if it was reached.
On Saturday, a Palestinian source familiar with the truce talks, said Hamas rejected withdrawal maps that Israel proposed, because they would leave about 40 per cent of the territory under Israeli control, including all of Rafah.
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Burke slams Advance after donation by Segal’s spouse
The Age (& Sydney Morning Herald) | Olivia Ireland & Mostafa Rachwani | 15 July 2025
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has slammed conservative campaigning group Advance and its donors after it emerged that antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal’s husband’s family trust gave $50,000 to the controversial organisation.
But Burke defended Segal, a lawyer and businesswoman with a long career of high-profile roles, saying that claims she should be held responsible for her husband’s actions were out dated and misogynistic.
Australian Electoral Commission donation records lodged on behalf of a trust called Henroth, which is named for the father of Segal’s husband John Roth, show it gave $50,000 to Advance – formerly Advance Australia – in 2023-24, making it one of the group’s largest donors.
“Advance is an appalling organisation, and those who fund it are not acting in the cause of social cohesion,” Burke said. “But another of the forms of bigotry that we are fighting is misogyny, and there is no way I am going back to the 1950s and blaming a woman for the actions of her husband.”
Segal distanced herself from the donation on Sunday, saying she had no involvement. “No one would tolerate or accept my husband dictating my politics, and I certainly won’t dictate his,” Segal said in a brief statement. “I have had no involvement in his donations, nor will I.” The Age does not suggest otherwise.
Segal delivered a plan last week to tackle rising antisemitism in Australia, which called for widespread education on the issue, monitoring of media reporting and funding cuts to organisations that fail to tackle hatred of Jews. In media interviews, Segal described it as a good-faith proposal to advance social cohesion.
Advance, a conservative campaigning group, has previously accused left-leaning politicians of being “mostly on the same side as Hamas” and compared Labor to the Chinese Communist Party while advertising against the Voice to parliament referendum and immigration.
Former NSW Labor premier and foreign minister Bob Carr, who has become an advocate for the Palestinian cause, said the donation should have been publicised when Segal was ap pointed to the role last year.
“Ms Segal had a clear obligation when she was appointed to this job to declare that her husband’s family trust funds a group called Advance, notorious for vilifying Palestinians and immigrant communities, even running a campaign against Welcome to Country,” he said. Segal’s office declined to comment. Roth, a successful property investor, was contacted for comment.
Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, said Carr’s criticisms smacked of “conspiratorial thinking” and accused him of trying to dis credit Segal and her report. ” [Carr] also seeking to tarnish her on the ridiculous basis of something her husband is alleged to have done,” Rubenstein said.
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley backed Segal’s appointment and described her background in law, across executive boards and the public service, as exceptional. “We welcomed her appointment and stand by her appointment,” Ley said. “She is an eminent Australian and she has done outstanding work as the antisemitism envoy.”
Her report also recommended that all Australian public institutions adopt a definition of antisemitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The definition has been embraced by Jewish groups and some parts of the Australian government, but attacked by critics who argue that it stifles free speech and conflates criticism of Israel and its government with antisemitism.
A Labor backbencher said, on the condition of anonymity to avoid speaking out of party ranks, that this report creates “a potential nightmare” politically, as people would wonder why one group was receiving particular treatment.
“We have to wait and see what the anti-Islamophobia envoy has to say, I guess it’s going to be a balancing act,” the MP said. “These latest revelations cast a bit of a shadow on Jillian Segal’s report, no matter how much she tries to distance herself from it.”
The Lebanese Muslim Association and Australia Palestine Advocacy Network both said Segal should be stood down from her role as envoy because of what the network called her “proximity to Advance”.
“This isn’t about dictating a spouse’s politics,” the association’s spokesperson said. “It’s about credibility, account ability, and public trust.” The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, of which Segal was formerly president, declined to comment.
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Anonymous ‘group’ claims arson responsibility
The Age | Carla Jaeger, Cassandra Morgan & Chip Le Grand | 15 July 2025
The investigation into an arson attack on an Israeli-linked military parts manufacturer in Melbourne’s north-east has been escalated to counterterrorism detectives, following a video circulating online of an anonymous individual threatening further action, purportedly on behalf of a group.
The four-minute video shows a masked individual standing in front of a Palestine flag and claiming responsibility for the July 5 attack on vehicles and property at the Greensborough headquarters of Lovitt Technologies, which makes components for planes and aerospace, on behalf of an “anonymous cell”. The video goes on to threaten further at tacks, noting “we have your addresses” in what appears to be a threat towards workers at the company.
The Age has decided not to publish the entire video for public safety reasons. It has also not been able to independently identify the original source of the video, which has been shared on social media by supporters of the vandalism.
CCTV footage released by detectives from the night of the attack shows five hooded figures setting alight three cars and spray-painting the Lovitt Technologies building with anti-Israel Defence Forces graffiti. The business, in Para Road, Greensborough, has previously been targeted by protesters op posing the Israeli military.
In the video, the anonymous figure flags the attack will not be an isolated incident. “This was not an accident, nor thoughtless vandalism. This is a clear and serious threat – if you continue making weapons components of any kind, there will be consequences,” the individual in the video, whose voice is distorted, says.
The speaker claims Lovitt Technologies was attacked over its backing of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is used by Israel and other nations. Lovitt has produced titanium longeron keels for the F-35’s inner wing assembly for Lockheed Martin “Lovitt was targeted because it is a bottleneck in the supply chain,” the individual says.
The speaker goes on to threaten violence against Lovitt Technologies employees: “Every worker in this supply chain is complicit … We will decide your fate as you have decided the fate of millions. For the past few months, we have been closely watching you. We have your addresses. All the information we have about you will be distributed to our underground networks.”
The video began circulating widely online yesterday after it was uploaded to an anonymous Instagram account, but it was first reported by The Guardian late last week. A Victoria Police spokesperson said yesterday that the investigation into the vandalism attack had been escalated to its counterterrorism unit.
“The matter is now being investigated by the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team, which includes personnel from Victoria Police, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.
“Investigators are aware of a video which has been circulating where a group has claimed responsibility for the incident. This video is being reviewed as part of the ongoing investigation,” the spokesperson said.
Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said failing to confront the threat of extremist behaviour would harm Australia. “Seeing a group resembling an al-Qaeda terror cell openly pledging to carry out criminal acts is chilling and disturbing. It doesn’t matter that they think they’re doing something just and righteous Islamist terrorists and neo Nazis think that too.
“What matters is that we remain a country of laws and not allow bands of zealots to decide what is a legitimate target for violence and criminal acts.
” Dvir Abramovich, chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission described the video as a “manifesto of violence”. “The people targeted in this video are ordinary Australians. Parents who pack school lunches. Children who kiss them goodnight.
“They were not just threatened, they were told they were being watched. We now face a chilling question: what happens when a campaign of hate leaves the internet and enters your driveway? What happens when slogans turn to gasoline? This is not an isolated episode.”
The vandalism attack occurred the same night Sydney man Angelo Loras allegedly at tempted to firebomb an East Melbourne synagogue with children and families inside, and 20 people stormed Israeli restaurant Miznon in Melbourne’s CBD. Police have not found a formal link between the three incidents or determined if the firebombing was an act of terror.
A Lovitt Technologies spokesperson declined to comment, citing the police investigation. Police Minister Anthony Carbines said he was made aware of the video yesterday morning. “It’s outrageous and it’s appalling, and we would expect that the full force of law is brought to bear,” he said.
The video footage emerged as Victorian Opposition Leader Brad Battin called on new police chief Mike Bush to explain what he planned to do to stop ex pressions of anti-Jewish hatred at public demonstrations. Battin expressed frustration that during last Sunday’s regular pro-Palestine rally in central Melbourne, protesters chanted “Death to the IDF” and displayed swastikas without intervention by police who were monitoring the march.
“Mike Bush, obviously, he is fairly new in the job and we will give him the benefit of the doubt, but he needs to be coming out and ex plaining what he is doing when it comes to the protests here in this state,” he said.
Carbines accused Battin of interfering with the police chief’s independence. “The chief commissioner is an independent office holder. He makes de terminations about what investigations he’s involved in and what he investigates.”
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Israeli missile kills six children collecting water
The Age (& Sydney Morning Herald) / Reuters, AP | Crispian Balmer | 15 July 2025
At least eight Palestinians, most of them children, were killed and more than a dozen were wounded in central Gaza when they went to collect water, local officials said, in an Israeli strike which the military said missed its target.
The strike hit a water distribution point in Nuseirat refugee camp on Sunday, killing six children and injuring 17 others, said Ahmed Abu Saifan, an emergency physician at Al Awda Hospital. The Israeli military said the missile was intended to hit an Islamic Jihad militant in the area but a malfunction had caused it to fall “dozens of metres from the target”.
“The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians,” it said in a statement, adding that the incident was under review. Water shortages in Gaza have worsened sharply in recent weeks, with fuel shortages causing desalination and sanitation facilities to close, making people dependent on collection centres where they can fill up their plastic containers.
Ramadan Nassar, a witness who lives in the area, told the Associated Press that about 20 children and 14 adults had been lined up to get water. He said Palestinians walk some two kilometres to fetch water from the area. In Nuseirat, a small boy leaned over a body bag to say goodbye to a friend. “There is no safe place,” resident Raafat Fanouna said as some people went over the rubble with sticks and bare hands.
Hours after the strike on a water distribution point, 12 people were killed by an Israeli attack on a market in Gaza City, including a prominent hospital consultant, Ahmad Qandil, Palestinian media reported. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the attack.
Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday that more than 58,000 people had been killed since the start of the war be tween Israel and Hamas in October 2023, with 139 people added to the death toll over the past 24 hours. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its tally, but says more than half of those killed were women and children.
Negotiations aimed at securing a ceasefire appeared to be deadlocked, with the two sides divided over the extent of an eventual Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian enclave, Palestinian and Israeli sources said at the weekend.
The indirect talks over a US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire are being held in Doha, but optimism that surfaced last week of a looming deal has largely faded, with both sides accusing each other of intransigence.
In a video posted on Telegram on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not back down from its core demands – releasing all the hostages still in Gaza, destroying Hamas and ensuring Gaza will never again be a threat to Israel. Late on Sunday, Washington time, Trump said he hoped talks for a ceasefire would be “straightened out” this week.
The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel, killing about 1200 people and taking 251 hostages into Gaza. At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages there are believed to be alive.
Netanyahu and his ministers are set to discuss a plan to move hundreds of thousands of Gazans to the southern area of Rafah, in what Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has described as a new “humanitarian city” but which is likely to draw international criticism for forced displacement.
An Israeli source briefed on discussions in Israel said the plan was to establish the complex in Rafah during a ceasefire if it were reached. On Saturday, a Palestinian source familiar with the truce talks said Hamas rejected withdrawal maps that Israel proposed because they would leave about 40 per cent of the territory under Israeli control, including all of Rafah.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas has displaced almost the entire population of more than 2 million people, but Gazans say nowhere is safe in the coastal enclave. Early on Sunday morning, a missile hit a house in Gaza City that a family had moved to after receiving an evacuation order from their home on the south ern outskirts.
“My aunt, her husband and the children are gone. What is the fault of the children who died in an ugly bloody massacre at dawn?” said Anas Matar, standing in the building’s rubble. “They came here, and they were hit. There is no safe place in Gaza,” he said.
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Segal misjudges
The Age | Letters | 15 July 2025
Antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal attacked the ABC last week (“Antisemitism envoy singles out ABC reporting in stoush over ‘manipulated narratives” (11/7), and has recommended that universities be penalised if they fail to address antisemitism.
The recent unlawful attacks on synagogues and Jewish properties is un-Australian. Why has this occurred and how can we stop it?
When the leader of Israel, justifiably defends itself against a brutal attack by Hamas, it does not have the right or justification to murder thousands of innocent women and children for months, preventing medical aid and food from reaching injured, starving and harmless people.
Our young university students see them as their mothers, sisters and brothers. European migrants like myself, are not antisemitic and support Israel, but view the behaviour of Benjamin Netanyahu as an accused war criminal who has lost the support of the majority of the Israeli population.
Jillian Segal would be wise not to misjudge a large proportion of the Australian people who view Netanyahu as the principal cause of recent public demonstrations and growing concern with his abuse of power to save his own political skin and criminal accusations.
Rob Kalkman, South Melbourne
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Synagogue arson suspect ‘lured by cash’
Sydney Morning Herald | Adelaide Lang | 15 July 2025
A man who allegedly started a fire at a synagogue was not motivated by hatred or religious beliefs but instead was following instructions for a payday, a court has been told.
Adam Edward Moule, 34, was arrested over an attack on Newtown Synagogue in Sydney’s inner west and antisemitic graffiti sprayed in Queens Park in the city’s east in January. He and neighbour Leon Emmanuel Sofilas allegedly left a van containing fire extinguishers filled with red paint to be collected by people who used them to spray paint “f*** Jews” on property in Queens Park.
Moule then allegedly set a small fire at the synagogue, the boundary wall of which Sofilas allegedly defaced with nearly a dozen swastikas. But Moule didn’t know the fire extinguishers would be used for offensive slogans or what was being spray-painted, the NSW Supreme Court was told yesterday.
Moule is not accused of acting out of religious hatred or in furtherance of any ideology or discriminatory belief. It’s alleged he was following instructions issued by Sofilas, who in turn claims he was receiving directions from another man.
The prosecutor likened Moule’s alleged offending to a person receiving directions through service platforms such as Uber or Airtasker. “Everything was kept very separate and it was passed down (through) distinct groups of people,” he said.
The organisers allegedly wanted police to believe they had valuable information which could be exchanged for an affidavit of assistance in serious drug matters. But there was a possibility Moule would commit further offences if he was released on bail ahead of anticipated guilty pleas later in July, the prosecutor said.
Moule’s lawyer Mark Klees argued he had spent nearly six months in custody on remand and wouldn’t be at liberty for long before being sentenced. Refusing bail could have “drastic consequences” including Moule possibly losing his home and winding up homeless, Klees said.
Justice Desmond Fagan said the offending was “of a very low order” considering Moule’s lack of initiation and the “almost negligible property damage” caused by the fire, but more serious because he allegedly knew he was at a synagogue.
Starting a fire outside a place of worship conveyed a threat to the congregation and had “the capacity to induce apprehension in them of community hostility or even violence”, the judge said. He granted Moule bail under strict conditions.
Moule has also been charged with growing 15 cannabis plants and possessing five stolen debit cards after police raided his home. He is expected to enter pleas when he returns to court.
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Anti-Israel ‘cell’ claims credit for firebombing, threatens workers
The Australian | Ryan Bourke | 15 July 2025
A video circulating online shows a masked figure taking responsibility for the firebombing of a Victorian-owned weapons manufacturer, and threatening to target its workers with further violence.
Victoria Police have launched an investigation into the July 5 incident.
“Investigators are aware of a video which has been circulating where a group has claimed responsibility for the incident,” a police spokesman said.
“This video is being reviewed as part of the ongoing investigation … Police are urging anyone with information about the Greensborough incident and those involved to come forward.”
In the four-minute video that began circulating on Sunday night, a black-clad man wearing a balaclava uses voice-altering software to tell viewers “This is an anonymous communique by the cell that torched three cars at Lovitt Technologies”.
The figure then threatens further “consequences” if the company continues to manufacture weapons, and instructs viewers how to conduct firebombings of their own, adding that workers should “consider this a warning”.
After explaining the company’s link to the manufacturing of Israeli weapons, the figure warned workers at the company they had had “years to contemplate the consequences of your actions”.
“We will decide your fate as you have decided the fate of millions … for the past few months we have been watching you, we have your addresses,” the figure warns.
“All information we have about you will be distributed to our underground networks.”
The video then shows the figure demonstrating how to firebomb a car using paper bags and fire starters.
“Place one bag under the front and one under the back tyre … be mindful of fingerprints and DNA.”
The alarming threat comes after five hooded offenders were captured on CCTV entering Lovitt Technologies Australia on Para Road, Greensborough, in Melbourne’s northeast, just before 4am on Saturday, July 5.
Police allege that the hooded offenders then set fire to three vehicles and used spray paint to write various slogans on the cars and on a building wall.
The attack remains under investigation by the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team, which includes personnel from Victoria Police, Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. The video was posted to X by the Australian Jewish Association at roughly 10.30pm on Sunday.
AJA chief Robert Gregory said: “It was sent to us by a concerned member of the Jewish community who came across it on a social media page of anti-Israel activists.”
A search of Instagram revealed several accounts with anti-Israel posts began sharing the video about 7pm.
The original source of the video remains unknown.
Speaking to The Australian, Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said: “Seeing a group resembling an al-Qa’ida terror cell openly pledging to carry out criminal acts is chilling and disturbing.
“Today it is a business they oppose and tomorrow it will be individuals, politicians, journalists or religious institutions they deem impure. We expect this incident to be investigated and for those responsible to be met with the law.
“If we fail to confront this threat, we risk becoming a nation of competing violent extremists and not a society under the rule of law.”
Lovitt Technologies has been contacted for comment.
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Anti-semitism policy slammed as ‘Trumpian’
The Australian | Natasha Bita | 15 July 2025
University students have slammed the “Trumpian authoritarian overreach’’ of the Segal review into anti-Semitism, as the academics’ union warns of bullying and cronyism on university boards.
National Union of Students president Ashlyn Horton said threats to strip universities of funding over anti-Semitic speech or behaviour “mirrors tactics used by Trumpist officials in the US’’.
“It’s authoritarian, not anti-racist,’’ she said on Tuesday. “We’re seeing a manufacturing of moral panic, leveraging public money, and trying to reshape university culture from above.’’
Ms Horton said universities should be allowed to develop their own anti-racism strategies in consultation with staff and students. Citing Islamophobia, she said “if the government truly cared about student safety, it would address the broader rise in all forms of racial and religious discrimination’’.
Anthony Albanese has yet to respond to recommendations by his government’s special envoy to combat anti-Semitism, Jillian Segal, who wants academics, researchers and universities stripped of public funding “as a last resort’’ for promoting hate speech or anti-Jewish sentiment.
Universities Australia has welcomed the Segal review,
The student union’s attack coincides with a National Tertiary Education Union survey showing “dysfunction, secrecy and intimidation’’ on university governing boards.
NTEU national president Alison Barnes said the report confirmed “university governance is completely broken’’.
“Decisions are made behind closed doors by people with no connection to the daily realities of staff or students,’’ Dr Barnes said.
“We’ve seen vice-chancellors paid millions while casual staff have wages stolen. For too long, universities have acted like corporations … while governance boards rubber-stamp decisions that have harmed the people who make education and research possible.’’
One staff representative on a university council told the NTEU survey she had miscarried after being “bullied, intimidated and publicly shamed’’ at a meeting.
“I had a miscarriage after a really nasty council meeting,’’ the academic, whose identity was suppressed, told the survey.
“There are unfortunately no mechanisms to raise bullying and bad behaviour when the chancellor, vice-chancellor and pro-chancellor are the problem.”
The NTEU governance survey shows widespread secrecy over governance decisions, often “rubber-stamped behind closed doors’’.
Ninety per cent of respondents reported that the agenda, papers and minutes of council or senate meetings were not available to staff. “Meetings have the feeling of being clandestine,’’ one respondent stated.
Citing allegations of cronyism, the survey reveals “very negative experiences of bullying, intimidation and belittling in toxic cultures’’, with staff afraid to speak out.
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Trump ‘hopeful’ Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal on track this week
The Australian | Phil Hazlewood | 25 July 2025
Donald Trump has reiterated his hope that a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is on track, telling reporters there could be a deal this week.
Indirect talks in Doha over a proposed 60-day ceasefire and release of 10 living hostages have appeared to stall, with both sides refusing to budge on key sticking points.
However, the US President told reporters “Gaza – we are talking, and hopefully we’re going to get that straightened out over the next week”, repeating remarks he made before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House last week.
Mr Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, also said he was “hopeful” of a positive result.
However, Israeli media reports that military chiefs are warning that a plan for a “humanitarian city” in southern Gaza, where at least 600,000 Palestinians would be relocated, could put the negotiations at risk.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz last week outlined plans to ultimately relocate all Gaza’s Palestinians into a closed zone along the border with Egypt, to keep ordinary citizens separate from Hamas militants.
Israel’s Channel 12 TV reports that the Israel Defence Forces is warning it would take up to five months until the planned city was operational, and Hamas might interpret the plan as a signal Israel intended to resume the war after the ceasefire.
The broadcaster also reports that Mr Netanyahu promised far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that the war with Hamas would resume after the ceasefire.
“After the pause, we will transfer the population in the Strip southward and impose a siege (on northern Gaza),” Mr Netanyahu reportedly told Mr Smotrich, who along with fellow far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir vehemently opposes an end to the war with Hamas.
The two have threatened to leave the government if Mr Netanyahu agrees any deal that would see the war end with Hamas still in power. Jerusalem has said it would end the war only once Hamas surrendered, disarmed and went into exile, something it has refused to do.
A sticking point has emerged over Israeli troops’ deployment in Gaza during a truce.
Amid growing frustration over the lack of positive action, families of some hostages demonstrated outside Mr Netanyahu’s office on Sunday evening.
“The overwhelming majority of the people in Israel have spoken loudly and clearly: We want to do a deal, even at the cost of ending this war, and we want to do it now,” said Jon Polin, father of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American hostage who was killed in captivity.
Meanwhile, a drone packed with explosives was shot down on Monday near Arbil airport, which hosts US troops from the international anti-jihadist coalition in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, Kurdish security forces said.
“At 02.20 (1120 GMT) an explosive-laden drone was downed near Arbil International Airport, without causing casualties or damage,” said the counter-terrorism services. There has been no claim of responsibility for the drone, the second intercepted near the airport this month.
Arbil airport, which includes a base for the US-led international anti-jihadist coalition, was frequently targeted by rocket and drone attacks in previous years.
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Anti-Semitism taking root in Victoria as protesters grow louder
The Australian | Letters (1) | 15 July 2025
Not only is Victoria the home of anti-Semitism (“There is a home for anti-Semitism and it is called Victoria”, 11/7) but it now seems to be heading towards violence and terrorism as well. Demonstrators in Melbourne on Sunday chanted “Death to the IDF” and someone carried a sign, “Death to the Zionist regime” (“Pro-Palestine defiance after firebombing”, 14/7).
This is the language of the Iranian regime, which has chanted “Death to Israel” for 40 years and calls it the Zionist entity or the Zionist regime, as Iran believes Israel should not exist.
This country has now descended to a terrible depth never seen before.
Unless the federal government takes urgent action, we can expect violence, injuries and deaths. The ayatollah in Iran must be chuckling with joy.
Pia Brous, Armadale, Vic
The pro-Palestinian defiance after the arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue and the storming of a Jewish-owned restaurant full of patrons is extremely concerning. “Death to the IDF” is certainly a call to arms.
I find all of this most disappointing in the only country I have ever lived in. I would just like to remind the protesters that they live in the best country in the world and their current actions are going to change all of that. Most Australians are peaceloving people who accept a person based on the way in which that person behaves.
In my 77 years in Australia, I have never seen anything that compares with what is occurring today over such an extended time.
Peter D. Surkitt, Sandringham, Vic
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Disturbing trend
The Australian | Letters (2) | 15 July 2025
Michael Gawenda (“No returning to the golden land for Jews any time soon”, 12-13/7) laid bare some disturbing and shameful truths about anti-Semitism in Australia.
Our government has assisted the festering of this hate by failing both to stamp it out early and by showing its reluctance to punish the offenders. Repeated weak words and empty promises do not help. Jewish migrants are among our best, and I believe a majority of Australians hold that opinion. It takes only a small, nasty minority to spread vitriol with the help of social media. Acts of hatred largely go unpunished.
Jewish people value and support education and the arts. They maintain their culture and religion without trying to interfere with anyone else’s, something that can’t be said of all groups of migrants in Australia.
Susan Dornan, Beecroft, NSW
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Why the Jewish Council doesn’t care about Australian Jews
The Australian | Nick Dyrenfurth | 15 July 2025
Imagine, if you will, the establishment of a Palestinian Council of Australia, whose leaders possessed little or no meaningful connection to their community.
The group’s main activity, featured in endless media quotes and opinion pieces, was to castigate Palestinians and consistently argue against the formation of a Palestinian state, between alleging that Islamophobia was “weaponised” to silence criticism of Palestinians and their leaders. Sounds laughable, right? But replace Palestinian with Jewish and we face reality.
In recent days the parodic Jewish Council of Australia (sic) has thrust itself into our national conversation, seizing headlines in the Guardian Australia and progressive (sic) media with its rejection of the Albanese Labor government’s new plan to combat anti-Semitism.
The JCA’s hysterical reaction was not only predictable, it also was dangerous, misleading and an affront to progressive Jewish identity and the vital cause of anti-racism in this country. The far-left JCA is not representative of Australian Jewry.
A thousand unhappy, narcissistic flowers less than blooming without a transparent membership and zero democratic accountability.
The JCA is not even representative of the Jewish left.
It is a fringe clique, the same tired old actors – Antony Loewenstein and Louise Adler and co – that actively distance themselves from the Jewish community’s core values, institutions and experience in Australia and globally.
Yet in Adler’s recent Guardian Australia column, Jews and non- Jews are told the Albanese government’s plan – created in consultation with mainstream Jewish organisations and aimed at addressing rising anti-Semitism – is really a “push to weaponise anti- Semitism”.
According to Adler, a co-founder of the JCA, the real threat is not white supremacy or Islamist extremism, or the explosion of anti- Semitic tropes on social media or the bullying of Jewish students on campus. No, the threat is the plan to stop all of that. This is gaslighting on an industrial scale.
The JCA claims to oppose anti- Semitism but refuses to adopt the widely accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, endorsed by dozens of countries and most global Jewish institutions. Instead, it obsesses over how anti-Semitism is supposedly being used to shield Israel from criticism – specious nonsense given the scope and scale of Israeli domestic critiques of the Netanyahu government and diaspora writers of my ilk. (I have previously written about how West Bank settlements “are a cancer eating away at Israel’s democratic soul”.) In doing so, JCA flirts with classic anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish power, political manipulation and dual loyalties.
It’s not just what it says – it’s what it doesn’t. Where is its outrage at Hamas? For Gazans living under the jackboot of Hamas? For Aussie Jewish children like mine requiring security protection at junior sporting activities, at synagogue arsons or at anti-Semitic chants on university campuses? Where is even a flicker of positive association with Jewishness, Jewish culture or Zionism – the democratic national liberation movement supported by 90 per cent of Jews globally? I wake up each day thankful to God for being a Jew. I am proud to be a member of a tribe that has contributed so much to the world and Australia – for the blessings of Torah and its instructions on how to be a good Jew and pursue social justice, Talmudic scholarship and our questing thirst for knowledge and debate, and our beautiful diverse community.
I beam with pride when reading my (Zionist) great-grandfather’s death notice published by his son (also a Zionist and co-founder of the Jewish Socialist Workers Party, later the Israeli Labor) in Vienna in 1919: “a good man and loyal Jew has left this world. Even living in a constant struggle for existence, he was an advocate for all the poor and oppressed.
His longing to find refuge in Eretz Israel from the storms of this troubled world has been shattered by his sudden passing. I and my family have lost a role model of loyalty and kindness in the dearly departed.”
Zionism is not a dirty word. It is the movement that re-established Jewish self-determination after two millennia of exile, persecution and genocide.
It is the reason Druze, Baha’is, Christians, Muslims and Jews in Israel, with equality for women and LGBT citizens – unlike anywhere else in the region – live under a democratic government, with free courts and press. Yet, for the JCA, Zionism is the enemy, as is mainstream Australian Jewry. The JCA poses as anti-racist and a human rights defender but its real impact is to undermine the efforts that protect minority groups, including Jews, from hate and violence.
As Philip Mendes has written in two meticulously researched pieces in The Times of Israel, this is not a new story. The JCA follows in the well-worn ideological tracks of the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism, a Sovietaligned organisation from the mid-20th century that excused Stalinist anti-Semitism and smeared Zionism as a form of fascism.
Mendes writes that “these councils were effectively fronts that ignored the Jewish community’s core concerns”, more interested in ideological purity than helping real people. That tradition lives on today in the JCA.
It’s a tragic irony that the JCA’s activists see themselves as protectors of the marginalised yet they are ultra-marginal by every measure and mostly very rich and powerful. They do not represent Jewish religious bodies, educational institutions, welfare organisations, youth movements or progressive politics. They speak for themselves only and get attention only because they offer media outlets the mirage of Jewish endorsement for anti-Zionist screeds. JCA won’t participate in the World Zionist Congress elections. I voted for the progressive ticket.
Enough. Jewish identity is not something to be weaponised on behalf of far-left politics or, lest it be unsaid, apologised for. Nor is anti- Semitism a game of rhetorical gymnastics. If the JCA truly wants to make a difference, it could start by standing with the community it claims to represent.
Until then, it is a bit player and a big part of the problem. And not the solution.
Nick Dyrenfurth is executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre.
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Killed waiting for water
Daily Telegraph (Herald-Sun, Courier-Mail) | 15 July 2025
GAZA CITY: Israel’s military have admitted to a “technical error” after Hamas reported 10 people, including six children, were killed in an air strike while waiting to fill water containers in central Gaza.
The Israel Defense Force (IDF) said it was targeting an Islamic Jihad “terrorist” in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, but “the munition fell dozens of metres from the target”.
It said it was aware of the “claim regarding casualties in the area”, but it works to avoid civilian harm “as much as possible” and “regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians”.
Eyewitnesses told the BBC a drone fired a missile at a crowd queuing with empty jerry cans next to a water tanker in the refugee camp on Sunday. The incident is under review, the Israeli military said.
Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defence agency said air strikes killed at least 43 Palestinians on Sunday – a figure that cannot be independently verified.
The Israeli military, which has recently intensified operations across Gaza, said that in the previous 24 hours the air force “struck more than 150 terror targets”.
It released aerial footage of what it said were fighter jet strikes attacking Hamas targets in northern Gaza, showing explosions on the ground and thick smoke in the sky.
While its attacks on Gaza intensify, resumed talks for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas remain stalled.
Delegations from Israel and the Palestinian militant group have now spent a week in the Qatari capital Doha trying to agree on a temporary truce to halt 21 months of devastating fighting in the Gaza Strip.
Despite the deadlock, US President Donald Trump said “hopefully we’re going to get that straightened out over the next week”, an optimistic sentiment he has held since he returned to office in January.
Hamas wants the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, but a Palestinian source with knowledge of the talks said Israel had presented plans to maintain troops in more than 40 per cent of the territory.
The source said Israel wanted to force hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into the south of Gaza “in preparation for forcibly displacing them to Egypt or other countries”.
Israel was also demanding the release of the 22 living hostages who remain captive in Gaza after being snatched by Hamas in the invasion of Israel on October 7, 2003 in which more than 1200 people, mostly civilians, were killed. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is prepared to enter talks for a lasting end to hostilities if Hamas disarms.
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Leaders dither as hate burns
Herald-Sun | Carly Douglas | 15 July 2025
A sickening video has emerged of an anti-Israel activist inciting fire-bombings as senior Labor minister and architect of Victoria’s hate-speech laws Jaclyn Symes says she is still unsure whether “Death to the IDF” chants would constitute a criminal offence under the legislation.
Amid mounting criticism from the Jewish community that the state government had failed to crack down on extremism, Ms Symes, who is Acting Premier, on Monday pointed to new hate-speech laws that she designed while attorney-general.
But despite repeated questions from the Herald Sun and after spending years crafting the laws, Ms Symes could not say whether the offensive chants – heard at weekly protests – would meet the threshold of an offence.
“It is difficult for me to give you a definitive view, nor is it appropriate to be giving you a definitive review in relation to the applications of the laws,” she said on Monday.
“There is also constitutional protection for implied right to political freedom.”
It comes as disturbing footage showed a masked person clad in black claiming to be part of a “cell” responsible for firebombings at a Victorian weapons manufacturer and providing detailed instructions on how to torch cars.
The footage, which is being analysed by counter-terrorism detectives, then calls for “death to Israel, death to Australia, death to America”.
At a media conference on Monday afternoon, Ms Symes and Police Minister Anthony Carbines said they had not yet watched the video.
Ms Symes condemned “any disturbing, racially motivated or hateful conduct”, but said it was up to Victoria Police to take appropriate action.
Responding to criticism about the government’s action on anti-Semitism, Ms Symes said: “When it comes to acting on hate and inappropriate conduct in this state, we have acted.
“We have brought in anti-vilification legislation, which will come into effect in September.”
Mr Carbines said he had spent Monday morning in meetings with senior police, but would not confirm whether the video was discussed.
In the footage, the masked activist, who wears blacked-out glasses and uses a digitally altered voice, threatens to reveal the home address of workers at manufacturer Lovitt Technologies Australia, accusing them of being “complicit” in the “genocide” occurring in Gaza.
“We will decide your fate, as you have decided the fate of millions,” the masked figure says.
“For the past few months, we have been closely watching you.
“We have your addresses.
“All the information we have about you will be distributed to our underground networks.
“Stop arming Israel or else.”
The video comes after pro-Palestine protesters again chanted the controversial “death to IDF” slogan during rallies in Melbourne’s CBD on Sunday.
Opposition Leader Brad Battin said under his proposal to reintroduce move-on laws, hateful protesters holding up signs that read “Death to the IDF” could face arrest on the spot if they failed to move on.
He also called out police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush, who was spotted in plain clothes at Sunday’s rally as death chants rang out, demanding that he explain to Victorians how he planned to stamp out hateful protests.
“You can’t just come in and take the pay,” Mr Battin said on Monday.
The rally came just a week on from a horror night for the Jewish community, with the Lovitt firebombings occurring just hours after a mob of pro-Palestine activists ambushed Israeli restaurant Miznon in Melbourne’s CBD, and after the East Melbourne Synagogue was set alight, forcing 20 people to flee.
In the chilling footage, the masked activist tells their audience that the “cell” was responsible for setting alight three cars outside Lovitt in Greensborough on July 5 before providing detailed instructions on how to use fire starters to torch cars.
“If you are watching this, you can do what we have done,” they say.
“Be mindful of fingerprints and DNA.”
They then claim that it is their “duty to attack the belly of this colonialist imperialist beast at every opportunity”.
“Every colony will burn,” they say.
Jewish leaders warned that if Australia failed to confront the “deeply troubling escalation”, the nation risked becoming a nation of “competing violent extremists”.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said the footage resembled material released by terrorist organisations as he called for those responsible to be met with the law.
“Seeing a group resembling an al-Qa’ida terror cell openly pledging to carry out criminal acts is chilling and disturbing,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter that they think they’re doing something just and righteous – Islamist terrorists and neo-nazis think that too.
“What matters is that we remain a country of laws and not allow bands of zealots to decide what is a legitimate target for violence and criminal acts.”
Australian Jewish Association chief executive Robert Gregory said the video was a “clear incitement to domestic terrorism”.
“Australian businesses and their employees are being threatened,” he said.
“Authorities must act urgently – before someone is seriously harmed or killed.”
A spokesman for the Australian Federal Police and Victoria Police confirmed the video and fire-bombings were being investigated by counter-terrorism detectives.
“The matter is now being investigated by the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team, which includes personnel from Victoria Police, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation,” he said.
“This video is being reviewed as part of the ongoing investigation.”
The spokesman said no links had yet established between the fire-bombings and the other incidents on July 4.
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Allan govt sued over failure to stem evil
Herald-Sun |Shannon Deery & Carly Douglas | 15 July 2025
The Allan government is facing legal action over its failure to stem the dangerous rise of anti-Semitism in Victoria.
Jewish community leader Menachem Vorchheimer has accused the government of enabling breaches of the state’s racial vilification laws in a case that will rely on secret government briefings he says expose systemic failings.
The Department of Premier and Cabinet and Attorney-General Sonya Kil-kenny are listed as defend-ants in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal case that seeks a public apology from Premier Jacinta Allan for failing Victorian Jews.
It comes amid growing international condemnation about the failure of Australian governments to act on anti-Semitism following attacks on an East Melbourne synagogue and CBD restaurant on Saturday.
Benjamin Netanyahu has called for urgent government action to prevent similar incidents. “The reprehensible anti-Semitic attacks, with calls of ‘death to the IDF’ and an attempt to attack a place of worship, are severe hate crimes that must be uprooted,” the Israeli Prime Minister said last week.
In his case lodged with VCAT this year, Mr Vorchheimer said documents released to him under Freedom of Information laws revealed the government had taken an explicit position to allow weekly pro-Palestine protesters to chant and display anti-Semitic slogans in the CBD providing they did not result in “violent protest or speech encouraging violence”.
But he said that position, either explicitly or implicitly, authorised and assisted contraventions of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act.
It followed concerns being raised with Ms Allan and subsequent high-level briefings between the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing and Victoria Police.
Since its introduction in 2001, the Act, which requires the written consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions before prosecutions can begin, has been rarely used in Victoria. Through its introduction of anti-vilification laws – which passed parliament this year but have not yet come into force – the government conceded existing laws were not fit for purpose.
Mr Vorchheimer has argued they should have been used more forcefully, and that the government’s soft approach to enforcing them has allowed anti-Semitism to hit unprecedented levels in the state. He said “regrettably rather than address the incitement, FOI documents reveal, the DPC and DoJ (Department of Justice) adopted the position that they would authorise and/or assist breaches of sections ” of the Act, causing “genuine fear for our physical and mental safety and wellbeing, and the need to take added precautions ”.
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Inaction fans flames of hate
Herald-Sun | Editorial | 15 July 2025
All the political rhetoric about getting tough on hate speech, anti-Semitism and incitement means nothing unless it’s backed by action.
And all the time spent reviewing, drafting and enacting legislation, all the promises made by politicians to enable police and the courts to clamp down on incendiary threats and hate is worthless unless those laws are effective and unless they are actually used.
Doing little to nothing only encourages a toxic infection to spread and worsen.
Yet for more than a week, the Allan government and Victoria Police equivocated on whether repeated protest chants and placards calling for ‘death to the IDF’ is against the law.
This failure by governments and authorities to act comprehensively and with conviction – going back to the October 9, 2023 anti-Semitic rally on the steps of the Opera House, two days after Hamas butchered up to 1200 Israelis and took 250 hostages – has stood as tacit acceptance that inherent threats will be somewhat tolerated.
While there was debate then over claims anti-Jewish demonstrators chanted ‘gas the Jews’ (which NSW Police said they were unable to substantiate), cries of “f..k the Jews” and “where’s the Jews” were repeatedly yelled as a mob celebrated the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Similarly, the spread of anti-Semitism across university campuses, not just in Australia but elsewhere, has fanned the flames of hatred. Driving much of this volatility is the unchecked bigotry, conspiracies and incitement that washes across social media platforms, parroted and amplified by people intent on division, hate and even direct-action violence.
On Monday, the Herald Sun reported on one of the most awful and serious manifestations of inaction and rising anti-Semitism – a video in which a masked man threatens the lives of Melbourne factory workers at a business that provides components for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (which Australia’s air force also operates).
Claiming to be part of a “cell” that burned several vehicles at the factory just over a week ago, this is an act of terrorism, now elevated to a serious threat to life, and needs to be treated as such.
A separate arson attack was also carried out at an East Melbourne synagogue on July 4 and two restaurants were targeted by vandals and protesters.
It’s been often said, and rightly, that people are free to have and express opinions – we live in a democracy. Australians are free to protest and to criticise, even deeply and loudly, the actions of the Israeli government or of the Israel Defence Force. Similarly, anyone is free to criticise the Palestinian Authority, the US or its foreign policies, Australia or any other nation or institution.
But a line is clearly crossed when protest includes incitement to violence or incitement to hatred and vilification.
Instead of prevarication and delay, charges need to be consistently laid – or laws tightened even further – to tackle the poisonous scourge of hate and anti-Semitism and the rising incitement to violence online and on our streets.
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Chant clearly a crime
Herald-Sun | Letters | 15 July 2025
For the second week in a row in Melbourne, the chants went up “Death, death to the IDF” and the authorities can’t work out if it meets the threshold of a criminal offence (“Death chant fury”, HS, 14/7).
I would have thought that the call to kill people or entice people to do so would be criminal in itself.
If someone were to shout a similar chant with reference to Premier Jacinta Allan, I’m sure the authorities would make their mind up in an instant and call it a criminal offence.
Ilse Arndt, Meeniyan
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Call out Gaza crimes
Hobart Mercury | Letters | 15 July 2025
Australia is a multicultural country and every citizen in theory has the same rights and obligations as everybody else and has to abide to the same laws.
October 7 should never have happened in Israel, even though it is still very questionable what role the Israeli government played in it due to their much delayed response. However, the genocidal atrocities that government committed against the civilian population in Gaza since have been condemned by the UN and other bodies as unlawful war crimes.
Everybody with a heart and some empathy feels for those innocent suffering people. One hasn’t heard anything within the Australian Jewish communities that would be critical to those deplorable actions of the Israeli government.
What else are they, but hate crimes that need to be called out in the strongest terms? The actions that have been committed against Jewish property and institutions in Australia should never have happened either.
However, to condemn them as being antisemitic is totally off the point. They are the response to cruel and heartless criminal offences against innocent civilians by the Netanyahu Israeli government. We have plenty of laws in this country to deal with those actions. It would be a grave mistake to give those heartless Jewish institutions in our society special means to influence the very fabric of our communities, like defunding universities if they allow to call out criminal acts committed wherever. That sounds like it would fit better into the disastrous situation that is unfolding itself in Trump’s US by the day.
Ute Mueller, Lapoinya
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Israel’s terror war
Hobart Mercury | Hot Topic | 15 July 2025
Israel is doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to them, and has the weaponry backing of the USA. Important to point out that America has a very large and wealthy Jewish society who fund Israel.
Missiles and tanks v camels and slingshots. Be clear on this, Israel is murdering civilians daily to achieve the complete destruction of Palestinians so as to expand and turn Palestine into Israel.
- W. Sullivan, Swansea
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Israel proposes withdrawal of more troops from Gaza
Canberra Times / Reuters, AAP | 15 July 2025
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9016045/israel-proposes-withdrawal-of-more-troops-from-gaza/
Israel has presented a new proposal in indirect talks over a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict, according to a media report.
The Jewish state is now willing to withdraw more troops from the Gaza Strip during the ceasefire than previously offered, the Times of Israel newspaper reported, citing an Arab diplomat.
Indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in the Qatari capital Doha have recently stalled.
A key sticking point is the differing views on the extent of the Israeli troop withdrawal, particularly from the southern Gaza Strip.
Israel had previously been adamant that its forces remain in a relatively large area, including a three-kilometre wide buffer zone along the border with Egypt near Rafah, as well as the so-called Morag Corridor, which separates Rafah from Khan Younis, the next second city in the coastal strip.
Hamas, however, has demanded the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the positions they held before the collapse of the last ceasefire in March.
Under the newly reported proposal, Israel would reduce its military presence to a two-kilometre-wide buffer zone along the southern border near Rafah.
However, according to the Arab diplomat cited by the Times of Israel, it is doubtful whether this concession will lead to a breakthrough in the negotiations.
Israel’s wish to maintain its military presence in southern Gaza is linked to plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to establish a camp there for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, media reports say.
Critics describe this as an internment camp that could ultimately lead to forced deportation. Israel, however, refers to it as a “humanitarian city” intended as a base for the “voluntary departure” of Gaza’s residents.
Israel’s war on Gaza, which followed the October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks by Hamas and other Islamist militants, continues to lead to consternation at the United Nations.
UN Secretary General António Guterres said in New York on Monday: “We all condemned the horrible, terrible attacks of Hamas, but what we are witnessing Gaza is a level of death and destruction that has no parallel in recent times.”
Separately, Egypt’s foreign minister said the flow of aid into Gaza has not increased despite an agreement last week between Israel and the European Union that should have had that result.
“Nothing has changed (on the ground),” Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told reporters ahead of the EU-Middle East meeting in Brussels on Monday.
The EU’s top diplomat said the bloc and Israel agreed to improve Gaza’s humanitarian situation, including increasing the number of aid trucks and opening crossing points and aid routes.
Asked what steps Israel has taken, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar referred to an understanding with the EU but did not provide details on implementation.
Asked if there were improvements after the agreement, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told reporters that the situation in Gaza remains “catastrophic”.
“There is a real catastrophe happening in Gaza resulting from the continuation of the Israeli siege,” he said.
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Israeli government and military clash over proposed camp for Palestinians
Military opposed to Gaza ‘humanitarian city’ plan, which a former Israeli PM has likened to a concentration camp
The Guardian | Emma Graham-Harrison | 15 July 2025
A feud has broken between the Israeli government and the military over the cost and impact of a planned camp for Palestinians in southern Gaza, as politicians criticised the former prime minister Ehud Olmert for warning that the project would create a “concentration camp” if it goes ahead.
The “humanitarian city” project has become a sticking point in ceasefire talks with Hamas. Israel wants to keep troops stationed across significant parts of Gaza, including the ruins of Rafah city in the south, where the defence minister, Israel Katz, says the camp will be built.
Hamas is pushing for a more comprehensive withdrawal. Husam Badran, a senior member of the group, said the camp plans were a “deliberatively obstructive demand” that would complicate talks, the New York Times reported.
“This would be an isolated city that resembles a ghetto,” he said in a message to the paper. “This is utterly unacceptable and no Palestinian would agree to this.”
Katz revealed last week that he had ordered the army to draw up plans for a camp. It is envisaged that Palestinians would be crammed into an area between the Egyptian border and the Israeli military’s “Morag corridor”, which cuts across the strip.
Katz said initially 600,000 people would move there, and eventually Gaza’s entire population. Those inside would only be allowed to leave for another country, he told Israeli journalists at a briefing.
The plan was unveiled while the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was in Washington DC for an official visit, but it was understood to have his backing. The plan caused immediate alarm among Israel’s allies, including the UK, and domestically.
Olmert, who led Israel from 2006 to 2009, has been the most high-profile domestic critic of the project. He said that if Palestinians were forced to move to the camp, it would constitute ethnic cleansing.
His comments evoking comparisons with Nazi-era Germany were fiercely attacked inside Israel. The heritage minister, Amichai Eliyahu, in effect called for Olmert to be jailed over the comments, with a barely veiled reference to time he served for corruption offences after leaving office.
“[Olmert] already knows prison very well,” Eliyahu said. “There is no other way to shut him down from the hatred and antisemitism he spreads around the world.”
The military has also opposed the project, even as it has followed orders to draw up plans to implement it. In a security cabinet meeting on Sunday night, tensions broke out into the open as the IDF chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, clashed with Netanyahu, Israeli media reported.
Zamir reportedly said the project would divert funds and other resources from the military, sapping its ability to fight and undermining efforts to rescue hostages. His office had previously argued that moving and “concentrating” civilians was not a goal of the war, in response to a legal petition brought by reservists concerned they would face illegal orders to commit war crimes.
Netanyahu reportedly lashed out at Zamir, saying the plans he had presented – which estimated several months of construction work, and perhaps up to a year – were “too expensive and too slow”, Israel’s Channel 12 reported, citing official sources.
“I asked for a realistic plan,” the prime minister reportedly said, demanding that a cheaper, faster timeline for construction be delivered by Tuesday.
Finance ministry officials raised other practical objections to the “humanitarian city” plan, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported. They said an estimated 15bn shekels (£3.3bn) annual cost would be a huge drain on the state’s budget. That cost would probably fall on the Israeli taxpayer, taking money away from schools, hospitals and welfare, the paper added.
Senior Israeli officials estimate that constructing a proposed “humanitarian city” in the Rafah area would cost between $2.7bn and $4bn, Ynet reported. They added that if the plan proceeds, Israel would initially bear nearly the entire cost.
The row came as Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 31 people, according to local hospitals. Twelve people were killed by strikes in southern Gaza, including three who were waiting at an aid distribution point, according to Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, which received the bodies.
Shifa hospital in Gaza City received 12 bodies, including three children and two women, after a series of strikes in the north, according to the hospital’s director, Dr Mohammed Abu Selmia. Al-Awda hospital reported seven killed and 11 wounded in strikes in central Gaza.
UN agencies, including those providing food and health care, reiterated a warning made at the weekend that without adequate fuel they would probably be forced to stop their operations entirely.
In a joint statement, they said hospitals were already going dark and ambulances could no longer move. Transport, water production, sanitation and telecommunications would shut down and bakeries and community kitchens could not operate without fuel, they said.
What’s On July 14-20 2025
What’s On around Naarm/Melbourne & Regional Victoria: July 14-20, 2025
With thanks to the dedicated activists at Friends of the Earth Melbourne!
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See also these Palestine events listings from around the country:
Media Report 2025.07.13
A city grappling with weekly protests and antisemitism
The Age | Sophie Aubrey & Kieran Rooney | 13 July 2025
For a year and a half, many of Fiona Cochrane’s Sundays have looked much the same. She boards a train, often with her children and grandchildren, and joins hundreds – sometimes thousands – of others outside the State Library to march in protest against the mass killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces.
At these rallies, the Melbourne-born doctor is shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of other protesters of all ages, races and religions, all motivated by the same cause. “I don’t want to be in my generation, watching another genocide, and not doing anything,” Cochrane says.
This month, the pro-Palestine protest movement that began in October 2023 rallying every Sunday faces its biggest challenge yet. On the night of July 4, a fire-bombing of East Melbourne Synagogue and the storming of Israeli restaurant Miznon horrified the nation.
Charges have been laid over both incidents. The events sparked rapid federal and state action to stamp out antisemitism, together with widespread crit cism – including by this masthead – of the protests that take place every Sunday in the city.
Alarmed by the uproar, advocates of the pro-Palestine movement fear their demonstrations have been weaponised and stress that this month’s events should not be conflated with their weekly protests.
Last weekend, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan slammed protesters for sticking to their plans to march on Sunday, two days after the incidents, and labelled chants of “death to the IDF [Israeli Defence Forces]” as “odious”.
Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler goes further, arguing the right to protest should not infringe on the right of others to feel safe in the city. “If you allow people to march through the streets of Melbourne, week after week, chanting ‘globalise the Intifada’ [an Arab word meaning ‘uprising’], what happened on Friday night at the synagogue and at the restaurant is what that looks like,” Leibler says.
The state government says it has no plans to introduce protest permits in Victoria, but has committed to new laws that would ban the use of masks, symbols of terrorist organisations and the use of “dangerous attachment devices” such as glues and rope.
Following the July 4 incidents, Allan established an anti-hate taskforce which dis cussed with Jewish community leaders how Victoria Police will enforce strengthened anti-vilification laws, passed this year, and may consider further measures over coming months.
“We agreed if there was further action we needed to take to keep Victorians safe, we will not hesitate to take it,” the premier said in a statement. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese separately announced on Thursday that his government would accept many of the recommendations of a major antisemitism report.
The suggested action plan includes withholding funding from institutions that fail to combat Jewish hatred, screening visa applicants, embedding antisemitism education in school curriculums and funding Jewish cultural programs.
Pro-Palestine activist groups have strongly condemned the synagogue attack and any act of antisemitism. And while Miznon was deemed an appropriate boycott target, the organised groups oppose violence and the prevailing view is that the restaurant rampage went too far.
The Age reported on Friday that the actions at Miznon were instigated by a small fringe group that often hijacks peaceful protests with more aggressive tactics. Miznon is part owned by Shahar Segal, who until recently was spokesman for the Israel and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been widely criticised for its aid distribution facilities in Gaza, after taking over from usual relief agencies.
Witnesses, including UN officials, say Israeli forces have fired on starving Palestinians seeking food. Fiona Cochrane says that the Free Palestine protesters know violence won’t serve their goal to move the Australian government to take measures against Israel.
She also isn’t comfortable with the chant “death to the IDF”, which spread after rap group Bob Vylan led crowds to repeat the phrase at Glastonbury Music Festival in the UK two weeks ago, which is now being investigated by British police. But she adds: “We need to think about our priorities here. Chanting something is completely different to actually killing 60,000 people.”
Gaza’s health ministry says more than 57,000 Palestinians have been killed, over half of them women and children.
The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants launched attacks on Israeli communities that killed 1200 people and took 251 others hostage, according to Israeli tallies. At least 20 hostages are believed to still be alive in captivity. Cochrane says the riotous way the protests are sometimes portrayed does not reflect her experience.
She has never witnessed violence coming from demonstrators. There is music, poetry and, sometimes, performances by children. People are draped in keffiyehs, wave handwritten placards and wear watermelon symbols in a sea of colours of the Palestinian flag.
Some carry posters showing photos of some of the thousands of Palestinian children who have died. They discuss their anguish at the starvation and spread of deadly illness in Gaza, where aid is controlled by Israel, and where schools, health facilities and cities have been turned to rubble.
“I love the protests,” Cochrane says. “It’s people just being able to express their ab solute frustration and despair at what is happening in the world.”
Nachshon Amir is a former Israeli military officer whose treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank in the 1980s would eventually turn him into a pro Palestine ally. The Israeli-born former Zionist recalls entering family homes in the middle of the night and terrifying children.
“I oppressed Palestinians with my own hands,” he says. Amir is now a Free Palestine Melbourne protest organiser and as a Jewish man – one of many who attend, including his children he has always felt welcome at the rallies.
He gets emotional as he describes how moved he is to hear Palestinians share their stories with the crowd. He says the protest leaders and speakers condemn violence and support inclusivity. “Sometimes two people among thousands will [do the wrong thing], we can’t control every one of them.”
As a former IDF soldier, he says he has no problem with the “death to the IDF” chant. Some say the phrase is antisemitic and calls for deaths of Jewish people, pointing out that all Israelis are conscripted to do military service. Amir disputes this: “It doesn’t mean death to people. The call is to dismantle and stop this big army of death. It has nothing to do with Judaism.”
But like with the chant “all Zionists are terrorists” – which Amir doesn’t support – he thinks protesters should choose their words wisely to avoid getting caught in a political firestorm.
Yamama Shourbaji agrees. The Syrian-born mother has marched almost every Sunday since October 2023 with her husband and three children, aged 20, 16 and 8. She says the meaning of the chant has been misrepresented and she questions why there isn’t more horror over language that has been used by Israeli officials, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who vowed in May: “Gaza will be entirely destroyed.”
Still, Shourbaji says the chant should not be used. Instead, she believes protest leaders should encourage language that doesn’t give others a reason to distract from the big ger issue of Palestinian lives.
Shourbaji is deeply troubled by the prospect of restrictions on pro-Palestine protests, with the right to demonstrate being a pillar of democracy. “We are always saying repeatedly at the protest that we are against all forms of violence and racism, including antisemitism,” she says. “It can be emotionally heavy, especially when we hear stories from Gaza, but it’s also deeply uplifting to stand together.”
Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni is among the protest organisers. He is exasperated by what has played out this month, and says criticism of pro-Palestine demonstrators since July 4 is hurtful.
“It’s hard to see … the complete and utter dis connect between what my community is experiencing and the way the government has re acted,” he says. “It’s abhorrent that what our community is witnessing in Gaza … continues to be second fiddle to the feelings of Australian Zionists.”
Mashni says he is vehemently against antisemitism and at tacks on religious sites. And while Miznon is a legitimate protest target, he says, he does not back violence. As for the “death to the IDF” chant, Mashni says the outrage is misdirected: “The fixation on words while our children are being butchered continues to exacerbate the pain of our people.”
Mashni says the protests must not be curtailed. He describes them as restorative spaces filled with community spirit while calling for Australia to sanction Israel. “That is what community is all about. We’re supposed to empathise with the suffering of others in the world. We’re supposed to care about our fellow humans,” he says.
Mashni says he has only met once with the Victorian premier since October 2023, labelling it a failure of her leadership. “All we’ve seen are crack downs on protest and the ongoing threat of repressive new laws,” he says. “No one group’s experience should be elevated above the other’s.”
A spokeswoman for the Allan government says its action plan to tackle antisemitism includes proposed laws protecting places of worship and banning terrorist symbols. “Antisemitism is a cancer, and we are leaving no stone unturned to eradicate it here in Victoria,” she says. “The taskforce will meet again in the coming weeks to discuss the progress of our plan.”
The Coalition does not propose to ban protests outright, and Opposition Leader Brad Battin this week instead announced he would introduce a protest permit system if elected in 2026.
“We will encourage people to continue to have their protests in this state, but if you can do it by working with the Victoria Police, it may mean that businesses won’t get blocked [so frequently],” Battin said. The Coalition has also pledged tougher move-on powers for police, giving them greater control to break up rallies without a permit and setting up exclusion zones.
Jeremy Leibler backs the Coalition’s proposed changes. He says the fact that the protest movement began “in sin” on October 8, 2023 – while the bodies of Israel’s dead were still being counted – strips away its legitimacy.
He acknowledges there are well-meaning protesters, but says the use of the term “genocide” is modern-day “blood libel” and the rallies have facilitated incitement against the Jewish community by supporting the dismantling of Israel and using hateful imagery and chants.
“It became very obvious, very quickly, to the Jewish community that this [protest movement] was not really about Israel. This was about Jews,” Leibler says.
“It shouldn’t have to be a normal thing for me to tell my child when he’s going to the footy, ‘Hide your Star of David that you wear around your neck on the train’. I can say with absolute conviction that the suffering of innocent Palestinians in Gaza is a terrible tragedy. I say that with no ‘buts’. Where is the unequivocal condemnation of the 7th of October?”
Jewish Community Council of Victoria president Philip Zajac says people should have the right to protest, but that right is not unfettered. He wants stricter state regulation.
“Melbourne, because of its lack of controls, is really recognised as a protest capital of the world. And I think not only the Jewish community, but the wider community is now totally fed up with the interference with their quiet enjoyment of the city,” he says. “Enough is enough. Allow them to … do what they do, but do it in a way that doesn’t interfere with the other 99 per cent of Melbourne.”
Zajac recognises the regular protests are non-violent, but he is concerned by aggressive chants such as “death to IDF” and “all Zionists are genocidal baby-killers”. “I’m a proud Zionist and what that means to me is that I believe in the existence of the state of Israel. Zionism is a be lief that a land for the Jewish people should exist,” he says.
“Does that mean that I support the government of Israel? No, not necessarily. I think it’s time for the war in Gaza to stop … The violent words and the hate speech and the offence in the expressions that are used at these rallies encourage rogue operators.”
The Jewish Council of Australia has a different perspective. The organisation sup ports Palestinian freedom, and executive member Ohad Kozminsky attends and has spoken at the Free Palestine protests. “These are important for demonstrating to the broader public that it is essential we keep talking about Israel’s genocide,” he says. The council has slammed the antisemitic synagogue arson attack, however Kozminsky argues it is “extremely dangerous” to lump this with the restaurant rampage. Intimidating diners is wrong,
Kozminsky says, but targeting Miznon is a political act. Kozminsky worries about antisemitic attacks being linked to the pro-Palestine protest movement, as he has witnessed how the rallies welcome Jewish people and they consistently call out antisemitism.
He warns that conflating political protest with antisemitism risks misrepresenting the diversity of views within the Jewish community, while also exacerbating antisemitism because it suggests all Jews represent the state of Israel and its actions.
Gemma Cafarella is vice president of Liberty Victoria, a non-profit focused on safe guarding civil liberties. She calls for careful differentiation between acts of vilification and discrimination of Jews and legitimate criticism of Israel, the IDF and Zionism (a political ideology). That distinction was reinforced in a Federal Court judgment on July 1.
Throughout history there have been protests that were viewed as hugely unpopular at the time, such as the suffragette and anti-Vietnam war movements, but Cafarella stresses that these are often later looked back on as essential vehicles of change.
“Protest can be inconvenient and disruptive and annoying, but it must be protected if we’re to call ourselves a democracy,” she says. Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Luke Hilakari says he will never sign a protest permit, and it is “fundamentally wrong” for any government to pursue such restrictions.
“Protest is about disruption, and that is how you help make change,” he said. “The right to protest must be … preserved and protected. If you have to ask permission for it, it’s not really a protest.” Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Paul Guerra says protests have become normalised.
“Because of that, now we’re seeing clear racist actions and violence out of those protests,” Guerra says. “Everybody has the right to protest, but they should be both peaceful and respectful. Guerra calls on all levels of government to find a better way to run the events, reiterating his previous calls for a dedicated space for rallies.
“We are shutting businesses down because a few people want to protest. That’s not respectful.” Acting Melbourne Lord Mayor Roshena Campbell says the right to protest does not ex tend to those who incite violence or hatred.
“Protests in Melbourne do not change the situation in Gaza, but they do create angst for traders, residents, workers and visitors in the CBD,” she says. For trader Michael Togias, there are much bigger issues for CBD businesses than the protests.
Every Sunday, he gets a front-row view of the pro Palestine protests. Togias owns Mr Tulk, the cafe at the State Library, where protesters congregate at midday. Not only is the rally good for his business – he knows by heart the coffee and food orders of some of the regulars – he has always found the protesters respectful and courteous.
“If people are trying to portray them as anything but peaceful, concerned protesters, it’s out of context,” Togias says.
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Inaction is consent
The Age | Letters | 13 July 2025
Inaction is consent
On reading the article on East Jerusalem “There’s nothing the world can do about it” (12/7) I couldn’t stop thinking about the words of the man who watched his home be flattened: “They are trying to break people, they want us to be nothing.”
It stayed with me, not just because of its heartbreak, but of how those words contrasted with the voices of those working to make that outcome a reality.
Australian-Israeli settler Daniel Luria, who proudly leads Ateret Cohanim’s efforts to evict Palestinians and “reclaim” homes, denies that Palestinians even exist as a people. They are “illegal squatters”; he praises the use of courts to transfer land, and describes his mission as one of national rebirth.
This is a slow-motion war, and it is being waged with bull dozers and land deeds instead of bombs.
Australia recognises these settlements as illegal. So why is our outrage so well-mannered? I don’t know what the world will do. But I know inaction is a form of consent.
Fernanda Trecenti, Fitzroy
Treading carefully
Our leaders will have to tread carefully in considering any implementation of the points raised in Jillian Segal’s antisemitism plan (Editorial, 12/7).
The risk here is that a misjudged implementation of such strong measures carries a strong risk of hindering rather than enhancing our quest for continued cultural unity and understanding, which is one of the successful hallmarks of Australian society.
Perhaps most difficult of all will be our achieving a better national understanding of the appallingly tragic Gazan situation beginning with an acceptance of the fact that it is this which in large measure lies at the heart of our destabilising antisemitism and Islamophobia.
What is needed now is a better understanding of extremism and moderation on all sides in the Middle East – and the problematic role of the West in the Middle East so ably written about by highly regarded British journalist, the late Robert Fisk.
So, we must tread carefully here, favouring educative understanding over punitive coercion lest the cure prove to be as bad – or worse – than the complaint.
Terry Hewton, Henley Beach South, SA
Violence no answer
The treatment of non-Jewish residents in East Jerusalem is one ongoing issue within an intractable problem of history, religion and politics. Leaders of Israel and many other countries, plus organisations like Hamas and the PLO, have not done all they could to reach a compromise solution.
Jerusalem, a Holy City for Jews, Muslims and Christians, should be under international governance, protecting access for all. A vote on this special status for Jerusalem, was passed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1947, within a two-state solution.
It might not be accepted by the extremists on either side, but there is no realistic alternative. Neither side can “win” this forever war with more violence.
John Hughes, Mentone
Gift status at risk
Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal has recommended to the government that deductible gift status should be removed from charitable organisations that promote antisemitism.
Amnesty International, Medecins Sans Frontieres, and Human Rights Watch have all published lengthy reports finding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Given Segal’s adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism that conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism, the deductible gift status of these independent organisations would be at risk if the government adopted Segal’s recommendation.
Angela Smith, Clifton Hill
Echoes of Trumpism
I consider it unconscionable even to propose, let alone impose, the defunding of universities that have difficulty dealing with student protests on cam pus, such as those we’ve seen in connection with Israel and Gaza. That is the kind of threat that Donald Trump has actually carried out against Harvard University, and its ultimate effect is to stifle free speech and legitimate protest.
I’m also troubled by the woolly definition of antisemitism that is before the federal government. If I criticise Israel’s current prime minister or his government, my views may well be shared by around half of Israel’s own citizens. But in Australia I may risk being accused of denigrating a “Jewish individual” (Benjamin Netanyahu) and a “Jewish community institution” (his government), and find myself in court trying to explain that my criticism was not directed at their being Jewish as such.
If we cannot criticise Israel’s government or its policies without being called antisemitic, we may as well sign up to Trumpism at once.
Anthea Hyslop, Eltham
Moral equation
I am about to turn 81 and one of my earliest memories is listening to the news on 3LO. Dad would tell us to be quiet so that every word could be heard. I have continued to listen, watch and read the world news ever since.
But now I am finding it impossible to do so. Antisemitism, the bombing of innocents, starvation of a population just go around in circles every day. Of course, it is necessary to remain acutely aware of the Holocaust but that doesn’t mean atrocities can occur in Gaza. Two wrongs never did make a right.
Libby Gillingham, Outtrim
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Albo fiddles while our synagogues are burning
Daily Telegraph (& Herald-Sun) | Peta Credlin | 13 July 2025
The Prime Minister would be a lot more credible on the anti-Semitism he deplored last week if there’d been some specific actions the government was about to take, rather than just welcoming yet another report with official hand-wringing.
Almost all of the recommendations in the report from his own anti-Semitism special envoy Jillian Segal can be acted upon now, including the deportation of people spreading hate. And yet for months and months, the bile being spread in some mosques goes unchallenged while overseas, we’ve seen examples of zero-tolerance in the case of Italy, which expelled a pro-Hamas imam despite him being a resident in Bologna for 30 years.
When a synagogue is firebombed with worshippers inside and when a mob ransacks a Jewish restaurant with the police on hand making just three arrests, our country doesn’t just have a Jew hatred problem but a general challenge to the rule of law from people who think they can intimidate others with impunity.
There’s now a tactical partnership between recent migrants who haven’t left behind the hatreds of their homeland and cultural Marxists who want to turn Australia upside down.
Jews are the initial target, but the real enemy is western civilisation itself. Without strong action, it soon won’t just be one community that’s targeted but every law-abiding Australian and history is our lesson here; look at Europe in the 1930s and look at what’s happening again in Europe today. This is why the Prime Minister’s response to the report released last Thursday was so underwhelming, because we still have time to turn this around, but it’s as though he’s only half-interested. I was staggered to hear Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan admit at her press conference on Monday that, despite a weekend of racial violence, she had not spoken with Albanese.
Can you imagine John Howard or even Kevin Rudd being asleep at the wheel like this, treating the prime ministership as a part-time gig?
Take the example of defunding institutions that react inadequately to anti-Semitic eruptions and removing their charitable status. If the government is as serious about these recommendations as it claimed to be last week, the PM should have been at the press conference with a list of universities and arts bodies that he was defunding immediately and yet all we got were just more words.
On so many issues, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Prime Minister is a modern version of Nero, fiddling while Rome burns.
He’s about to embark on a leisurely six-day tour of communist China, that will include his fourth meeting with President Xi Jinping; while eight months after Donald Trump’s re-election, Anthony Albanese has still not had six minutes with the leader of the free world. While in Beijing, our PM will doubtless join the communist dictator in espousing the merits of free trade – that will be an obvious slap at Trump – while saying nothing about Xi’s boycott of $20 billion of our trade in response to Australia’s call for an inquiry into the Wuhan virus.
Then there’s the PM’s obstinate refusal to increase defence spending even though our armed forces are obviously being hollowed out and Australia is gaining a reputation as a weak ally that expects to freeload on others as NATO countries take the global threats seriously and scale up. And given he’s been a hard-left antinuclear activist for much of his life, I am fast coming to the view that Albanese wants Trump to walk away from AUKUS because nuclear power at sea (in our subs) makes his opposition to nuclear power on land increasingly unsustainable.
Even on childcare, the subject of understandable public alarm after the revelation ten days back that a worker employed at some 20 centres was on charges including the rape of children aged between eight months and two years, with 1200 infants now being tested for STIs, it turns out that the Albanese government’s training manual for childcare workers prioritises “cultural safety” (including sexual orientation) over the safety of children. And despite ending last week with yet another male childcare worker charged over sex crimes at a NSW centre, we still have not seen any action to better protect our most vulnerable.
All this is quite apart from the fact that we’ve had two years of declining GDP per person and an 8 per cent fall in living standards exacerbated by the government’s pro-union workplace changes and climate policy obsessions that are sending business bankrupt or offshore. Our country is drifting backwards fast under a Prime Minister who seems to think that his election victory was a personal endorsement rather than just the rejection of an Opposition that plainly wasn’t ready for government.
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Talks on Gaza to continue
Daily Telegraph | 13 July 2024
Ten Palestinians were reported killed Friday while waiting for food, as negotiators from Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas were locked in indirect talks in Qatar to try to agree on a temporary ceasefire in the more than 21-month conflict.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped a deal for a 60-day pause in the war could be struck in the coming days, and that he would then be ready to negotiate a more permanent end to hostilities.
Hamas has said the free flow of aid is a main sticking point in the talks, with Gaza’s more than two million residents facing a dire humanitarian crisis of hunger and disease amid the grinding conflict.
In Gaza’s south, a witness said Israeli tanks were seen near Khan Yunis, reporting “intense gunfire, intermittent air strikes, artillery shelling, and ongoing bulldozing and destruction of displacement camps and agricultural land”.
Israel’s military said troops were operating in the area against “terrorist infrastructure sites, both above and below ground”.
Hamas has said that as part of a potential truce deal it was willing to release 10 of the hostages taken during its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
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Border insecurity and divisions created by Albanese’s juvenile government are unlikely to be fixed
Daily Telegraph |Piers Akerman | 13 July 2025
Anthony Albanese always says he is acting in the national interest, but that claim is as phony as his Medicare card-only clinic visits and his electricity price cuts.
He may be a “handsome boy” to the Chinese government as he encourages the communists to sell us more solar and wind factories (likely built by slave labour) but he is not serving the national interest.
Our national interest depends on foreign and domestic security.
The Prime Minister and his inept government fail on both fronts.
He definitely won’t remind his fawning hosts this week their navy endangered the lives of Australian divers, and he won’t mention the live-fire exercises by the CCP’s ships in the Tasman Sea, the underwater survey of submarine cables by their submersible robots or holding Australians as political hostages.
His hosts will clap him on the back and congratulate him for his false claims about our historical reliance on our only serious defence ally, the US, and his proclamation of our sovereignty, just as President Xi Jinping sides with such respecters of national sovereignty as Russia, Iran and North Korea. Serious leaders of Western nations do not permit themselves to be duchessed by authoritarian regimes, but the Albanese government has turned its back on the allies with who we once claimed to share common values.
On Tuesday, in her first major speech to the European Parliament since Denmark took up the presidency of the EU, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, once the heroine of Leftist Euro-progressives, aggressively called on member states to close the door on asylum seekers and increase military spending.
“European citizens have a right to feel safe in their own countries,” she said. “That is why we need to strengthen our external borders. We have to lower the influx of migrants to Europe. We need to help stabilise EU’s neighbouring countries. And make the process of returns easier and, of course, more efficient.”
Albanese’s government has done just the opposite. The fact Australia finally appointed a special envoy to combat the toxic surge in Jew hate that arose after October 7, 2023, is a clear demonstration of this failure to control our borders.
The Albanese government offered 3000 tourist visas to Gazans approved by terrorist organisation Hamas after it invaded Israel.
In December 2023, 72 per cent of Gazans supported that attack, yet our government issued visas without basic security checks. The disgusting anti-Semitic ravings by Islamist clerics and the unchecked outrageous demonstration by a mob outside the Sydney Opera House before any Israeli counteroffensive had been launched were the trigger for the anti-Jewish protests in our cities and on our university campuses.
Had Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke shown decency and courage then, there would have been no need for special envoy Jillian Segal’s appointment. But he didn’t, and nor did any of the Labor ministers, including Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen, or Education Minister Jason Clare (all of whom have significant Muslim populations in their electorate) call out the hate speech. Segal’s comprehensive report makes a number of sound recommendations that Albanese has said the government would consider.
Good luck with that. Another review, spare us all. The national interest demands that the divisions created by Labor, whether it be its failure to protect its Jewish citizens, or the continuing pandering to Islamists, or activists promoting separatist Indigenous policies, be dealt with maturely.
Unfortunately, this juvenile government and its obsession with undergraduate ideologies lacks the maturity and courage to confront the shameful issues it has created.
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Political weakness
Daily Telegraph | Letters | 13 July 2025
On the same day that the federal government’s anti-Semitism envoy Jillian Segal delivered her report on measures to combat the rise of anti-Semitism in this country, we have American-Jewish author and broadcaster Shmuley Boteach calling for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to be banned from entering the US, due to his lingering inaction dealing with the problem. (“Blueprint to stamp out hate at home”, DT, 11/7).
Therein rests the dilemma for Albo.
The contrary portrayal of the day’s events is a stark reminder of the PM’s “each-way” persona.
Albo’s tepid response to Segal’s “blueprint” doesn’t inspire much confidence that his government will adopt all, or any of the recommendations.
It’s true the worm is turning, albeit at a pedestrian pace, as the resounding election victory means the government no longer needs to tread softly when dealing with the anti-Jewish unrest that prevails.
The Segal report provides an opportunity for a belated correction to the government’s previous apathy in dealing with the hateful bile infecting the community.
Albo infers there needs to be forensic thought given, before making any decisions.
The government has had 22 months to perform due diligence.
Leadership is now imperative.
I would also vehemently reject Boteach’s call to unilaterally ban Albo from entering the US.
The premise of the rabbi’s proposal is clear, but the PM shouldn’t be singled out, as his ministerial coterie of Tony Burke, Penny Wong and Jason Clare are just as culpable for the failings we have witnessed since October 7, 2023.
Graeme West, Marks Point
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Chorus of intimidation derails singer’s career
Herald-Sun | Shannon Deery | 13 July 2025
Renowned singer-songwriter Deborah Conway says anti-Semitism has left her career in the balance because of her outspoken support for Israel.
Amid growing tensions over the war in the Middle East the Jewish performer says music venues are being targeted and threatened over hosting shows for Jewish creatives.
She told the Sunday Herald Sun she had been refused bookings by Melbourne venues in recent weeks, and had one show cancelled.
Conway, who is promoting a new album, says she is not the only creative to be cancelled.
“Right now Victoria is not safe for Jewish creatives,” she said. “This is true of many places in Australia, and of course many creatives, myself included, are questioning if we have a career to pursue in this country if targeted threats of violence against us in our workplace
are not taken seriously.
“I am fortunate enough to have enjoyed a four-decade career but I am horrified for emerging Jewish talent and the barriers they’re now facing.
“At every event we must discover the hard way what kind of support versus antagonism we face when we are performing to audiences. I dearly hope we are allowed to play our music for people who want to hear it without the intimidation tactics used by people who want to silence us for factors not linked to our art or our skills.”
The Sunday Herald Sun has seen emails from venues and councils advising they will not host Conway’s performances.
In one she was told: “Public commentary by the artist has attracted widespread attention, including instances of protest and event disruption. As part of council’s arts and culture programming, we must consider the potential impact on community wellbeing and cohesion.”
In another, after publicly announcing her tour, she was told the show could not go on in the interests of her safety.
Conway said she felt she had a target on her back.
“I never expected that standing up for my community in the weeks following the October 7 attacks would ever put a target on my back here in Australia,” she said.
“These activists that we have seen take over our streets don’t just disagree with you, they will abuse, threaten and support violence against innocent people if you have a different opinion to them.
“The people calling themselves pro-Palestinian are not about finding solutions or engaging in legitimate activism. Rather than promoting peace or lobbying political figures who can actually make a difference, they promote conflict in Australia towards people who have nothing to do with the situation and can have zero impact on bringing the war in the Middle East to a close.”
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Divided by hate
Herald-Sun | Letters | 13 July 2025
Divided by hate
Your front-page story “Stop this hate” (SHS, 6/7) told it all.
Australia now is a most divided country with our governments out of solutions to the problem.
Our current situation had its genesis on that fateful day of October 7, 2023.
The outrageously and cowardly response by all Australian governments, especially the Albanese government, began the current rot all in the name of capturing the Muslim vote in last year’s federal election.
Now that the election has been won, the pigeons are coming home to roost and finally we are seeing condemnation of anti-Semitism beginning to appear.
We are now seeing senior Labor figures beginning to condemn acts of anti-Semitism, although for most Jewish communities the damage has been done.
Acts of anti-Semitism are getting worse.
Obviously this anti-Semitic activity is not going to abate with the current government’s attitude.
There is no doubt that this government is in huge trouble.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has to work very hard on many fronts to prevent himself going down in history as the worst PM Australia has ever had.
Peter D. Surkitt, Sandringham
Learn from history
People of my generation were taught about anti-Semitism in Germany in the 1930s and its culmination in the Holocaust, yet here we are in 2025 with our very own Kristallnacht in Melbourne (“Fear, despair as violence reigns”, SHS, 6/7).
Violence against civilians in pursuit of political aims is terrorism, and I hope that our authorities will have the courage to charge the perpetrators with terrorism offences and that the courts will have the wisdom to jail them so that this scourge is stamped out before it becomes too late.
However, even that will not be enough.
History and civics education must be compulsory up to Year 10.
History must include the horrors of the 1930s, so that the current generation knows where anti-Semitism leads.
Civics education must inculcate support for the democratic process and inoculate against street violence as the way to achieve one’s aims.
Chris Curtis, Hurstbridge
Sincere congratulations on your brilliant Editorial “These attacks are intolerable” (HS, 6/7). Exactly what so many are thinking. Thank you for the unambiguous and uncompromising stand you take. I stand with you.
Judy, Ararat
What are we, the Third Reich? (”Stop this hate”, SHS, 6/7). Jew-hating activists must be repelled by Victorian state law. Jewish communities warrant protection and safety, not the scourge of an awry “democracy”.
Julie Rogers, Bentleigh
Our government needs to bring in zero tolerance for all racial attacks by feral activists.
Nicky, Sunshine
There are many who are adamant they are anti-racist unless, of course, it’s against the Jews. Strange that.
Rags, Greensborough
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Gaza truce talks falter, 17 die in latest aid shooting
Canberra Times / AAP | 13 July 2025
Progress is stalling at talks aimed at securing a ceasefire in Gaza, with the sides divided over the extent of Israeli forces’ withdrawal from the Palestinian enclave, Palestinian and Israeli sources familiar with the negotiations in Doha said.
The indirect talks over a US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire continued throughout Saturday, an Israeli official told Reuters, seven days since talks began. US President Donald Trump has said he hoped for a breakthrough soon based on a new US-backed ceasefire proposal.
In Gaza, medics said 17 people trying to get food aid were killed on Saturday when Israeli troops opened fire, the latest mass shooting around a US-backed aid distribution system that the UN says has resulted in 800 people killed in six weeks.
Witnesses who spoke to Reuters described people being shot in the head and torso. Reuters saw several bodies of victims wrapped in white shrouds as family members wept at Nasser Hospital. The Israeli military said its troops had fired warning shots, but that its review of the incident had found no evidence of anyone hurt by its soldiers’ fire.
Delegations from Israel and Hamas have been in Qatar pushing for an agreement which envisages a phased release of hostages, Israeli troop withdrawals and discussions on ending the war.
The Israeli official blamed the impasse on Hamas, which he said “remains stubborn, sticking to positions that do not allow the mediators to advance an agreement”. Hamas has previously blamed Israeli demands for blocking a deal.
A Palestinian source said that Hamas had rejected withdrawal maps which Israel had proposed that would leave around 40 per cent of Gaza under Israeli control, including all of the southern area of Rafah and further territories in northern and eastern Gaza.
Two Israeli sources said Hamas wanted Israel to retreat to lines it held in a previous ceasefire before it renewed its offensive in March.
The Palestinian source said aid issues and guarantees on an end to the war were also presenting a challenge. The crisis could be resolved with more US intervention, the source said.
Hamas has long demanded an agreement to end the war before it would free remaining hostages; Israel has insisted it would end the fighting only when all hostages are released and Hamas is dismantled as a fighting force and administration in Gaza.
Saturday’s reported mass shooting near an aid distribution point in Rafah was the latest in a series of such incidents that the United Nations rights office said on Friday had seen at least 798 people killed trying to get food in six weeks.
“The shooting was targeted. It was not random. Some people were shot in the head, some in the torso, one guy next to me was shot directly in the heart,” eyewitness Mahmoud Makram told Reuters.
“There is no mercy there, no mercy. People go because they are hungry but they die and come back in body bags.”
After partially lifting a total blockade of all goods into Gaza in late May, Israel launched a new aid distribution system, relying on a group backed by the United States to distribute food under the protection of Israeli troops.
The United Nations has rejected the system as inherently dangerous and a violation of humanitarian neutrality principles. Israel says it is necessary to keep militants from diverting aid.
The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel, killing about 1200 people and taking 251 hostages into Gaza. At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages there are believed to still be alive.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, displaced almost the entire population of more than two million people, sparked a humanitarian crisis and left much of the territory in ruins.
Thousands of Israelis rallied in central Tel Aviv on Saturday demanding a deal that would release all remaining hostages being held by Hamas.
Protester Boaz Levi told Reuters here was there to pressure the government, “to get to a hostage deal as soon as possible because our friends, brothers, are in Gaza and it’s about the time to end this war. That is why we are here.”
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Israeli settlers kill American-Palestinian visiting relatives in West Bank, says family
Ambulances were reportedly stopped from reaching Sayfollah Musallet after attack in which another Palestinian man was shot dead
The Guardian | William Christou, Sufian Taha & Joseph Gedeon | 13 July 2025
A 20-year-old Palestinian-American was killed by Israeli settlers while visiting relatives in the occupied West Bank, his family have said.
Sayfollah “Saif” Musallet was reportedly beaten by Israeli settlers while he was on his family’s farm in an area near Ramallah. A group then prevented ambulances from reaching Musallet for three hours, according to the family, who said he died of his injuries before reaching hospital.
“I was the first one to reach Saif,” said Mohammed Nael Hijaz, a 22-year-old friend of Musallet. “He was not moving when I got there and he could barely breathe. There was time to save him.”
Another Palestinian man, 23-year-old Razek Hussein al-Shalabi, was fatally shot during the attack and was left to bleed to death, the Palestinian health ministry said. The funeral for both men will be held on Sunday so they can be buried together, according to a cousin of Musallet.
The attacks come amid a wave of increasing Israeli settler violence targeting Palestinians in the West Bank – more than 1,000 Paestinians have been killed and at least 9,000 injured since Hamas militants launched a murderous assault in southern Israel on 7 October 2023.
The Israeli military claimed stones were thrown at Israelis and that “a violent confrontation developed”. It added that it was “aware of reports concerning a Palestinian civilian” and that it was looking into the incident.
A spokesperson for the US Department of State said that it was aware of reports of the death of a US citizen in the West Bank and that it was “ready to provide consular services”, declining to comment further “out of respect for privacy of the family”.
In a statement, the family demanded an investigation by the US state department into the killings and called on it to “hold the Israeli settlers who killed Saif accountable for their crimes”. Witnesses of the confrontation claimed that Israeli soldiers were present during the confrontation.
Three Palestinian-American teenagers have been killed in the West Bank since 7 October. As yet, no one has been punished for the deaths.
Mussalet was born and raised in Florida, and had just opened an ice-cream shop in Tampa with his father. He had travelled to the West Bank to visit relatives at the beginning of June, family said.
“He was a very sweet guy, full of hopes and dreams,” said Hijaz, who mourned the fact that they were unable to save his friend.
In a statement, his family said: “Saif was a brother and a son, just starting the prime of his life. He was a kind and hard-working and deeply respected young man. Saif built a successful business in Tampa and was known for his generosity, ambition and connection to his Palestinian heritage.”
Mussalet was attacked on a farm owned by his family in the town of Baten al-Hawa, near Jerusalem. The area is within Area B, which is under the administrative control of the Palestinian Authority but the security control of the Israeli military.
Settlers had attacked two journalists working for DW, a German broadcaster, in the same area a week earlier, prompting condemnations by the German ambassador to Israel. Settlers had attacked them by throwing rocks at them, despite them wearing well-marked press jackets, severely damaging their car. The Israeli military said it would look into the incident.
The Israeli military has been accused by rights groups of standing by or even helping as settlers raid Palestinian villages, where they vandalise property and attack residents. Arrests of settlers are rare.
Two weeks earlier, more than 100 settlers rampaged through the village of Kafr Malek, near Ramallah, killing three men and injuring several more people.
At a funeral for Abraham Azulay, an Israel Defense Forces soldier and settler killed in south Gaza on Wednesday, mourners called for revenge against Palestinians for their friend’s death.
“We want redemption,” a friend said. “We want the temple, we want revenge.”
The Biden administration had placed sanctions on several figures within the settler community in an effort to curtail the violence, but those sanctions were repealed by Donald Trump after becoming the US president.
“The settlers want to take over our land,” said Hijaz. “Their aggression is increasing by the day. The Israeli army comes to protect them and don’t do anything to stop them from attacking us. No one can hold the settlers accountable.”
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The special envoy’s plan is the latest push to weaponise antisemitism, as a relentless campaign pays off
The omissions are as important as the inclusions in Jillian Segal’s plan, which is guilty of overreach
The Guardian | Louise Adler | 12 July 2025
One must acknowledge the remarkably effective Jewish community organisations in Australia behind the latest antisemitism report. Collectively, with their News Ltd megaphone, they have successfully badgered the government of the day, cowed the ABC, intimidated vice-chancellors and threatened to defund arts organisations.
With the ability to garner prime ministerial dinners, a battalion of lobbyists has gained access to editors, duchessed willingly seduced journalists keen to enjoy junkets and corralled more than 500 captains of industry to subscribe to full-page ads against antisemitism and thereby blurring political argument with prejudice and bias. It is no surprise that this relentless propaganda effort has paid off.
The appointment of Jillian Segal to special envoy to combat antisemitism, routinely described as an “eminent corporate lawyer”, does not seem to bring scholarly expertise to the role. With respect one might argue that Segal’s previous position as president of ECAJ, an unequivocal advocate for Israel as the Jewish homeland, should have disqualified her for the role.
Numbers have been cited as evidence of an escalation of antisemitic incidents that had apparently occurred after 7 October 2023. Of course, nuance or accuracy isn’t paramount in this campaign. So, 16 students at Sydney University feeling intimidated by the slogan “from the river to the sea” was reframed as 250 complaints submitted to parliamentary inquiry. A childcare centre that was not in fact a Jewish centre was added to the list of terrifying antisemitic attacks. The individuals police believe were hired by criminals seeking a reduction in their prison sentences who allegedly placed combustible material in a caravan became a “terrorist plot”, the hooligans (still unidentified seven months later) who firebombed the Addas Israel synagogue brought out a rash of politicians to deplore the incident.
This isn’t a full list of incidents, and it should not be necessary to make clear that I deplore all racist attacks and that people should be free to worship, protest, identify in whichever way they choose, in our society. But we do need to insist on contextualising these antisemitic attacks: some are genuinely antisemitic, some are opportunistic byproducts of other, unrelated conflicts and some are by pro-Palestine activists.
The publication of the special envoy’s plan is the latest flex by the Jewish establishment. The in-house scribes have been busy: no institution, organisation or department is exempt from the latest push to weaponise antisemitism and insist on the exceptionalism of Australian Jewry. One might pause to wonder what First Nations people, who are the victims of racism every day, feel about the priority given to 120,000 well-educated, secure and mostly affluent individuals.
The omissions are as important as the inclusions in the plan. Zionism is mentioned only once, in the section demanding the adoption of the IHRA definition. The IHRA is a contentious document, a word salad as a consequence of editing by committee; but that has not stopped Jewish representative bodies advocating for its adoption. The campaign has not been entirely successful, in significant instances actually stiffening the resolve of some to insist that antisemitism, just like all other forms of racism, is to be emphatically rejected. The plan “requires” the adoption of the IHRA definition by all levels of government, institutions and regulatory bodies. The examples proffered plainly conflate Jewishness with the State of Israel. The plan says “The IHRA definition is key to distinguishing legitimate criticism from hate, especially when anti-Zionism masks antisemitism”. There you have it. So antisemitism is anti-zionism and anti-zionism is antisemitism. QED.
The plan is certainly guilty of overreach. The envoy wants to strengthen legislation apparently. Isn’t that the role of the government of the day? Who is to be the arbiter? Who is to be the judge, for example, of universities and their report cards? Who will adjudicate “accountability” in the media? Who will recommend defunding which artist? Should this government endorse this proposal, it will clearly be the envoy.
Fortunately, a suite of laws protecting us from racism, discrimination, hate speech and incitement to violence are already deeply embedded in our civil society. No university is oblivious to these laws, no public broadcaster, no arts organisation.
Educating future generations about the Holocaust has long been a priority. I hope the envoy is aware of the work done engaging thousands of school students at such institutions as the Melbourne Holocaust Museum where my own mother was the education officer for over a decade. If the envoy is concerned that school students aren’t sufficiently well versed in the horrors of the Holocaust, she might take heart from such evidence as the sales of Anne Frank’s diary continue unabated, in the past five years more than 55,000 copies were sold in Australia.
The envoy helpfully proposes to nominate “trusted voices” to refute antisemitic claims – yet again seeking to prescribe who speaks and which views are deemed acceptable. One hopes that media organisations are resolute against the plan’s determination to monitor, oversee and “ensure fair reporting to avoid perpetually incorrect or distorted narratives or representations of Jews”. It seems that the envoy wants to determine what is legitimate reportage. Freedom of the press is of less importance. Independent journalism that is factual and speaks the truth is lightly abandoned.
Universities appear to be on notice: adopt the IHRA definition, act on it or be warned that in March 2026 a judicial inquiry will be established as the envoy demands.
Cultural organisations be warned – your funding could be at risk too. There isn’t a cultural organisation in the country that doesn’t have well-argued codes of conduct for staff, artists and audiences – in place well before the 7 October attack to combat homophobia, racism and hate speech. Now it is proposed that a Jewish Cultural and Arts Council is to advise the arts minister. To privilege one ethnic community over others is deeply offensive and dangerous.
The glaring absence here – a tactical move – is the question of Israel and its war on Gaza, as if antisemitism is a particular problem absent of any connection to Middle Eastern realpolitik. One oft repeated concern in the document is that younger Australians are more susceptible to antisemitism than older generations. The reason, clearly unpalatable to the authors of this document, is that younger, media literate Australians recognise the steadfastly uncritical advocacy of Israel by Australia’s Jewish leadership. Young people see the death and destruction in the occupied territories and cannot avoid the blindingly obvious connection. If the actions of Israel in the past 20 months or indeed the past 75 years doesn’t engender any dissent in the diaspora, it’s unsurprising that critics of Israel conclude that Jews are to be condemned for their appalling myopia and lack of moral clarity.
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Netanyahu flies home without a Gaza peace deal but still keeps Trump onside
Israeli PM manages to avoid breach with US president through high-profile assurances he is seeking end to war
The Guardian | Andrew Roth | 12 July 2025
Benjamin Netanyahu arrived back in Israel on Friday without a ceasefire in the Gaza war despite heady predictions from US and Israeli officials that this week could provide a breakthrough in negotiations. But he did not come home completely empty-handed.
The Israeli PM’s visit was his third since Donald Trump’s inauguration, with several high-profile meetings at the White House, a nomination for Trump to receive the Nobel peace prize, and suggestions from Trump and the special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, that peace could be achieved in a week.
But as Netanyahu’s trip ended, no clear results had been achieved. Witkoff postponed a trip to Doha on Tuesday as it became clear that the negotiations had not reached a point where they could produce a ceasefire agreement.
While Netanyahu repeated a refrain that a ceasefire could be announced within days, a deal to bring peace to more than 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip remained elusive.
“I hope we can complete it in a few days,” Netanyahu said during an appearance on Newsmax, a conservative, pro-Trump news network on Wednesday. “We’ll probably have a 60-day ceasefire. Get the first batch [of hostages] out and then use the 60 days to try to negotiate an end to this.”
By Thursday, when he attended a memorial service for two Israeli embassy staff killed in Washington, Netanyahu said Israel would not compromise on its demands for Hamas to disband. “I am promoting a move that will result in a significant liberation, but only on the conditions Israel demands: Hamas disarm, Gaza demilitarise,” he said. “If it is not achieved through diplomacy, it will be achieved by force.”
Several officials suggested during the week that only a single sticking point remained between negotiators in Doha: the extent of a withdrawal by the Israel Defense Forces that would follow the release of some of the hostages being held by Hamas. The White House had pushed back against an initial map that would have left Israel with significant zones of control in Gaza, which Witkoff had compared to a “Smotrich plan”, referring to the hardline Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich. Israel reportedly redrew that map to make it more palatable to the US administration.
But Hamas has said there were other disagreements, including negotiations over whether the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, an Israeli and US-backed logistics group, would be allowed to continue to deliver food to the territory (the UN said on Friday that 798 people had been killed trying to reach GHF sites since its introduction in May) and whether Israel would agree to a permanent truce, which it has said it would not. US mediators sought to bridge the gap by telling Qatari intermediaries they would guarantee the ceasefire’s continuation after 60 days as negotiations continued.
The upshot is that while Netanyahu leaves the US without a ceasefire, he has managed his relationship with Trump through high-profile assurances that he is seeking a peace in Gaza, while maintaining a status quo that members of his right-wing coalition, including the ministers Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, have said is preferable to a peace deal.
For Netanyahu, the trip produced images that reinforced Israeli claims there was “no daylight” between him and Trump, and came as the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced a decision to impose sanctions on Francesca Albanese, a UN expert on the occupied Palestinian territories, for urging the international criminal court to investigate Israeli officials and US companies over the Gaza war.
Trump’s frustrations with Netanyahu appeared to be boiling over a month ago as the US president sought to negotiate a truce between Iran and Israel, which had been trading airstrikes and missile barrages as Israel sought to dismantle the Iranian nuclear programme.
“I’m not happy with Israel,” he said on the White House lawn. “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”
That recalled remarks by Robert Gates, a former US secretary of defence, about successive White House administrations’ difficulties in managing an ally in the region that also had considerable political influence in the US.
“Every president I worked for, at some point in his presidency, would get so pissed off at the Israelis that he couldn’t speak,” Gates said.
But a full breach with the US would have been disastrous for Netanyahu, who is managing his own difficult coalition and has been targeted in a graft investigation at home that was again delayed as a result of his international travel. And, after joint strikes against Iran, the Israeli PM was keen to show that the two men were in lockstep, while giving the Trump administration an opportunity to show it was working toward a Gaza peace.
Elliott Abrams, the senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said the Trump administration had sought, as it did during the first short-lived ceasefire, to bring “pressure to bear on Israel directly” through discussions with Netanyahu and his chief lieutenant, Ron Dermer, and “trying to bring pressure on Hamas mostly through the Qataris, when there are these talks in Doha”.
He added: “Whether that pressure is effective is unclear.”
Media Report 2025.07.11
Palestine Israel Media Report Friday 11 July 2025