Escalating anti-Semitism is a danger to the nation

After the last four battalions of Hamas fighters headed south, Israel’s offensive against the terrorists is approaching a critical stage, with a new Israeli assault expected in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city. It will be highly controversial; the city is now a vast refugee camp of 1.5 million people. The complexity of dislodging Hamas, which is vital to any hope of lasting peace, has been underlined by the revelation of the militants’ sophisticated communications and intelligence hub beneath UN Relief and Works Agency buildings in Gaza City. The base operated reportedly with electricity drawn from the UN’s supply. A nearby tunnel runs under a UN school. Until its pro-Hamas sympathies are eradicated, Australia should be slow in resuming funding for UNRWA.

The war unleashed by Hamas’s barbaric attack on civilians in Israel on October 7 is brutal. According to Gaza-based health authorities 28,000 people, mainly women and children, have died in Gaza so far. That is no justification, however, for the dangerous anti-Semitism unleashed across the world, including in Australia, by the October 7 attacks – before Israel could begin to defend itself. In addition to the shameful Opera House demonstration on October 9, bungled by NSW police, one of the worst examples is author/illustrator Matt Chun, who celebrated Hamas’s “freedom fighters’’ just a day after the atrocities and shared details of 600 Jewish people from a creatives’ WhatsApp group, including their occupation and, in some cases, ­social media profiles and pictures. Chun has received tens of thousands of federal taxpayer dollars in funding and support from Writers Victoria, in partnership with the Myer Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Jewish Myer family. He has posted that the Jewish creatives’ group chat “confirms what we already know – Zionists are thoroughly racist, thoroughly anti-Indigenous and thoroughly committed to colonialism”.

As Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin told The Australian, he was “in shock … disbelief” that “people are once again drawing up lists of Jews”. Widespread attacks on Jewish businesses, especially small businesses, are chilling. Bad online reviews, negative social media posts and direct intimidation by anti-Israel activists are rife, John Ferguson wrote on Saturday. Demands for boycotts on companies and organisations led by Jews are being posted. Victoria Police is pursuing a protection order for a Jewish couple who received a photograph of their five-year-old son from an anti-Zionist activist with the threat: “I know where you live.” And Jewish residents of Melbourne’s inner-northern suburbs are packing up and moving to the southern suburbs to escape anti-Semitism.

The situation smacks of Europe in the 1930s. As former federal Labor minister Graham Richardson told Sky News, anti-Semitism has been able to “boil away underneath the surface” for a while but is “just coming out everywhere’’. It is being noticed. “Anti-Semitism Down Under is turning Vicious’’, US magazine Newsweek wrote last week.

The federal and state governments have been slow and piecemeal in their approach to the re-emergence of 1930s-style anti-Jewish rhetoric. They need to be stronger and more consistent. Resorting to moral equivalence, condemning anti-Semitism in the same breath as Islamophobia (which is not on the same scale), is not good enough.

The new face of anti-Semitism is young, woke and left, as Brendan O’Neill wrote on Saturday. Anthony Albanese was right to condemn NSW Greens MP Jenny Leong for describing Jewish groups as using “their tentacles” to influence politicians (she later said the word tentacles was inappropriate). But the Prime Minister and his ministers should have been in the parliamentary chamber on Wednesday to vote against the Greens’ push to debate an anti-Israel motion. Until it is faced, exposed and dealt with, the ugly underbelly of anti-Semitism in Australia, stirred on October 7, will grow more menacing

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Egypt threatens to end treaty if Israel enters Rafah

Canberra Times/12.2.2024

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8517591/egypt-threatens-to-end-treaty-if-israel-enters-rafah/

Egypt has threatened to suspend its peace treaty with Israel if Israeli troops are sent into the densely populated Gaza border town of Rafah, where it says fighting could force the closure of the besieged territory’s main aid supply route, according to two Egyptian officials and a Western diplomat.

The threat to suspend the Camp David Accords, a cornerstone of regional stability for nearly a half-century, came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said sending troops into Rafah was necessary to win the four-month war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Over half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled to Rafah to escape fighting in other areas, and they are packed into sprawling tent camps and UN-run shelters near the border.

Egypt fears a mass influx of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who may never be allowed to return.

The standoff between Israel and Egypt, two close US allies, took shape as aid groups warned that an offensive in Rafah would worsen the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, where around 80 per cent of residents have fled their homes and where the UN says a quarter of the population faces starvation.

Hamas’ Al-Aqsa television station quoted an unnamed Hamas official as saying that any invasion of Rafah would “blow up” talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar aimed at achieving a cease-fire and the release of Israeli hostages.

Netanyahu, in an interview with the US’ ABC News, suggested civilians in Rafah could flee north, saying there are “plenty of areas” that have been cleared by the army. He said Israel is developing a “detailed plan” to relocate them.

But Israel’s offensive has caused widespread destruction, particularly in northern Gaza, and heavy fighting is still taking place in central Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis.

In Gaza City on Sunday, the remaining residents covered decomposing bodies in the streets or carried bodies to graves.

Some streets were piled high with sand from bombings and smoke billowed from destroyed buildings.

A ground operation in Rafah could cut off one of the only avenues for delivering Gaza’s badly needed food and medical supplies.

All three officials confirmed Egypt’s threats, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief reporters on the sensitive negotiations.

Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other countries have also warned of severe repercussions if Israel goes into Rafah.

“An Israeli offensive on Rafah would lead to an unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe and grave tensions with Egypt,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell wrote on X.

The White House, which has rushed arms to Israel and shielded it from international calls for a cease-fire, has also warned against a Rafah ground operation under current circumstances, saying it would be a “disaster” for civilians.

Israel and Egypt fought five wars before signing the Camp David Accords, a landmark peace treaty brokered by then-US President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.

The treaty includes several provisions governing the deployment of forces on both sides of the border.

Egypt has heavily fortified its border with Gaza, carving out a 5km buffer zone and erecting concrete walls above and below ground.

Australian Associated Press