Media Report 2025.05.17

Free Palestine Melbourne Media Report Saturday May 17 2025
Israeli strikes kill at least 82 in Gaza as US President Donald Trump wraps up Middle East visit
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-16/idf-strikes-deir-al-balah-khan-younis-gaza-strip-friday-may-16/105303900

Palestinian women and children arrive in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza on Friday. (AP Photo: Jehad Alshrafi)
In short:
Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip on early Friday morning killed at least 82 people, according to local hospitals.
The strikes followed days of similar attacks, after Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to step up Israel’s use of force to destroy Hamas.
Asked about the situation in Gaza, US President Donald Trump said “we’re going to get that taken care of”.
The latest round of Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 82 people, according to local hospitals, as US President Donald Trump wrapped up a Middle East visit that skipped Israel and offered no prospect for a ceasefire in the war-torn territory.
At least 66 people were killed in northern Gaza in the early hours of Friday morning, according to the Indonesian Hospital, where most of the bodies were taken. Another 16 bodies were taken to Nasser Hospital in the strip’s south.
The IDF had no immediate comment on the strikes, which hit the outskirts of Deir al-Balah and the city of Khan Younis in the south, and sent people fleeing from the town of Beit Lahiya and the Jabaliya refugee camp further north.
A scattered crowd of people and vehicles travel on a dusty road between flattened, wrecked buildings.
The strikes followed days of similar attacks that have killed dozens of people across the territory since Tuesday.
The latest violence came as Mr Trump concluded a Middle East tour that had sparked widespread hope of a ceasefire deal or a renewal of humanitarian aid to Gaza, despite the president skipping Israel during the visit in favour of a number of Gulf states.
Israel’s military (the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF) has blockaded Gaza since March 2, preventing the delivery of any supplies including food, shelter and medicine.
Israel says the blockade aims to pressure Hamas to release the hostages it still holds and that it won’t allow aid back in until a system is in place that gives it control over distribution.
Netanyahu vows to step up war
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed earlier in the week to push ahead with a promised escalation of force in Israel’s war in Gaza to pursue his aim of destroying Hamas.
In comments released by his office on Tuesday, the prime minister said Israeli forces were days away from entering Gaza “with great strength to complete the mission … [which] means destroying Hamas”.
Israeli strikes in Gaza kill at least 70, including local journalist
Te strikes were carried out on the day Palestinians commemorate the “Naqba”, when hundreds of thousands of people fled or were forced to flee their home towns and villages during the 1948 Middle East War.
It’s unclear if Friday morning’s bombardment marked the start of that operation.
An Israeli official told the Associated Press that cabinet members were due to meet later on Friday to assess ongoing ceasefire negotiations in Qatar, and to decide on its next steps.
The official was not authorised to brief members of the media on the meeting, and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Earlier in the morning, families of Israeli hostages being held captive by Hamas said they awoke with “heavy hearts” to reports of increased attacks, and called on Mr Netanyahu to “join hands” with Mr Trump’s efforts to release the hostages.
“Missing this historic opportunity for a deal to bring the hostages home would be a resounding failure that will be remembered in infamy forever,” the families said in a statement.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people during a terror attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has so far killed at least 53,000 Palestinians — many of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.
Almost 3,000 Palestinians have been killed since March 18, the ministry said, when Israel resumed carrying out strikes on Gaza following a two-month ceasefire.
Hamas still holds 58 of the roughly 250 hostages it took during the October 7 attack, with 23 of those 58 believed to still be alive.
Donald Trump smiles after signing a gues book in an orange-lit room.
US President Donald Trump signs a guest book after touring an interfaith complex in Abu Dhabi on Friday. (AP Photo: Alex Brandon)
Trump acknowledges Gazans are ‘starving’
Mr Trump, a Netanyahu ally, briefly addressed the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza during remarks to reporters in Abu Dhabi on Friday.
“We’re looking at Gaza. And we’re going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving. A lot of people are — there’s a lot of bad things going on,” he said.
Earlier this week, a new humanitarian organisation that has US backing to take over aid delivery said it expects to begin operations before the end of the month — after what it describes as key agreements from Israeli officials.
A tatement from the group, called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, identified several US military veterans, former humanitarian coordinators and security contractors that it said would lead the delivery effort.
However, many in the humanitarian community, including the United Nations, say the system does not align with humanitarian principles and won’t be able to meet the needs of Palestinians in Gaza.
Hamas on Thursday insisted the proper restoration of aid to the war-ravaged territory is “the minimum requirement” for talks to take place.
It also warned that Gaza was not “for sale”, hours after Mr Trump once again floated the idea of the US taking over the territory and turning it into “a freedom zone”.
AP/AFP
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Israel concedes error in video claiming to show Hamas tunnels under Gaza hospital
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-16/israeli-video-claimed-hamas-tunnels-gaza-hospital-different/105299312

By Middle East correspondent Matthew Doran
The video released claimed to show Hamas tunnels underneath a Gaza hospital.
In short:

The Israeli military fired at least nine missiles at the European Hospital in Khan Younis on Tuesday, the last hospital in Gaza providing cancer and cardiac care.
The IDF released a video claiming to show a tunnel network under the hospital, but has since conceded it shows another location nearby.
The damaged hospital has had to close, with patients sent to other facilities already struggling to remain open.
The Israeli military has conceded that a video it released claiming to show Hamas-built tunnels underneath a southern Gaza hospital actually shows different buildings.
On Tuesday, at least nine so-called bunker-busting missiles hit the European Hospital compound in Khan Younis, Gaza’s last cancer and cardiac care hospital.
At least 16 people were killed and more than 70 were injured. The hospital has now had to close due to the damage caused to buildings and water and sewage connections.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) says it was targeting an underground Hamas command and control centre, but Palestinian officials insist no such structure exists.
Patients have been evacuated, although nearby intensive care units have struggled to accommodate the extra people.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet (ISA) claimed Hamas had constructed a command centre underneath the hospital, and said it believed the group’s military commander Mohammed Sinwar was killed in the attack.
The IDF released a video late on Tuesday highlighting what it said was tunnel infrastructure.
But analysis of satellite imagery shows the buildings highlighted are in a school 150-200 metres away.
“The underground infrastructure was located beneath the European Hospital compound, and passed under the adjacent area that was marked in the graphic,” the IDF said in a statement.
Imagery released by the IDF claiming to show Hamas-built tunnels underneath a southern Gaza hospital. (Israel Defence Forces)
“In the joint IDF and ISA announcement published on Tuesday, regarding the underground infrastructure site that was struck, the area marked was adjacent to the hospital, and not the hospital itself.”
The IDF has continually insisted Hamas hides its operations in hospitals and other civilian buildings, but many of its claims are presented without evidence.
The video published on Tuesday also provides no evidence to back up claims that markings seen in the footage show underground tunnels.
Gaza’s health ministry confirmed the European Hospital had been forced to close after the strikes.
“The repeated targeting of the hospital makes it impossible to provide medical care, as it poses a risk to medical staff, the wounded, and patients,” it said in a statement.
“The European Gaza Hospital is the only hospital providing medical follow-up for cancer patients in the Gaza Strip, following the destruction of the Turkish Friendship Hospital.”
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Call me a self-hating Jew, but what Israel is doing in Gaza is indefensible
https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/call-me-a-self-hating-jew-but-what-israel-is-doing-in-gaza-is-indefensible-20250515-p5lzez.html

David Leser
Dear faithful supporters of Israel, Jewish and non-Jewish. And dear everyone else who may – or may not – know what to think about this diabolical conflict, but is loath to say so for fear of being labelled antisemitic or, in my case, a self-hating Jew.
Time to get clearer on what antisemitism means.
According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, adopted in Bucharest in 2016, antisemitism includes the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology. It includes accusing Jews of “controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions”; or of denying the facts of the Holocaust.
It covers labelling Jews as “Christ killers”, or claiming they conspire to harm humanity; that they’re more loyal to Israel than other countries; that, regardless of political or religious leaning, they are collectively responsible for Israel’s conduct.
This IHRA definition has been officially adopted by more than 40 countries, including Australia, but has been criticised for its undue emphasis on Israel. Among its detractors are hundreds of leading scholars of Holocaust history, Jewish studies, antisemitism studies and Middle East studies who, in 2020, issued a competing definition known as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. (Many of the scholars are Jewish.)
This new definition was drafted because the IHRA definition was thought to muzzle legitimate debate about Israel/Palestine and Zionism; that it was better to remove the “state issue” from the question of antisemitism to help clear confusion and to combat real and growing antisemitism. (This Jerusalem Declaration has drawn strong criticism for being too soft on antisemitism.)
The IHRA definition insists that it is antisemitic to call Israel’s existence a “racist endeavour”, even though Israel has effectively built an apartheid system of domination over another people. (But are Jews a race, religious group, ethnicity, culture, people or nation? Discuss.)
The IHRA definition contends it is antisemitic to compare contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, despite Israel being accused before the International Court of Justice of violating the Genocide Convention, a charge supported by a growing number of countries, human rights organisations and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. (Israel rejects these accusations as “an obscene inversion of reality”.)
I wasn’t going to raise my voice again, but Israel has given me no choice
Under the IHRA definition, it could be antisemitic for Daniel Blatman, head of the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to say – as he did recently: “I’ve studied the Holocaust for 40 years. I’ve read countless testimonies about the most horrific genocide of all, against the Jewish people and other victims. However, the reality in which I would read accounts about mass murder committed by the Jewish state (in Gaza) that, in chilling resemblance, remind me of testimonies from [the Holocaust] – this I could not have foreseen even in my worst nightmares.”
Under the IHRA definition, no vehement critic of Israel is safe from the accusation of antisemitism – no student protester nor vice chancellor, no media boss nor journalist, no politician, institutional leader, artistic director, artist, colleague or friend.
The Jerusalem Declaration says that hostility to Israel can be an expression of “antisemitic animus”, but it can also be a reaction to human rights violations, or “the emotion that a Palestinian feels on account of their experience at the hands of the Israeli state. In short, judgement and sensitivity are needed in applying these guidelines to concrete situations.”
Here are some concrete situations: On October 7, 2023 Hamas and its affiliates massacred nearly 1200 people and took more than 250 people hostage. Fifty-eight hostages remain in Gaza, one-third believed still alive. This has traumatised Israel in the most profoundly shocking ways, as it would any nation.
Since October 7, Israel has – in what it claims to be “self-defence” and an attempt to destroy Hamas – killed nearly 53,000 people, including thousands of children, according to health officials in Gaza. Aid workers, first responders and journalists have been deliberately targeted, entire families wiped out, children bombed, shredded and decapitated. Almost all schools, homes, churches, mosques, hospitals, shelters and farmlands have been destroyed, and the majority of the territory’s 2 million people displaced countless times. Ethnic cleansing appears to be next.
Gaza is a wasteland where – since March 2 – no food, medical supplies nor fuel have been allowed to enter. People slaughter donkeys, horses and cats to survive.
“My name is Jori Al Areer, I’m 5 years old,” says a stick-thin girl to the camera, her face a rictus grin of despair. “I am from Gaza. I am starving.”
United Nations experts have described this deliberate starvation campaign as an “ostentatious and merciless … desecration of human life and dignity”.
Middle East and security analyst
Can I write that these scenes are reminiscent of Europe 80 years ago when my own people faced extinction? Under the IHRA definition of antisemitism, perhaps not.
Today, the fate of millions rests in the hands of an unchecked Israeli government, one that the (Jewish) New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas Friedman wrote recently, “is not our ally”.
Time again to call this out, as hundreds of Jewish Australians (including myself) did in an open letter prior to the recent federal election. “For many of us, watching in horror, this is not a crisis we can turn away from,” the letter said. “It cuts to the heart of our Jewish values: the imperative to speak out in the face of injustice.
“Yet here in Australia, political leaders and commentators have worked to smear those who express solidarity with Palestinians. They claim that criticism of Israel amounts to antisemitism. They suggest that support for Palestinian rights – including from Australian political parties – is an attack on Jewish people.
“This is as false as it is dangerous. Not all Jews support the policies of the Israeli government or the actions of the Israeli army. We reject the idea that defending Palestinian life and dignity is antisemitic. On the contrary, it is an expression of our human and Jewish ethics. To imply otherwise erases the diversity within our community and exploits Jewish identity to shut down legitimate debate.”
As I said, it’s time to get clearer on what antisemitism is … and is not
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Letters the Age
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/spring-street-farmers-are-doing-it-tough-20250516-p5lzvc.html

Trump’s resort dream
Your correspondent believes that Donald Trump would empathise with the Palestinians if he witnessed first-hand the destruction and devastation of Gaza (Letters, 16/5). Unfortunately, rather than being empathetic, he would merely see it as necessary demolition to clear the way for a resort development.
Edward Combes, Wheelers Hill
Weight is on Hamas
Your correspondents attacking Israel for Gaza’s woes are missing the main point (Letters, 15/5). Israel has offered the Hamas leaders safe passage out of Gaza if they end the war by releasing the hostages and giving up their weapons. Meaning they have choice. This would allow aid to immediately resume, and a new government to start rebuilding.
Hamas is refusing, insisting on keeping those weapons and staying in Gaza so it can wage further wars against Israel when it’s ready. Surely, we should be pressuring the Hamas terrorists who started this war to end it, not Israel. Again Hamas has the choice to release hostages and lay down arms to stop this war.
After all, we rightly demand the Russian aggressors end their war, not Ukraine, don’t we?
Stephen Lazar, Elwood

Stand worth applauding
Simon Tedeschi’s plea for an end to Israel’s remorseless brutality in Gaza (Letters, 16/5) is passionate and powerful. It’s all the more compelling coming from a world-renowned classical musician who treasures his Jewish heritage, believes in Israel’s right to exist and laments the rise in antisemitism. He will be acutely aware of the risk he is taking by speaking out with such bold candour. His defence, if he needs it, is that he is doing nothing but speaking the truth. The words he uses – ″⁣horror, punishment, devastation, cruelty, madness, disgrace″⁣ – constitute a deafening chorus of condemnation. Bravo, for his daring. It deserves a standing ovation.
Tom Knowles, Parkville
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Why Israel’s supporters need more people like Sussan Ley
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/why-israels-supporters-need-more-people-like-sussan-ley/news-story/8fffb49d7df9fcfd76182a8e2f5f592d

After any election defeat, parties review their policies and positions. Some things are discarded, other things are re-embraced.
There are some things so strongly supported across the breadth of the Coalition, such as Australia’s support of like-minded democracies such as Israel and Ukraine and our support of Australia’s Jewish community against the scourge of anti-Semitism, that I can confidently predict a continuation in current policy.
Suggestions that Sussan Ley’s previous positions on Palestine are likely to lead to a shift in the Coalition’s position on these policy areas are wrong.
I know Sussan well. She has thought deeply about these issues and engaged with all sides. It is a journey and an approach we need more Australians to take.
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Liberal MP Andrew Wallace says the entire Liberal Party is “all behind” newly appointed Opposition leader Sussan Ley and…
After the 2022 election Sussan stood unopposed as a candidate for the deputy leadership of the Liberal Party.
Ley grew up in the United Arab Emirates, where her father, a British intelligence officer, was stationed. He had served previously in Israel during the British Mandate in the years before Israel’s independence.
Sussan was a supporter of the Palestinian cause not because it was a cause of the progressive left but because she had grown up in Arab countries and had heard stories of her father’s experiences in Jerusalem. She served for many years as a co-chairwoman of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine and undertook a trip to the Palestinian territories with the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network.
Interpersonally I always liked Sussan.
While accepting that she and I had come from different starting points (I have always been a strong supporter of the state of Israel), I was particularly concerned that our putative deputy leader had been a supporter of the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state.
This was contrary to long-held Coalition policy that recognition of a Palestinian state should occur only when the Palestinian leadership had recognised Israel’s right to exist and final status issues had been settled.
So when Sussan called me to canvass for my vote, I said to her that I had real difficulty in supporting her because of her support for unilateral recognition, which has never been, and should never be, our policy.
I was concerned that as deputy leader she would have great influence on the future foreign policy direction of our party even if she were not our foreign affairs spokeswoman.
Support for the state of Israel, the only Western liberal democracy in the Middle East, is an article of faith for the Liberal Party and I wasn’t the only colleague giving her this message.
Sussan and I talked about the changing circumstances in the Middle East as the result of the Abraham Accords.
The UAE, where Sussan had grown up, had recently changed its position in relation to Israel.
I suggested to Sussan that the two of us visit Israel and the UAE to see how the Abraham Accords had changed the relationship between Israelis and Arabs. I also wanted her to hear the perspective of Israelis that she had perhaps never heard and asked her to reflect on whether unilateral recognition was really helping the cause of Middle East peace.
Former foreign minister Alexander Downer discusses his pick for Sussan Ley’s shadow foreign affairs minister, Senator Dave…
The timing of the visit in October 2022 coincided with the Israeli election and occurred a week after Penny Wong’s ham-fisted changing of Australia’s position on West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
I had asked the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council to prepare an itinerary for us that included Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Tel Aviv, Sderot and the Gaza border including one of the kibbutzes, Nahal Oz, that later was one of the sites attacked during the October 7 massacre in 2023.
We met top Israeli experts on the Abraham Accords and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We also heard Palestinian perspectives during a visit to Ramallah. We met the Palestinian prime minister at the time, Mohammad Shtayyeh who told us how delighted he was that Australia had changed its position on the capital of Israel.
It was Sussan who told him firmly that was not Liberal Party policy.
In the UAE we met Emirati businesspeople who had connections to both Israel and Australia. I really got to know Sussan on that visit. I saw her listen closely and engage with new perspectives, in particular the shared optimism of Israelis and Emiratis about the new relationship and the prospect of a deal with the Saudis that would reshape the Middle East.
The Abraham Accords are different to the cold peace that Israel has with Egypt and Jordan. It is a peace based on friendship and shared strategic objectives.
In those heady days it seemed as if the region was on the cusp of a new era of peace and prosperity. Sussan was impressed by the peace initiatives on the ground between Israelis and Palestinians we visited in the West Bank.
She got a real sense of Israel’s strategic challenges, particularly from Iranian-backed terrorist groups – Hezbollah by the visit to Golan Heights and the border with Lebanon; and the fragility of existence in places such as Sderot, with its bomb shelters in playgrounds and schools in the event of rocket attacks from nearby Gaza.
When Sussan returned from the trip, she made speeches reflecting on her visit, repudiating her previous position and outlining her new perspective. She developed a warm friendship with Israeli ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon and she attends Jewish communal functions as a welcome friend. After October 7, she was as clear-eyed and as strong in her condemnation of attacks on Israel by Palestinian terrorists and in her support for Jewish Australians as any of our Coalition colleagues.
I have no doubt that Sussan Ley is sincere in her appreciation of the changed circumstances in the Middle East, both before and after October 7.
She understands the challenges that Israel faces and the importance of supporting Israel as a Western liberal democratic ally.
I also know that she remains a friend of the Palestinians, and she does so because she wants to see peace in the Middle East. She understands that peace won’t come until you have Palestinian leaders who want to recognise Israel’s right to exist, cease their campaign of terror and seek a relationship with Israel much as the UAE has.
Supporters of Israel need more people to come on the journey that Sussan has taken and look at the challenges of the Middle East from all vantage points.
When the Liberal Party needs to look afresh at our policy positions, it is good to have a leader who is prepared to listen and consider new perspectives on old problems – and, when the facts change, be prepared to change her opinion too.
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Smoke and mirrors: truth goes MIA in a world full of spin and deception
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/smoke-and-mirrors-truth-goes-mia-in-a-world-full-of-spin-and-deception/news-story/bf037c7352fcbaa62fe01274bf3424d2

Chris Kenny
Truth is as golden as Lasseter’s Reef, but in our public debate it has become almost as hard to find. The battle against lies in politics is nothing new (Winston Churchill said “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on”) but we are losing it faster and more often.
How do we settle momentous issues of economics, science and engineering without coalescing around agreed facts? We need to confront reality rather than pretend it away, yet in the information age people are becoming isolated in digital silos where facts are seldom stress-tested.
The times do not value truth. To observe that someone with a penis is not a woman is to invite scorn and censure; we are expected to go along with the chosen pronouns of individuals rather than prioritise the rights of biological women and girls.
We see university students, no less, align their activism in support of Palestinians in Hamas-controlled Gaza with their support for LGBTIQA+ rights. Queers for Palestine is not an ironic tagline or a bizarre suicide pact but an earnest group of pro-Palestinian protesters – what next, Yazidi women for Islamic State?
Palestinian protesters also have displayed placards linking their cause to climate action. It defies belief that such absurdity can exist, let alone be taken seriously.
Even after our federal election Labor Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is persisting with a $600bn price tag for the Coalition’s nuclear power plan. This is a fabricated figure, a wildly exaggerated number five times higher than credible estimates, and it comes from a Labor-aligned renewable energy lobby group – it is a lie.
Yet those who have called this out most stridently from the right-of-centre happen to be the same people who promulgated the falsehood that the Uluru Statement from the Heart was 18 or 26 pages long. If you want to demand honesty in political debate you need to stand on solid ground yourself.
We were lied to ad nauseam during the Covid-19 pandemic. This was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”, Victorian premier Daniel Andrews declared, insisting there was a social duty to get the jab as he locked his state down and even imposed curfews without medical advice.
Our own government secretly censored social media to take down factual posts about the inability of vaccines to prevent virus transmission or the ineffectiveness of lockdowns. We were told lies about the origins of the virus, the threat it posed to the healthy and the young, the relative risks from vaccines, the effectiveness of masks.
People were arrested for daring to dissent. Yet so thin is our society’s commitment to honesty and transparency that the politicians have been able to avoid a full royal commission into the pandemic response. After colluding to spread fear rather than facts, most of the media is happy to leave it all unexamined. No apologies have been forthcoming.
The climate and energy debate is broadly disdainful of reality. Think about how often we are told renewable energy is the cheapest form of electricity and then examine what its rollout has done to our power costs.
Bowen offers the oxymoron that “reliable renewables are securing the grid” – a complete inversion of reality. He insults the intelligence of voters but is seldom interrogated on the facts.
Proponents are free to advocate for renewables all they like – there are rational arguments to be made – but pretending away the central weakness of intermittence is delusional. If renewables are reliable and cheap, then war is peace and ignorance is strength – when bills go up or power is in short supply, reality catches up with spin.
On global warming we are constantly fed forecasts and opinions as fact, even when they fly in the face of the empirical record. During Cyclone Alfred in March, Anthony Albanese said “the science tells us that there would be more extreme weather events” and “anyone who looks at the science knows that that is what is occurring”.
In fact, the science shows tropical cyclones in Australia have become less common; even the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water’s Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub notes the “overall number of tropical cyclones recorded in the Australian region has decreased significantly in recent decades”.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts cyclone frequency will continue to decline with a possible increase in intensity.
After most bushfires and floods we hear activists, politicians and media refer to new records as they misuse the word “unprecedented”. A quick check of the record often exposes their claims – our worst bushfires and floods in most locations occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries.
On January 24, 2019, the Bureau of Meteorology proclaimed a record maximum of 46.6C for Adelaide, claiming it was the hottest maximum ever recorded in an Australian capital city. Yet almost exactly 80 years earlier, on January 12, 1939, the maximum recorded in Adelaide was 47.6C, a full degree hotter.
When questioned, the BOM advised it had revised down or “homogenised” the earlier records, as it has done with much of the historical temperature data. So the record it proclaimed only occurred because it had lowered, ex post facto, the earlier record.
The bureau will defend its scientific processes; fair enough. But if it were really interested in facts and transparency, it would at least include footnotes and be upfront about its revisions.
Then there is the constant and nonsensical deceit (and conceit) that emissions reductions in Australia can change the climate. The science is clear, we can make no discernible difference.
On Middle Eastern affairs we are constantly told that Hamas terrorists in Gaza are fighting against Israeli “occupation”. Yet Israel withdrew completely from Gaza, including forcibly removing Israeli farmers and settlers, two decades ago.
The term genocide is used to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza when the latter’s population has been growing faster than Israel’s and their energy, health and food supplies have been facilitated by Israel all along. We have never seen a war previously where so much care has been taken to warn civilians about attacks and provide pathways and ceasefires for safe passage.
Figures provided by Hamas-controlled agencies about the number of Gazans killed are shared by the world’s media without accounting for the fact that about half of the dead are terrorists and many others have died of natural causes.
A total of 122 health facilities have been affected, leaving more than 90 percent of Gaza’s hospitals damaged or destroyed.
In the first weeks of the war global media reported that Israel had bombed a hospital and killed 500 people when no such thing happened – a missile fired by a Hamas-aligned group landed off-target and killed up to 200 people.
Unsurprisingly for Islamist terror groups, the wild claims from Hamas and its affiliates are often the polar opposite of the reality. Yet they are amplified and endorsed by much of the media and political debate before verification.
On social media there is an unholy confluence of hidden agendas, misinformation, artificial intelligence and malevolent actors that feeds directly into the minds of our population, especially the young. And the algorithms ensure that whatever falsehoods intrigue us will be repeated and reaffirmed on constant loop.
As traditional media becomes more polarised, the silo effect is accentuated and we see far too few examples of people with differing views debating issues directly, so that we might at least come to an agreed set of facts on which to base our disagreements.
The one shining light of the federal election campaign was that we had four debates of differing formats fostering a contest of ideas and information – the trouble is most people probably consumed it through social media tidbits and hot takes.
These are immensely challenging times. Increasingly we are picking our way through a hall of mirrors.
There must be a constituency for truth because it will always win out in the long run. What we are missing are platforms that dare to confront all issues from all sides with the aim of arriving at basic truths, even if we disagree about how to address them.
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AMERICANS LASH AUSTRALIAN UNIS OVER ANTI-SEMITISM
https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=9b919269-9919-48de-80be-c984cd419339&share=true

Thomas Henry
American student leaders who feature in a film documenting the explosion of hatred on college campuses in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks have issued a warning to Australian universities confronted with rising anti-Semitism.
Talia Khan, a doctoral student at the Michigan Institute of Technology who appears in the documentary titled October 8, said universities were “failing their students” by not fostering “complex discussions or nuanced conversation about the conflict or Israeli policies”.
Her comments followed a general meeting held on Wednesday evening in which Sydney University’s student representative council endorsed a single Palestinian state from “the river to the sea” and rejected the institution’s definition of anti-Semitism.
Many students at the meeting turned their backs on Jewish students as they put forward their views.
While Wednesday’s student gathering was only the sixth SGM in the university’s 175-year history, it was the second meeting in the past 10 months held by the student representative body calling for the elimination of Israel.
Ms Khan labelled calls for a one-state solution as “completely ignorant”.
“Personally I’m a free speech absolutist … I think it’s really important in a healthy democracy to be free to say even really disgusting things,” she said.
“Blocking people from saying things is undemocratic but obviously it’s not intellectually rigorous or accurate comparing Israel to a Nazi state.
“That’s what we should be focusing on, that universities are failing their students because they have an inability to engage in complex discussions or nuanced conversation about the conflict or Israeli policies.”
Fellow university student and president of the University of California’s student body, Tessa Veksler, who also appears in the film, said there was “no other word” to describe the events of Wednesdays SGM than “anti-Semitism”.
“When two Jews come to discuss a topic that’s personal to them and people turn their backs on them, there’s no other word to describe that,” she said.
“What I’m seeing here in Australia is that university administrations will see the most blatant, obvious anti-Semitism and they will choose not to act upon it.” The UC student leader lashed Australian universities for creating separate spaces for Jewish students instead of “making sure anti-Semitic students are held accountable for their behaviour”.
Motions passed at the SRC-held student general meeting on Wednesday night rejected a new definition of anti-Semitism adopted by Australia’s universities and called for the elimination of the Jewish state.
The motions moved by anti-Israel activist group Students Against War, which passed almost unanimously, declared that it was “not anti-Semitic to call for the elimination of the apartheid state of Israel”.
These statements fly in the face of the newly adopted university definition of anti-Semitism which states: “Criticism of Israel can be anti-Semitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions and when it calls for the elimination of the state of Israel.”
EDITORIAL P14
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SINWAR USED TUNNELS AT SITE OF STRIKES: HAMAS
https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=09fc8dbd-2f95-47f8-a8be-129309ff7f7a&share=true
Staff writers
Hamas has reportedly confirmed that the Gaza tunnel network hit by massive Israeli air strikes this week is used by the terror group’s leader Mohammed Sinwar and other commanders to avoid Israeli Defence Force attacks.
On Wednesday (AEST) the Israeli Air Force dropped more than a tonne of bunker busting bombs on the emergency yard and rear compound of the European Hospital in Khan Younis, which it said were targeting an underground command and control facility of the terror group where Sinwar was thought to be hiding.
Strikes that continued on Thursday in a “belt of fire” at the site extended up to 500 metres in some areas, with Israeli media reporting the aim of the renewed attack was to prevent any attempt at the rescue of Sinwar and other militant commanders, or removal of the rubble
The Israeli military has been widely criticised after publishing a video incorrectly claiming to show Hamas-built tunnels under the hospital in southern Gaza.
The Israel Defence Forces admitted that the tunnels in the video were under a school about 250 yards from the hospital.
However, amid increasing concern over the accuracy of the strikes, which have killed scores of people, Hamas sources in Gaza told the Saudi-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat that the targeted site did contain a tunnel system previously damaged in the seven-week-long 2014 war with Israel
The sources claimed the network had been restored and was used by Hamas leadership to hide from Israeli attacks and plan their own attacks.
Israel’s Channel 12 TV reported that the tunnel includes oxygen tubes designed to allow survival in the event of a collapse or attack.
In 2021 Sinwar was in such a tunnel alongside Rafaa Salama, the former commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade, when it was struck by the IDF, Asharq Al-Awsat reports. Both men survived with minor injuries. Salama was later killed in an Israeli strike with Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s elusive military chief, in 2024.
Sinwar, who took over Hamas in Gaza after the death of his brother Yahya Sinwar last year, has been targeted for years by the IDF but has consistently managed to avoid assassination. Among his most audacious escapes, according to Asharq al-Awsat, was using pre-recorded radio transmissions to give the impression he was speaking live from a certain location, leading the IDF to bomb that site while Sinwar was actually elsewhere.
In 2003 he escaped unscathed after an explosive device planted in the wall of his home blew up.
In 2019, an Israeli operation that reportedly involved poisoning Sinwar and other commanders and abducting them from a beach also failed.
Asharq al-Awsat reports that Sinwar founded Hamas’s secretive “Shadow Unit”, which is tasked with guarding high-value captives, such as Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit whose 2006 abduction Sinwar oversaw.
Neither Israel nor Hamas has confirmed Sinwar’s death, with Asharq al-Awsat reporting that Hamas sources have refused to confirm or deny his assassination.
Israel’s military is following its pattern of refusing even to confirm publicly that the Khan Younis strikes were targeting Sinwar.
However, it is reportedly cautiously optimistic the strikes have killed both the Hamas leader and senior commander Muhammad Shabana, who was first in line to succeed him. Abu Obeidah, Hamas’s spokesman – regularly seen on Al Jazeera with his face covered by a red keffiyeh – is also thought to have been killed.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to push ahead with a promised escalation of force in Gaza to pursue his aim of destroying Hamas.
In comments released by Mr Netanyahu’s office this week, the Prime Minister said Israeli forces were days away from entering Gaza “with great strength to complete the mission … It means destroying Hamas”.
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim told Sky TV the group was holding direct talks with the US, despite denials by Washington.
“We believe that President Trump is doing the hard work of reducing tensions in the region, which is what motivates us to continue communicating with the American administration, regardless of the team,” Mr Naim said.
He claimed that Hamas told negotiators the group was ready to return all the hostages immediately if they were promised the releases would lead to an end to the war and the entry of aid into Gaza.
Jerusalem denied there are any movements forward on peace talks.
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Letters the Australian
https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=d7e11098-0f07-4141-86ed-f6b4bc4dca14&share=true

Uni students’ anti-Semitism shows they have a lot to learn
The actions and disrespect shown by University of Sydney students to Jewish speakers are a prime example of what Henry Ergas was talking about in his article (“Cambodia’s killing fields should haunt the left”, 16/5).
In fact I doubt many of them would even know what he was talking about. And that is how these things start, because young people with their lack of knowledge and experience are so easily manipulated. Crikey, I was one of them once when I was 18 and joined a demo because it looked like fun but didn’t have a clue what it was about.
And the problem is they are usually led by people who are older and have their own political agenda. It will be interesting to see what the powers that be at Sydney University do about this – because if they do nothing, they are in effect condoning it and they are also part of the problem.
Glenys Clift, Toowoomba, Qld It’s quite funny, in a way, to read about the university students protesting about Israel (“ ‘No Israel’: Sydney Uni students turn their backs on Jewish peers”, 16/5).
Of course, we all want to see an end to conflict wherever it occurs.
Those of us in Australia who live in peace and luxury can have no concept of what happens in the real world and to demand action to solve the problem is the height of ignorance and arrogance.
When I read about the student protests, my first thought is, don’t they have any lectures? What a lack of common sense to waste so much time and money to achieve nothing. Then again, some politicians encourage them by supporting their principles.
Paul Murray, Mollymook Beach, NSW I am shocked by the Sydney University students’ rabid anti-Semitism.
And it is cheered and celebrated.
I can see how easily the death camps of the past came to be accepted as culturally acceptable.
Back to the future. What next? Book burning? Kristallnacht? Ros Tooker, Bald Knob, Qld The recent student meeting at Sydney University calling for the abolition of Israel and the establishment of a free secular state of Palestine “from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea” is wishful thinking taken to the extreme.
Hamas reinforced its credentials as a terrorist dictatorship by invading Israel with a wild raid of killing, rape and kidnapping.
For the Pollyanna group of Sydney students to come up with a fairytale solution for the Middle East would be a silly, harmless exercise if it were not for the attack on Australian Jews.
The universities’ attempt to solve the problems of the Middle East is a typical hypothetical academic approach but the anti-Semitic attacks on their fellow Australians are very real. The universities need to rein in the lunatic fringe of the staff and students.
Anti-Semitism is not free speech.
We do not need to import the terrorism of the Middle East into Australia. This is not who we are, we are better than this.
Alan Woodward, South Melbourne, Vic The disgraceful anti-Semitic behaviour of Sydney University students is truly chilling.
What is more troubling is that those students will likely be running the country in the next 20 or so years and if such behaviour remains unchecked, which appears to be the response of the Albanese government, then Australia will slide into an anti-Semitic haven totally unwelcoming to those of the Jewish faith.
Fuelled by the ignorant rhetoric of the Greens, Sydney University, as well as some others, seems to be devoid of the academic rigour it claims to extol.
Alan Freedman, St Kilda East, Vic Thankfully, a bunch of privileged, arrogantly self-righteous, historically ignorant, undergraduate students don’t actually have a say in Australian universities’ new definition of anti-Semitism.
That has been left to adults.
Even more thankfully, these students don’t have a say in how Middle Eastern conflicts are conducted.
If they did, we surely would witness the deaths of many millions.
Fifty years ago, the “progressive” global left hailed the “liberation” of Cambodia, as Henry Ergas reminds us with perfect timing. At the hands of the Khmer Rouge, a fifth of the population, 1.5 million people, were, with extreme brutality, “liberated” from life.
Anthony Caughey, Elwood, Vic
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Alarming show of student bigotry Commentary
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/editorials/alarming-show-of-student-bigotry/news-story/e5c8800477150031f182518bcb41f619

Pockets of anti-Semitism on campus warrant effective action
The bigoted conduct of University of Sydney students who turned their backs on their Jewish peers on Wednesday night is a wake-up call as to how deeply anti-Semitism has penetrated our society, including among educated young people. The incident, at a general meeting of the university’s student representative council, underlined the necessity of the work of the Dor (Hebrew for generation) Foundation, launched by Josh Frydenberg and non-executive company director Elana Rubin with a board of prominent, successful Jewish and non- Jewish leaders. Its goal is to build tolerance, understanding and social cohesion – qualities that were badly missing at the Sydney University meeting of more than 200 young people. The Jewish students bravely exercised their right to free speech, pleading for support to stamp out anti- Semitism on campus and defending Israel’s right to exist. “We need your help – you’re meant to stand for solidarity for minority groups on campus,” undergraduate Jack Mars said. The hostility of most students at the meeting for those objectives reveals a deep, dangerous fissure among some young Australians, and most likely abysmal ignorance of the history of the past 80 years, especially in Germany and across Europe in the 1930s and 40s.

Regrettably, the meeting voted almost unanimously to reject the university’s definition of anti-Semitism, claiming it was “not anti-Semitic to call for the elimination of the apartheid state of Israel”. One anti- Israel speaker said: “We will force our government to end their support for this genocide. From the river to the sea. Palestine will be free.” It was only the sixth student general meeting in the university’s 175-year history but the second meeting in the past 10 months calling for the elimination of Israel.
Last year, Students Against War distributed pamphlets bearing the Hamas symbol.
“There is no such thing as a two-state solution,” the group claimed. “The only ­solution is a one-state solution” and there was “no such thing as Jewish selfdetermination in ­Israel”.
Such clarion calls fly in the face of the definition of anti-Semitism adopted by Universities Australia’s 39 members in February. They agreed that criticism of Israel “can be anti-Semitic when … it calls for the elimination of the state of Israel or all Jews or when it holds Jewish individuals or communities responsible for Israel’s actions”. Jewish students, like all students, need to feel and be safe everywhere on campus, not just in “safe rooms” such as at Macquarie University that can highlight their vulnerability and breed further intolerance. As Western Sydney University chancellor and Dors board member Jennifer Westacott wrote last year, academic freedom and freedom of speech, while critically important, come with responsibilities: “Civility, respect and tolerance are the greatest freedoms of all; they are the bedrock of our democracy and the bedrock of our cohesive society. We must never take them for granted and we must act now to stop their erosion.”
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Israel launches major offensive in Gaza after airstrikes that killed more than 100
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/16/israel-launches-major-offensive-in-gaza-after-airstrikes-that-killed-more-than-100

IDF aiming to seize strategic areas as part of expansion of war against Hamas in attempt to force release of hostages
Jason Burke International security correspondent
Sat 17 May 2025 08.34 AEST
Isael has announced a major new offensive in Gaza after launching a wave of airstrikes on the territory that killed more than 100 people, in what it said was a fresh effort to force Hamas to release hostages.
In a statement late on Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they had “launched extensive attacks and mobilized forces to seize strategic areas in the Gaza Strip, as part of the opening moves of Operation Gideon’s Chariots and the expansion of the campaign in Gaza, to achieve all the goals of the war in Gaza”.
The announcement came as Donald Trump finished a visit to the region that included stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates but not Israel.
What Donald Trump did this week should terrify Benjamin Netanyahu. This is why
Jonathan Freedland
Earlier on Friday, Donald Trump acknowledged that people are starving in Gaza and claimed the US would have the situation in the territory “taken care of”.
The US president told reporters in Abu Dhabi: “We’re looking at Gaza. And we’re going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving.”
But discussions on the longer term future of Gaza have faltered. On Thursday, Trump described his desire to turn Gaza into a “freedom zone”, a possible reiteration of a plan he put forward in February for the US to take control of the Palestinian territory to allow for its reconstruction as a luxury leisure and business hub.
Late on Friday NBC reported that the Trump administration was working on a plan to permanently relocate as many as one million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya. The US was considering releasing billions of dollars of frozen Libyan funds in exchange for resettling the Palestinians, the report said. The US state department did not respond to a request for comment.
Under the Geneva conventions and the Rome statute, the arbitrary and permanent forcible transfer of populations is a war crime.
There had been widespread hope that Trump’s visit to the region could lead to a fresh pause in hostilities or a renewal of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Instead, the raids and bombardment over the past 72 hours have raised the levels of violence higher than for several weeks, with the death toll coming close to that seen in the first days of Israel’s renewed offensive in Gaza after a fragile ceasefire collapsed in March.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said strikes on Friday killed 108 people, mostly women and children, and some officials in the Palestinian territory put the number killed by Israeli attacks in recent days as high as 250 or 300.
At least 48 bodies were taken to the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, and 16 to Nasser hospital after strikes on the outskirts of the central town of Deir al-Balah and the southern city of Khan Younis, health officials said.
In Jabaliya, a neighbourhood in the north of Gaza that has seen heavy bombardment for weeks, women sat weeping beside 10 bodies draped in white sheets that were lined up on the ground amid rubble.
Umm Mohammed al-Tatari, 57, said she had been awoken by a pre-dawn attack on northern Gaza.
“We were asleep when suddenly everything exploded around us … Everyone started running … There was blood everywhere, body parts and corpses,” she said.
Israel’s military said its air force had struck more than 150 “terror” targets across Gaza.
Hamas still holds 57 of about 250 hostages seized in its October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Israel says the blockade and intensified bombardments since mid-March are intended to put pressure on the militant organisation to secure the release of the hostages. Fewer than half are believed to be still alive.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed about 53,000 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the health ministry there.
A ceasefire that came into effect in January broke down in mid-March after Israel refused to move to a scheduled second phase that could have led to a definitive end to the war.
CCTV footage captures moment Israeli airstrike hits Gaza hospital – video
Some of the heaviest Israeli strikes earlier this week were aimed at the current commander of Hamas in Gaza, who, Israeli officials said, was sheltering in tunnel systems under a big hospital complex in Khan Younis. Hamas has denied repeated Israeli accusations that it uses civilians as human shields.
Israel has called up tens of thousands of reservists for the new offensive, in which troops will hold on to seized territory and which will lead to a significant displacement of the population, Netanyahu has said. Israeli ministers have spoken of “conquering” Gaza.
Hamas on Monday freed Edan Alexander, the last living US citizen it held, after direct engagement with the Trump administration that left Israel sidelined.
As part of the understanding with Washington regarding Alexander’s release, Taher al-Nunu, a senior Hamas official, said the group was “awaiting and expecting the US administration to exert further pressure” on Israel “to open the crossings and allow the immediate entry of humanitarian aid”.
Israeli officials have consistently denied the tight blockade imposed on the devastated territory more than 10 weeks ago has caused hunger and Trump’s comments will be seen as further evidence of tensions between Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s closest ally.
Israel, which claims Hamas systematically loots aid to fund its military and other operations, has put forward a plan to distribute humanitarian assistance from a series of hubs in Gaza run by private contractors and protected by Israeli troops.
The US has backed the plan, which has been described as unworkable, dangerous and potentially unlawful by aid agencies because it could lead to the mass forced transfer of populations.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, on Thursday acknowledged the criticism and said Washington was “open to an alternative if someone has a better one”.
The US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been set up to manage the scheme, announced on Wednesday that it would begin operating by the end of the month and that it had asked Israel to lift its blockade to allow aid to reach the territory immediately.
Aid agencies have warned that any delay will cost lives, and that cases of acute malnutrition, particularly among young children, are soaring.
Polls in Israel show widespread support for a new ceasefire to secure the hostages’ release, but local media reports quoted statements from anonymous Israeli and regional officials downplaying any likelihood of a breakthrough.
Israel’s main group representing the families of hostages still being held in Gaza said on Friday that Netanyahu was missing a “historic opportunity” for them to be released.
Recent days have seen violence intensify in the occupied West Bank and new launches of missiles at Israel by the Yemen-based Houthi militia. Israel struck Yemen’s Red Sea ports of Hodeidah and Salif on Friday, continuing its campaign to degrade Houthi military capabilities.