Media Report 2025.06.07

FPM Media Bulletin Saturday June 7 2025

All universities in Gaza have been destroyed. What does this mean for Palestinians?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-07/gaza-lost-generation-of-students-academic-say/105379150

By Isabella Michie and Ali Benton for Late Night Live

The Islamic University of Gaza was once a buzzing campus, filled with ambitious students studying everything from medicine to literature.

Now, displaced families huddle in its ruined classrooms, burning school books for kindling.

Israeli bombardment during the Israel-Gaza war destroyed its main auditorium; its rows of seats are now charred and crumpled.

Tents are pitched next to piles of rubble, in buildings that once housed esteemed scholars.

An aerial shot of a destroyed auditorium, seats are blacked and crumpled with a few tents set up.

Displaced Palestinians are taking refuge in destroyed university buildings in the region. (Reuters: Mahmoud Al-Basos)

Among their alumni are award-winning poets, journalists, professors and — far more controversially — Hamas leaders.

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the last remaining university in the Gaza region was destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 2024.

Wesam Amer is the dean of the faculty of communication and languages at another institution, Gaza University, and began his tenure there in 2020.

“We already have a generation lost in Gaza; a generation of students, a generation of academics,” he tells ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live.

From razor-sharp analysis of current events to the hottest debates in politics, science and culture, Late Night Live puts you in the big picture.

He says the initial ground invasion in Gaza prevented students from attending campuses at the beginning of the war.

All levels of in-person teaching stopped in early November, 2023.

Dr Amer says he suspects Israel wants to eliminate the ability of Palestinian people to gain an education, “because education in Palestine, and for Palestinians, is existence”.

“And existence is resistance as well,” he says.

Dr Amer was forced to flee Gaza shortly after the war began and has been teaching online from the UK since May 2024.

Education in Gaza before the war

On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants undertook a surprise attack in southern Israel, killing more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers, and taking around 240 hostage.

Israel’s response has been an extensive bombing campaign and a ground invasion of Gaza which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says aims to “eliminate” Hamas. Gaza’s health ministry says more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed.

Even before the current war, universities were functioning under extreme conditions, says Mona Jebril, a Palestinian academic and research associate at the Centre for Business Research at Cambridge University.

An Arabic woman wearing a purple headscarf.

Dr Jebril taught at University of Palestine and later Al-Azhar University between 2006 and 2012.

Like any professor, her days were spent preparing lessons, marking assignments and ensuring her students showed up on time.

However, Dr Jebril says she frequently experienced power outages in Gaza lasting between six to 12 hours.

They would happen so suddenly that she began to change her sleep schedule so she could prepare her lessons during times when the electricity came back on.

“And then I go to the university, and there is no electricity, so in the end I [couldn’t] use it.”

Her students also faced limitations from these power outages and would often question the relevance of subjects like philosophy to their reality.

“I remember one student once asked me, ‘What is the relevance of Plato to Gaza? How would learning Plato improve our lives here?’,” she says.

Many were more concerned with finding jobs than doing school work.

Data from the Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Studies shows youth unemployment is at 70 per cent in Gaza.

A woman wearing a black head scarf faces away towards a projector.

Dr Jebril says constant power interruptions cause problems for staff and students alike. (Supplied: Mona Jebril)

“Many know that they won’t actually get a job because they have seen other graduates who are not able to find employment,” says Dr Jebril.

Dr Jebril left Gaza in 2012 to study a PhD at Cambridge University in the UK and has not been able to return home.

She doesn’t know which of her relatives, colleagues and students are still alive after the war.

“I constantly think about them … I don’t know who’s still alive or who actually has been killed,” she says.

The difficult decision to leave Gaza

For many academics in the region, choosing to leave is a difficult decision.

Dr Amer says he was ultimately forced to leave Gaza because of the war.

A man dressed in a graduation cap and gown, with blue ribbons.

Wesam Amer joined Gaza University in 2020 and was responsible for two departments: Media, and Translation and Languages. (Supplied: Wesam Amer)

“It was not … like a personal decision,” he says.

He attempted to leave Gaza four times before he finally made it out. Dr Amer studied in Germany so he reached out to the German embassy, which agreed to help he and his family leave.

In November 2023, Dr Amer had to transport his wife, who was in her last month of pregnancy, and his two daughters to the Rafah crossing.

“We were the only people on the street, actually, and driving from Khan Yunis to Rafah, you can imagine the risks and the dangers we went through until we reached the Rafah crossing,” he says.

Now Dr Amer is working as a visiting researcher at Cambridge University, and living with his family in the UK.

The destruction of universities

In a press release last year, UN experts expressed grave concern over the attacks on educational facilities in the Gaza Strip, including universities.

“It may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide’.”

The IDF claims campuses, such as the Islamic University of Gaza, are used by Hamas.

“The [Islamic University of Gaza] was being used as a Hamas training camp for military intelligence operatives, as well as for the development and production of weapons,” an IDF statement from October 2023 says.

The IDF targeted the area of Al-Azhar University in late October 2023. (Getty: Majdi Fathi)

However, there has also been some criticism from within Israel of the attacks on Gaza, including their educational system.

In May 2025, more than 1000 academics released an open letter addressed to the leading Israeli academic institutions calling for an end to the conflict.

The letter criticises the “complete elimination of the educational system” in Gaza and highlights the role of higher education and academics in the war.

“We cannot claim that we did not know. We have been silent for too long … unspeakable actions [are] being done in our name.”

Based on their experience at the universities past and present, Dr Amer and Dr Jebril reject claims Hamas is affiliated with the insitutions.

“But this [Hamas affiliation] is not true because I’ve been working in Gaza since 2020, and I’ve been teaching, mainly at Gaza University and also at other universities. We have much independence in our universities,” Dr Amer says.

He adds that focusing on quality research and educating students is the objective of these universities.

He believes the attacks are an attempt by Israel to suppress the intellectual expression of the Palestinian community and impede their recovery after the war.

“Israel tries its best to undermine Palestinian identity … [and prevents] restoring essential political and socio-economic conditions, because education is seen as a source of economic stability for many Palestinian families,” he says.

The destruction of these universities also has significant implications for the preservation and transmission of Palestinian culture, Dr Jebril says.

She says that before the founding of the Islamic University of Gaza in 1978, Palestinians would have to go to neighbouring countries to study, where they would not learn about their cultural history.

She says the history of the Palestinian struggle for education is represented in the building of the universities.

“There is a history linked to the resistance of Palestinians that is connected to these spaces,” Dr Jebril says.

“So destroying the university … is actually a destruction of the memory of the resistance of the past.”

Continuation of learning

Despite the conflict, Dr Amer continues to teach and mentor his students, with many in Gaza depending on solar panels to power the few electronics they have at their disposal.

Dr Amer calls on the international academic community to help rebuild the higher education systems in Gaza. (Supplied: Wesam Amer)

Three of the largest public universities in Gaza, Al-Aqsa University, Al-Azhar University and the Islamic University of Gaza, have formed an ‘Emergency Committee’ to ensure teaching continues and those in the region stay connected with the international academic community.

“Academics and students [are] really clinging to these opportunities to feel alive, to convey their voice, to represent their community, but also to keep their hopes,” Dr Jebril says.

Methods of support include offering students virtual opportunities to continue learning.

Oxford University has granted students from Gaza and the West Bank access to the Bodleian Libraries.

“Which is really important because … all libraries and other resources are destroyed,” Dr Jebril says.

Despite the destruction, Dr Amer hopes universities in Gaza will be able to rebuild.

“To move forward, we need coordinated efforts to rehabilitate infrastructure, provide mobile learning units, create digital academic libraries, and strengthen international academic solidarity,” he says.

However, Dr Amer says supporting education in Gaza goes beyond restoring buildings and providing reading materials — it relies on the resilience of students in the face of significant psychological trauma.

Aid distribution in Gaza has halted after the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations, in the latest disruption to its troubled relief effort

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-06/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-closes-all-aid-sites/105388240

With severe food shortages plaguing the coastal enclave, fighting continued in many areas of the Gaza Strip.

Local health authorities said 16 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes, mostly in northern Gaza, while the Israeli army said four of its soldiers were killed and five were wounded by an explosion in a building in Khan Younis to the south.

In a day of confusing messaging, the GHF first announced its distribution sites in southern Gaza were closed, then it revealed that it had actually handed out food, before saying that it had had to close its gates as a precautionary measure.

“The distribution was conducted peacefully and without incident; however, it was paused due to excessive crowding that made it unsafe to proceed,” it said in a statement.

As Palestinians across the war-ravaged Gaza Strip marked the start of one of Islam’s most important holidays, Eid al-Adha, Israeli forces continued military operations that they say are needed to root out and destroy Hamas militants.

The Israeli military was rocked by the deaths of four soldiers in a booby-trapped building, which brought the army death toll to eight since the start of June.

“It is a sad and difficult day,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

The army earlier issued new evacuation orders for areas in and around Gaza City, warning of an imminent attack.

With many residential areas of Gaza reduced to rubble by months of fighting, locals held Eid al-Adha prayer services in the open, next to bombed-out mosques and homes.

“As you can see, we are holding Eid prayers, while the bombing, shelling and planes are ongoing,” said one woman, Umm Mahmoud, in Khan Younis.

The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.

The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral.

It suspended operations on Wednesday and asked the Israeli military to review security protocols after hospital officials said more than 80 people had been shot dead and hundreds wounded near distribution points between June 1-3.

Eyewitness blamed Israeli soldiers for the killings. The Israeli military said it fired warning shots on two days, while on Tuesday it said soldiers had fired at Palestinian “suspects” who were advancing towards their positions.

The army said on Friday that Gazans should only move to and from the GHF distribution centres from 6am to 6pm local time. Outside daylight hours these access routes should be considered a closed military zone.”Entering it poses a significant risk to your life,” military spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote on X.

However, many Gazans say they have to walk for hours to reach the sites, meaning they have to start traveling well before dawn if they are to stand any chance of receiving food.

Palestinians have described the distribution process as chaotic and poorly organised, and say limited supplies have led to early morning crushes on access routes.

On Friday, the GHF said it had delivered 8160 boxes of food, providing approximately 471,240 individual meals.

Since launching its operations, the GHF has opened three sites, but over the past two days, only two of them have been functioning.

Australian Associated Press

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Israel acknowledges it is backing armed alternatives to Hamas in Gaza

https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/israel-acknowledges-it-is-backing-armed-alternatives-to-hamas-in-gaza-20250606-p5m5dt.html

By Julia Frankel, Samy Magdy and Sam Mednick

Updated June 6, 2025 — 12.09pmfirst published at 11.57am

Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has “activated” some clans of Palestinians in Gaza that are opposed to Hamas, in the first public acknowledgment that Israel is backing armed Palestinian groups in Gaza.

Netanyahu made the comments on social media on Friday (AEST), as the Trump administration said it was imposing sanctions on four judges from the International Criminal Court, including two who issued a warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest last year.

It is not immediately clear what role the Palestinian groups – based around powerful clans or extended families – were playing in Gaza, but one Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Netanyahu was referring to the so-called Popular Forces led by a Rafah clan leader, Yasser Abu Shabab.

That group has said its fighters were helping protect aid shipments to the new Israeli-backed food distribution centres, run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), but some Palestinians say the Abu Shabab group has also been involved in attacking and looting aid convoys.

Such clans often wield some control in corners of Gaza, and some have had clashes or tensions with Hamas in the past. Palestinians and aid workers have accused clans of carrying out criminal attacks and stealing aid from trucks. Several clans have issued public statements rejecting co-operation with the Israelis or denouncing looting.

In recent weeks, the Abu Shabab group announced online that its fighters were helping protect shipments to the new, food distribution centres

Israel set up the new aid distribution system using GHF after claiming that Hamas was seizing the aid brought into Gaza by other aid groups like the United Nations, which has denied the allegation. The UN and other aid groups are refusing to work with GHF, saying it breaches humanitarian principles.

The new system has been marred by chaos, with dozens killed since its inception last week, while attempting to get aid. Witnesses say Israeli forces have fired on crowds gathered near the distribution centres, but Israel says its troops have only fired warning shots. GHF paused aid delivery earlier this week in wake of the deaths, but resumed again on Thursday.

Netanyahu did not specify what support Israel was giving to the clans, or what their role would be. His announcement came hours after a political opponent criticised him for arming unofficial groups of Palestinians in Gaza.

Fresh reports Palestinians killed waiting for aid

The Hamas-run health ministry says more than 20 people were killed while waiting for aid. Israel’s military has denied the reports.

In a video posted to his X account, Netanyahu said the government made the move on the advice of “security officials”, to save the lives of Israeli soldiers.

Though it has been known in southern Gaza throughout the war, the Abu Shabab group emerged publicly in the past month, posting pictures of its armed members, with helmets, flak jackets and automatic weapons. It declared itself a “nationalist force” protecting aid.

The Abu Shabab family renounced Yasser over his connections with the Israeli military in a recent statement, saying he and anyone who joined his group “are no longer linked” to the family.

The group’s media office said in response to emailed questions from the Associated Press that it operated in Israeli military-controlled areas for a “purely humanitarian” reason.

It described its ties with the Israel military as “humanitarian communication to facilitate the introduction of aid and ensure that it is not intercepted.”

“We are not proxies for anyone,” it said. “We have not received any military or logistical support from any foreign party.”

It said it had “secured the surroundings” of GHF centres in Rafah but was not involved in distribution of food.

It rejected accusations the group had looted aid, calling them “exaggerations” and part of a “smear campaign”. But it also said, “our popular forces led by Yasser Abu Shabab only took the minimum amount of food and water necessary to secure their elements in the field,” without elaborating how, and from whom, they took the aid.

Abu Shabab and about 100 fighters have been active in eastern parts of Rafah and Khan Younis, areas under Israeli military control, according to Nahed Sheheiber, the head of the private transportation union in Gaza that provides trucks and drivers for aid groups. He said they used to attack aid trucks driving on a military-designated route leading from the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel, the main entry point for aid.

“Our trucks were attacked many times by the Abu Shabab gang and the occupation forces stood idle. They did nothing,” Sheheiber said, referring to the Israeli military. “The one who has looted aid is now the one who protects aid,” he said sarcastically.

An aid worker in Gaza said humanitarian groups tried last year to negotiate with Abu Shabab and other influential families to end their looting of convoys. Though they agreed, they soon reverted to hijacking trucks, the aid worker said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk the media.

The aid worker said he saw Abu Shabab’s men operating in Israeli-controlled areas near the military-held Morag Corridor in southern Gaza in late May. They were wearing new uniforms and carried what appeared to be new weapons, he said.

Jonathan Whittall, the head of the United Nations humanitarian office for the occupied Palestinian territory, said that “criminal gangs operating under the watch of Israeli forces near Kerem Shalom would systematically attack and loot aid convoys … These gangs have by far been the biggest cause of aid loss in Gaza.”

The war between Israel and Hamas erupted on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-linked militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1200 people and taking 251 others hostage, according to Israeli tallies. Israel responded with an offensive that has decimated Gaza, displaced nearly all of its 2.3 million people and caused a humanitarian crisis that has left the territory on the brink of famine after an 11-week food blockade.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, more than half of them women and children. The ministry, which is led by medical professionals but reports to the Hamas-run government, does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its tally.

Hamas is still holding 56 hostages. About a third are believed to be alive, though many fear they are in grave danger the longer the war goes on. Israel said it had recovered the bodies of two Israeli-American hostages from Gaza on Thursday in a secret operation.

Israeli strikes overnight and into Thursday killed at least 22 people in Gaza, including three local journalists who were in the courtyard of a hospital, according to health officials in the territory. The military said it targeted a militant in that strike.

Israeli forces also bombed the southern suburbs of Beirut overnight, sending thousands of people fleeing on the eve of an Islamic feast day and prompting accusations by top Lebanese officials that Israel was violating a ceasefire deal. Israel said it was targeting sites that Hezbollah was using to make drones. The strikes were carried out about 90 minutes after the Israeli military issued evacuation warnings.

It was the fourth time that Dahiyeh has been bombed since the United States brokered a truce in November that ended a year-long war between Israel and Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese armed movement.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump’s administration imposed sanctions on four judges at the International Criminal Court on Thursday in an unprecedented retaliation over the war tribunal’s cases regarding alleged war crimes by US troops in Afghanistan and over the court’s issuance of an arrest warrant for Netanyahu.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the judges – Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda, Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza of Peru, Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini Gansou of Benin, and Beti Hohler of Slovenia – were “actively engaged in the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel”.

The Hague-based court said it deplored the sanctions, calling them an attempt to undermine its independence.

The decision to impose them follows Trump’s executive order in February authorising sanctions on ICC officials who investigate the US and its allies.

The court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in November over allegations of war crimes in Gaza. The Israeli government has denied the accusations, and the Biden administration rejected the court’s authority at the time.

Neither the US nor Israel is a party to the court, which was established in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, genocide and other atrocities. It has issued 60 arrest warrants, including for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has detained 21 people.

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‘Double standard’: Why should Aussie Jews wear the collective blame for Israel’s flaws?

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/double-standard-why-should-aussie-jews-wear-the-collective-blame-for-israels-flaws/news-story/6be8f7db3e4beb2cb708525d1abac7da

‘It is absurd to assign collective guilt to individuals simply because of their ethnicity or ethnoreligious identity. But evidently not when it comes to Jews and Israel.’

The day after October 7, 2023, a non-Jewish friend predicted to me that Hamas’s pogrom would rip away the veil of ignorance from the Israel-hating “progressive” class. At last, he reasoned, they’d confront the inconvenient truth of the “bad neighbourhood” Israel and its citizens faced – vivid and unmistakeable, a sort of reverse 1967 Six-Day War effect.

“Oh no, mate,” I replied, “give it a few weeks and they’ll be out on the streets denouncing Israel and its Jewish supporters as evil incarnate.” Consult the long, tragic arc of more than 3000 years of Jewish history: optimism is a fool’s errand. Even I was stunned, though, when on October 9 – barely days after the atrocities – hundreds of “pro-Palestinian” protesters rallied outside the Sydney Opera House chanting “F..k the Jews”, before the south of Israel was back under Israeli control, and before the Israel Defence Forces had even responded.

And so it has gone, week after week. We have now reached what the late, great British Jewish philosopher Norm Geras might have termed peak “AzzaJew”.

On Thursday, Josh Szeps indulged in now-routine feel-pinion in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. Because his grandmother fled the Holocaust, Szeps imagines himself well-qualified – despite lacking intellectual training, publications or basic Middle East expertise – to urge Jews to “abandon Israel” and inject a hysterical dose of victim-blaming into the surge of anti-Semitic hate and violence.

“Israel, the country made to save the Jews,” he writes, “is now the thing that most endangers the Jewish people physically, culturally and morally.”

It’s all depressingly familiar. Back in March 2024, the similarly unqualified David Leser quoted the anti-Zionist rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss: “Because we’re Jews, we have to stand up and say … ‘not in our name’.” Weiss leads the US-based, ultra-Orthodox extremist sect Neturei Karta – a group virulently opposed to what it sees as the abomination of a secular Jewish state. Only the Messiah’s arrival can usher in a Jewish theocracy to rule over the land of Israel. Readers were left unaware that Neturei Karta openly supports the theocratic Iranian regime. It represents a mere (and hated) 0.1 per cent of the global Jewish population. It’s akin to quoting Osama bin Laden as the voice of moderate Islam.

Then there was Nicola Redhouse’s contribution a week ago: “One measure of our capacity to love Israel truly is our willingness to be ashamed of it when it acts shamefully – not because we hate it but because we long for it to be better than it has become … consistent with what is best in our religious and philosophical traditions.”

This sentiment echoes the voices of countless Israelis who, in the rough-and-tumble of democratic politics, hold their government accountable every day. Former Israeli (Kadima and ex-Likud) prime minister Ehud Olmert, writing in Haaretz just this week, claimed his country was guilty of war crimes. Ex (Labor) prime minister Ehud Barak has called for hundreds of thousands to shut down the country until the Netanyahu government falls. Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats, successor to Israeli Labor, controversially alleged that Israel was killing babies in Gaza “as a hobby”. Israelis debate and critique their political leadership with a passion that would make most Australians blush.

So why, then, are Australian Jews being told – yet again and by a Jewish voice with no subject expertise – they must publicly wear the burden of Israel’s flaws? Unwittingly, Redhouse channels the great Jewish novelist Howard Jacobson, calling for Jews to parade their shame publicly, but without sharp irony or self-awareness. In The Finkler Question, Jacobson’s comic meditation on contemporary Jewish identity, the eponymous character, Sam, becomes the figurehead of the “ASHamed Jews”, a group that performs its moral virtue by publicly disowning Israel.

An anti-government protester in Tel Aviv in April, holding a sign depicting a collage of the faces of

But why should Jews – alone among the world’s diasporas – be singled out? Why should any Jew feel obligated to perform emotional penance for the actions of the Israeli government?

An unapologetic Marxist, Geras explained its causation in a 2013 essay for the left-wing Fathom journal. He wrote of how Jews were drawn to the left through shared opposition to injustice and racism. “That affinity has now been compromised by the existence of a new climate of anti-Semitic opinion within the left. Its convenient alibi is the state of Israel … is a delinquent state and, for many of those who regard it so, a non-legitimate one – colonialist, imperialist, vehicle of oppression and what have you. Similarly, diaspora Jews who defend Israel … are treated as a dubious force – the notorious ‘Jewish lobby’ – as if their organised existence were somehow improper.”

Geras was scathing of the “Azzajew” crowd of opinionistas, typically left-wing and anti-Zionist, who paraded themselves in public, lecturing and hectoring “as a Jew”. Yet, as Geras insisted, Jews have “no special obligations in how they should react to events”.

Consider the double standard of our trio of ASHamed Jews. Russian-Australians are not regularly summoned to atone for Vladimir Putin’s decades of outrages: Ukraine and vicious domestic oppression. Chinese-Australians are not compelled to perform collective guilt for Xi Jinping’s Maoist redux or the repression in Xinjiang. Indonesians are not called on to ritually apologise for the prior occupation of East Timor or the oppression of West Papuans. Iranians and Afghans are not expected to wear sackcloth for their governments’ repression. Turks are not collectively blamed for Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarianism.

Nor should they be. It is absurd, offensive and ultimately counter-productive to assign collective guilt to individuals simply because of their ethnicity or ethnoreligious identity. But evidently not when it comes to Jews and Israel. Suddenly, the political is personal in a way no other national group is forced to endure. Jews are told their attachment to Israel is suspect unless accompanied by a conspicuous ritual of shame.

Only by publicly disavowing Israel’s failings can one remain a respectable participant in public debate. This moral one-way street is intellectually lazy and ethically troubling. It rests on the unspoken premise that Israel – alone among the world’s nations – must earn the right to exist by satisfying the moral demands of non-Jewish and Jewish critics. That’s not progressive; it’s a double standard that reeks of old prejudices in new guises, one that reinforces the old notion that Jews are always suspect, their loyalties always conditional, their identities contingent on perpetual, collective apologia.

Let’s be clear: Israel is an imperfect state. Like every other democracy – that is, unlike most of its authoritarian neighbours – it is home to injustices, contradictions and policy failures, including the strategic and moral failure of what is taking place in Gaza. It is also the only state in the world that exists as a national home for the Jewish people – a people who, even in the 21st century, face threats to their security in the Middle East and in much of the West.

This is the point of Zionism: to secure for Jews – a historically oppressed people numbering just 16 million or 0.2 per cent of the eight billion worldwide population and 0.46 per cent of Australia’s populace – the same rights and responsibilities every other nation enjoys; that is, self-determination and sovereignty. No more, no less.

The hypocrisy is staggering. Who requires Palestinian-Australians or any Arab or Sunni Muslim in Australia to be ashamed of any violence perpetrated by Hamas and formerly the Palestine Liberation Organisation? Who requires Russians or members of the Russian Orthodox Church to be ashamed of Russia’s actions? Or Turks in respect of Cyprus or the treatment of the Kurds? I cannot recall an opinion piece published by any newspaper by a member of any of these communities expressing shame or disavowing their homelands. As of the last census there were 150,000 Australians who claimed Turkish ancestry, born here or migrants, representing 0.5 per cent of the population. Not one single opinion piece has been published by a Turkish Australian criticising their homeland in ASHamed terms.

The point of Zionism was to secure a nation for Jewish people that had the same rights and responsibilities enjoyed by every other flawed nation. No more, no less.

Yet Redhouse’s contribution forms part of a veritable canon in Australian media history.

Why should Aussie Jews be different? Shame is a feeling of embarrassment or humiliation that arises from the perception of doing something dishonourable, immoral or improper. One cannot feel shame for the actions of a foreign government you did not help elect.

In a democracy such as Australia, if you disagree with your government’s actions, your obligation is to work towards change through the democratic process – persuading your fellow citizens, voicing dissent and forming, joining or advocating for a party to change the government. But if you’re living abroad or not a citizen, you have no obligation at all. And if you wish to stay out of politics, to keep shtum, that is your right too. Israel is a democracy. It will hold elections again by 2026. If Israelis dislike the government, they can change it through the ballot box. Personally, I can’t wait to see the back of Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing Likudniks and far-right coalition. That’s how democracy works.

And let’s also talk about the factual slippage in the ASHamed contributions. Most are guilty of infantilising the Palestinians, treating them as passive objects of history rather than active agents who make choices – sometimes tragic, indeed sometimes disastrous.

The Palestinians have consistently exercised agency throughout modern history, starting with their rejection of the 1947 UN partition plan that led to the 1948 war, which they lost badly and now call the Nakba, or “catastrophe”. The same applies to the events of 1967, to the second intifada, and Gazans electing the fascistic Hamas to rule over them in 2005. October 7 also represented agency – a premeditated, evil action.

All of this is ignored and replaced with the likes of Redhouse’s tendentious claim to reject the “conflation of the identity of the Jewish people with the state of Israel”. She calls this “a theological and moral error”. Yet the only person conflating the two are Redhouse and others by insisting Jews must be ashamed of Israel.

This is why Jacobson’s Sam Finkler eventually recoils when a well-meaning non-Jew favourably compares his “sublime Jewish ethic” to Israel’s supposed sins: “How dare you tell Jews what sort of country they may live in, when it is you, a European Gentile, who made a separate country for Jews a necessity?” To borrow from Jacobson: it’s enough to make one ashamed of these public displays of Jewish shame.

Nick Dyrenfurth co-wrote (with Philip Mendes) Boycotting Israel is Wrong: The Progressive Path Towards Peace Between Palestinians and Israelis (UNSW Press, 2015) and is co-convenor of Labor Friends of Israel.

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Netanyahu is strong in war, but when does the peace come?

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/netanyahu-is-strong-in-war-but-when-does-the-peace-come/news-story/c5ac44e2911f30d4dfa94efef69d87e1

Paul Kelly

Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu has made transforming military gains – breaking the Hamas leadership, liberating southern Lebanon from Hezbollah, penetrating Iran’s defences and helping to open a new chapter in Syria – yet Israel’s global standing is besmirched, its society is fractured and its legitimacy is under assault.

The Middle East is consumed by war yet ripe with opportunity. Contradictions fill every event and conversation.

Yet the focus of conversation is Netanyahu – Prime Minister for the third time and the longest-serving PM in the nation’s history – now revealed as a bold war leader who seems incapable of mobilising his gains and knowing how to make peace.

For Israel and Netanyahu, the US remains the great ally. President Donald Trump is with Israel but less often with Netanyahu, with the tensions between them unmistakeable. Trump has his own vision for the Middle East, outlined in May during his visit to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, hosted by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, where Trump proclaimed a coming age of peace and prosperity. “My greatest hope is to be a peacemaker and a unifier,” Trump said. “I don’t like war.”

His vision is to partner with the Saudis to transform the economics and politics of the region – the geopolitical apex being Saudi Arabia establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. If achievable, it would be a regional and world-transforming event: the nation hosting the holiest sites of Islam, Mecca and Medina, saying it can live with Israel.

The opportunities beckon. Yet Israel needs a leader who not only can fight terrorists but also can build bridges with the Arab world. Israel needs to be feared by its enemies but loved by the world – its tragedy, reflected in Netanyahu, is that success on the first front often leads to failure on the second front.

The Gaza health ministry says more than 55,000 people have been killed in the war. It makes no distinction between civilians and terrorists. Picture: Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP

Yet this was not always the case. Israel has changed. Netanyahu in Gaza fights a war with mass Palestinian casualties – the sort of war Israel has never fought before.

Netanyahu governs in a coalition that depends on the far right. The upshot is an ongoing military campaign in Gaza and a reluctance to offer the Saudis the incentives they need to close the deal that the region, Israel and the US all want.

The Gaza war has passed the 600-day mark. The ultimate instigator of its violence, former Hamas leader and architect of the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, Yahya Sinwar, is long since dead, killed by Israeli forces in October 2024.

Yet Sinwar’s cunning and butchery still haunt Israel – he provoked a retaliation against Hamas that has alienated Israel’s friends as well as its enemies, elevated Palestinian protests across the capitals of the West and ignited the worst anti-Semitism since WWII.

Under Netanyahu, Israel is a hard-power colossus but a soft-power child.

Operation Gideon’s Chariots, authorised by Netanyahu in May, seeks a comprehensive defeat of Hamas, entrenching Israeli security control over all of Gaza, severing the bulk of the population from Hamas penetration and seeking conditions for full hostage release.

Even if this plan were capable of implementation the project itself is fraught and flawed – a military plan devoid of a political strategy. Talks with senior political and military analysts in Israel affirm that Netanyahu has no agenda to create, in conjunction with Arab support, a new governing authority for Gaza. Polls in May reveal Israeli society, weary of the war, turning against Netanyahu’s agenda, the main motive being to secure the release, alive and dead, of the remaining hostages.

The assault on Netanyahu is fierce. Two former Israeli leaders – Ehud Barak, a former general, defence minister and prime minister from 1999 to 2001; and Ehud Olmert, prime minister from 2006 to 2009 – have savaged Netanyahu, with the devastating accusation that he maintains the war for his domestic political interests, to keep alive his coalition with the far right. Criticism of Netanyahu is far more virulent inside Israel’s democracy than outside in Western capitals.

Yet his most striking military success has been against the once formidable Hezbollah terror group. This began with the exploding walkie-talkie innovation that immobilised the group’s communications and confidence. Israeli military action terminated Hezbollah’s role in the post-October 7 war, its constant attacks on Israel, secured southern Lebanon and allowed Israeli citizens to return to their homes in the north.

Middle East politics is in a condition of massive fluidity, a function of Israel’s successful war on several fronts after the October 7 attacks; the unresolved future of Gaza; the vulnerability of Iran exposed at its weakest moment and desperate to keep its uranium enrichment program; the ambitious but unpredictable initiatives of Trump; and the virtue-signalling Western democracies with their threats to recognise a Palestinian state – a step guaranteed only to provoke Netanyahu’s retaliation, possibly annexation moves on the West Bank. The response of much of Western public opinion seeks to deny that Israel’s wars are genuinely existential – a fusion of territory, religion and identity.

The 47-minute video produced by the Israel Defence Forces from the cameras of terrorists and soldiers on October 7 showing Israelis, young and old, being murdered, women dismantled, corpses being mutilated, beheaded and paraded as trophies, is conspicuous for the incessant chant “Allah is Great” – the slaughter is a celebration.

The video documents a religious event. The murders are done to honour Allah.

War changes everything – and religious wars change everything absolutely.

October 7 surprised, shocked, enraged and transformed Israel. As the greatest death of Jews since the Holocaust, it will be remembered, along with its unfolding future consequences, for many hundreds of years. More than 1200 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed and 251 people taken as hostages. In the cities of the West progressive left-wing atheists went into the streets cheering this religious war, joining with radical Palestinians and Islamists calling for the elimination of Israel, seeing the event as a potentially glorious opening.

British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore likened the event to a “medieval tribal raid” for massacre and booty. The present merely invokes the past. At the conclusion of his book on the history of Jerusalem, Montefiore wrote: “Israelis and Palestinians are both nations with rightful claims to the land; neither has anywhere else to go, nor any intention of leaving; and no choice but to find a way to live side by side.”

The attack created a permanent dilemma for Netanyahu – how to balance the campaign to defeat Hamas with the need to secure the release of hostages.

The massacres on October 7 have scarred Israel’s soul and hardened its heart. The massacre shattered any notion of a Palestinian partner for peace; it made political backing in Israel for a two-state solution even more untenable. It eroded public confidence in the Netanyahu government’s security credentials. It was vivid proof of the enduring quest of Hamas and Hezbollah and their Iranian backers to eliminate the Israeli state.

The supreme irony of this event is that while Hamas was repelled and defeated, its political goal of delegitimising Israel as a state has gained immense traction across much of the world. The legacy was a moral dilemma for the Jewish state – how to prosecute a war against terrorists integrated into the civilian infrastructure.

In 16 years of ruling Gaza, Hamas built virtually nothing but advanced a grand project – an elaborate tunnel structure to turn any Israeli military success into defeat. Its tunnel system is astonishing, running over an estimated 500km, many concrete reinforced, able to store food and weapons, hold prisoners and host Hamas military planners and leaders.

This is the Hamas human shield strategy. The tunnels run under hospitals and schools – a guarantee that Hamas can be targeted and the tunnels destroyed only with large-scale civilian casualties. This is the purpose. It explains the frequent Israeli claim that “Hamas will fight Israel to the last Palestinian”. The moral dilemma facing Israel arises from the Hamas game plan.

A former legal adviser to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, veteran peace negotiator and key author of the Abraham Accords, Tal Becker summarised the origins of the current war during his address to the International Court of Justice in the case brought by South Africa, a nation with close ties to Hamas.

Becker said: “Hamas has systematically and unlawfully embedded its military operations, militants and assets throughout Gaza within and beneath densely populated civilian areas. It has built an extensive warren of underground tunnels for its leaders and fighters several hundred miles in length throughout the Strip, with thousands of access points and terrorist hubs located in homes, mosques, UN facilities, schools and perhaps most shockingly hospitals.

“It is an integrated, pre-planned, extensive and abhorrent method of warfare. Purposely and methodically murdering civilians. Stealing and hoarding humanitarian supplies – allowing those under its control to suffer, so that it can fuel its fighters and terrorist campaign.”

Under the auspices of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, an Australian media delegation visited Israel on a recent study tour seeing a wide range of people in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, visiting the south where the massacres occurred and the north where the population had been forced to evacuate because of the Hezbollah missile assaults.

Two impressions stand out – Israel is a profoundly divided polity but possessed of an abiding sense of purpose. It is fractured by the war yet more reinforced than ever in the Zionist concept: a homeland in its ancestral land. Military service is mandatory for all Israeli citizens over the age of 18 with religious exemptions. The women of Israel are extraordinary – every woman you meet in her early 20s is formed by two years of military service.

The hostages are a constant presence. “Bring Them Home Now” is the appeal and the demand, plastered in the streets, on shops, on restaurants.

The faces and names are kept before the nation. Each testifies to a family tragedy. They constitute an accumulated failure for Netanyahu.

This is a society far different from Australia, driven by a mission of survival, devoid of complacency, the national flag everywhere, the sense of sacrifice in every family, an opinionated and argumentative people still able to enjoy life while fighting a war. More multicultural than Australia, Israel’s 10 million population includes two million Arabs with political rights. It is a religious community with Jerusalem the home for three great religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Netanyahu’s tactics in Gaza have provoked international condemnation and domestic Israeli anger. The Gaza health ministry says more than 55,000 people have been killed in the war. It makes no distinction between civilians and terrorists. Israel claims to have killed about 20,000 terrorists. The longer the war has lasted the more global opinion has turned against Israel. This has reached a new zenith with the recent 10-week blockade on humanitarian and food aid followed by a new offensive to “take control of all areas” of Gaza along with a new US-Israeli system of aid and food distribution rejected by the UN.

Western governments, led by France, Britain and Canada, with Australia not far behind, have condemned Israel.

Anthony Albanese called Israel’s actions “completely unacceptable” and “outrageous”, said its excuses were “completely untenable and without credibility”, and said he made Australia’s views clear to Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, when they briefly met in Rome.

During their visit, the Australian delegation met Herzog, who spoke off the record with frankness but put on the record his invitation for the Australian Prime Minister to visit Israel to discover the facts for himself.

It is most unlikely Albanese would accept such an invitation. Labor’s distaste for Netanyahu and his government’s policies is visceral; witness Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s shift of Australian policy on the Middle East and her infamous visit to Israel in January 2024. Wong declined to make the 90-minute car ride to the site of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. More than a diplomatic snub, it was an act of moral contempt – a refusal to honour Israel’s plight by visiting the site of the medieval-type slaughter where the crimes against women were unspeakable.

Israel’s government remains polite in its dealings with Australia. Senior Australian officials say the working relationship is unimpaired. But in virtually every discussion held by the media delegation the sentiment towards Australia ranged from dismay to betrayal.

Themedia was escorted around the remains of the burnt-out Kibbutz Be’eri by a survivor, Danny Majzner, brother of the only Australian killed on October 7, Galit Carbone, one of more than 100 victims in what was once a truly beautiful place to live. The survivors were left with the blackened rooms where their families were murdered.

Majzner told the author: “My sister rang me on the day, about midday, telling me the terrorists were in her house and she didn’t know what to do. I told her to stay quiet. But that was it. It was our last conversation. She was shot, probably about 20 minutes later.

“When Foreign Minister Penny Wong arrived in Israel … she didn’t even bother to contact, not me, not my sister’s kids, no one, she didn’t come to Be’eri to visit. Nothing. At least the ambassador came to the funeral and did visit Be’eri.”

Albanese and Wong use the constant refrain that Israel, as a democracy, must be held to a higher standard. That’s right. But what of Australia’s diplomatic standards as a democracy? We need to reflect on the moral basis on which Australia passes judgment.

Australia, along with other Western governments and the UN, has long called for a ceasefire. The facts are that if Israel had acted on such demands, its people would be in a far more dangerous situation today and Israel’s decisive military gains in the region would not have been achieved. What price that morality?

A prominent Israeli analyst said of this situation: “Israel has fought more wars than Australia. It has a system of universal military service for men and women. It has been surrounded by hostile forces for decades, many openly declaring its destruction, an existential situation that none of the critical Western governments faces. Yet it is the subject of moral condemnation by other countries who lecture Israel on how it must conduct itself in a situation that none of these nations face or are ever likely to face.”

Former Netanyahu adviser and Israeli ambassador to Britain Mark Regev, who was raised in Australia and is co-host of the podcast Israel Undiplomatic, said on his blog: “The United Nations and humanitarian organisations that worked with the UN have been up in arms about aid and the lack of humanitarian support going into Gaza, and have been highly critical of a joint US-Israel plan to supply aid. They say it has to be done through the UN and organisations working with the UN.

“Here I have to say, straight out, they are wrong in their criticism. Hamas has been running the Gaza Strip since the first decade of this century. They control the population of Gaza with their guns. The idea that all the humanitarian and UN organisations within Gaza are somehow independent humanitarians is just incorrect. All the hundreds and thousands of Palestinians who worked for these different organisations have to do so with the blessing of Hamas.

“Israel cannot win this war without defeating Hamas politically, and as long as Hamas is deciding who gets the aid and who doesn’t and has the ability to take over the aid and sell it at inflated prices, as long as Hamas is in charge, directly or indirectly, there won’t be a political victory over Hamas. If humanitarians are just saying nothing but the existing UN system, I’m sorry, that is something Israel can’t accept.

“What people don’t understand is they’re counter-productive, they are giving inadvertent support to Hamas … We have no one like the United States, but our best friends, the British, the Canadians, the French, have all now come out against Israel, critical of our behaviour, threatening to take steps, to sanction Israel. The argument, of course, is if your friends are saying this, you must be doing something wrong.”

A portrait of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah amid debris in the Rouweiss neighbourhood of Beirut, Lebanon, where the US has urged Israel to avoid Gaza-like military action. Picture: AFP

A portrait of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah amid debris in the Rouweiss neighbourhood of Beirut, Lebanon, where the US has urged Israel to avoid Gaza-like military action. Picture: AFP

But that argument is being made much closer to home, within Israel’s high politics. Former prime ministers Barak and Olmert were conspicuous in power for offering the Palestinians viable peace agreements, only to be repudiated. Barak now points to Israel’s significant military gains to argue the nation “can now afford to pivot towards a broader deal: release all hostages, living and dead, end the war and pursue a peaceful regional order”.

Barak called on Netanyahu to abandon what he brands Israel’s “war of deception” and embrace “Trump’s vision of a new Middle East including normalisation with Saudi Arabia”. He warns against the notion of “total victory” against Hamas and says a further campaign is futile: “When this new war inevitably halts – under diplomatic pressure, humanitarian crisis, battlefield events or domestic political developments – we would find ourselves in precisely the same situation as today.”

His distrust of Netanyahu runs deep. Barak says accepting a peace settlement “would break Netanyahu’s coalition and likely end his political career”.

Olmert recently said: “What we are doing in Gaza is a war of annihilation: indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal and criminal killing of civilians. Yes, we are committing war crimes.” Writing for Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Olmert said: “Recent operations in Gaza have nothing to do with legitimate war goals. This is now a private political war.

“The government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning, and with no chances of success. Never since its establishment has the state of Israel waged such a war. The criminal gang headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has set a precedent without equal in Israel’s history.”

Such comments only reinforce the determination – if it needs reinforcing – of Western governments, apart from the US, to intensify the pressure on Israel and threaten measures against it never previously contemplated.

The moral dilemma is on every street. The Australian media met Viki Cohen, mother of 20-year-old soldier Nimrod, now a hostage for more than 600 days. She spoke with passion and love for her son but disillusionment with the government. “The Prime Minister is not connected to us,” she said of Netanyahu. After meeting him, she felt “there was no hope or plan”. She branded the government’s response and its incremental hostage steps as “cruel”.

The contradiction at the heart of government policy is obvious: pursuing the war conflicts with the quest to release all the hostages. Because Netanyahu’s priority is pursuing the war, he faces a moral attack from much of the community. Trump has plunged into this Middle East cauldron. As usual he aspires to be the man of destiny but his hold on the fundamentals verges on the tenuous.

The Trump administration operates at three levels: it seeks a ceasefire in Gaza; it teams up with Saudi Arabia in a project where Trump aspires to remake the region; and it negotiates with Iran to terminate Tehran’s nuclear program or perhaps be outwitted by the Iranians.

Hamas seems to have rejected or seeks to amend the latest US 60-day ceasefire proposal for Gaza along with some hostage releases as presented by American special envoy Steve Witkoff. The terror group demands a permanent ceasefire and complete Israeli withdrawal. Witkoff says the Hamas response is “totally unacceptable”. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz says Hamas must accept or be destroyed.

Gaza hunger crisis: US-backed aid becomes ‘death trap’ under Israeli fire

People in Gaza face starvation as aid distribution falters. Many fear death at GHF aid hubs, while hospitals struggle with blood…

The UN has branded Gaza “the hungriest place on earth”. The IDF has reported that it killed Mohammed Sinwar, brother of Yahya Sinwar, in a strike on a hospital in May. Any failure of the agreement condemns 2.2 million people to even more desperation and deaths.

In his visit to Saudi Arabia, Trump invoked the Abraham Accords negotiated in his first presidential term, fostering relations and diplomatic ties between Israel and Arab nations including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain, and declared his wish that Saudi Arabia would soon join the accords.

“You’ll do it in your own time,” Trump said. “But it will be a special day in the Middle East.” This lies at the heart of the Trumpian and Israeli strategy for the region. If the Saudis declare they can live with Israel, how can the pro-Palestinian demonstrators in our streets declare they want Israel eliminated? The chant “from the river to the sea” ringing across Australian and Western cities and university campuses becomes a worthless incantation at that point.

But how will this game plan unfold? The Saudis cannot make any such deal while the war continues. But can Netanyahu ever offer the Saudis sufficient incentive for such a transforming event?

The optimism in Israel for this agreement overlooks the obstacles in its path. It is improbable to think the far right in the government would accept it.

On Iran, Trump has raised expectations only to be rebuffed by the nation’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has dismissed US proposals for his nation’s nuclear program as “rude and arrogant” and “100 per cent against our interests”. Iran and the US are on the brink – with Israel awaiting the outcome.

There are reports that Trump recently prevented an Israeli strike on Iran. Trump has told Netanyahu to avoid a military option. “I told him this would be very inappropriate to do right now because we’re very close to a solution.” Really, like the Ukraine non-solution?

Israel’s judgment is that Iran is at a moment of maximum vulnerability: this is the time to end its nuclear program, by negotiation or military action.

“Israel will never accept an Iranian nuclear weapon,” a former senior official says. Trump says the right thing: “If I can make a deal with Iran, I’ll be very happy. Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump says Iran must dismantle its enrichment program, given enrichment delivers both civil nuclear power and weapons-grade material. Yet the “deal” negotiated by Witkoff allows Iran to keep domestic enrichment capability for a time before relying on a regional consortium. Israel won’t be satisfied.

In a dangerous move, the Iranian leader has defied Trump, probably assuming he will never back his big talk with military action. It has become a conflict over red lines – Trump’s supposed red line is to stop the nuclear program and Iran’s red line is that it cannot end domestic enrichment. “Who are you to decide whether Iran should have enrichment,” Khamenei told the Americans.

Israel’s numerous fears were spelt out to the Australian media: it fears Trump may negotiate a weak deal; it fears that even if the US-Iranian talks fail, Trump will still oppose any Israeli military action; and it is concerned about the viability of any Israeli strike without US active co-operation.

The impression, whether right or wrong, is that Trump has a vision for the region and Israel needs to fit into that Trumpian vision. Ultimately, Netanyahu needs Trump.

Israel has a bizarre status – the only democracy in the Middle East and the only state whose legitimacy is seriously questioned.

Becker, in a May 29 podcast interview, addressed the moral complexities of the current war: “There’s been so much misinformation and disinformation that it’s hard to get a handle on what’s happening. I don’t think that excuses us from thinking about the moral principles we need to apply and how we retain our humanity in the face of Hamas’s inhumanity.

“There isn’t an easy moral answer to these questions. For example, the challenge of humanitarian aid – where it sits exactly is, on the one hand, the danger of empowering Hamas and that means not just empowering your enemy but empowering the force that is terrorising the Palestinian population, potentially making the end of the war more difficult, potentially enabling Hamas to reconstitute itself, all on the one hand – and on the other hand, you have the suffering of Palestinians civilians.

“Even if you think, as I do, this is a just war, to be cognisant of the costs and suffering is a moral obligation on anyone but certainly on Jews. What I think we are obliged to do as a Jewish state and a country that wants to have partners in the world in dealing with these issues morally is to articulate clearly what the moral dilemma is, and how we are trying to grapple with it, (saying) this is the approach we are taking in an impossible dilemma.

“Zionism is also a product of a people who felt abandoned by the world. October 7 has in some way put on steroids this sense of an aloneness – nobody understands us, the media is against us, the disinformation is there. It reinforces this sense of being on our own with our own trauma.

“But that is a betrayal, I think, of Zionism’s aspirations – and of a victory in this war that isn’t just a victory on the battlefield but a preservation of our soul as we are fighting this irreconcilably evil enemy.”

Becker made a distinction between justified and unjustified war aims: “If the purpose of continued military operation is to prevent Hamas from being a force within Gaza and that enables Palestinians to have a government that isn’t dominated by Hamas, that in my view is a legitimate objective. If the purpose is to create conditions for a hostage deal, I think there’s legitimacy to that. But if the objective is the way some in the radical right are describing, to create conditions for a permanent occupation or for settlements in Gaza, then no, I don’t think that’s a just purpose.”

Yet Israel is changing in decisive ways – its domestic politics has moved decisively to the right, a factor that underpins changing Western views, notably in Australia.

This means that any Western move to recognise a Palestinian state will be an act of virtuous futility – having no impact on the ground and certain to drive Netanyahu into more Israeli assertion on the West Bank.

Referring to an attack by Israel on the Houthi terrorists in Yemen, Netanyahu outlined his philosophy: “We work according to a simple rule: Whoever harms us, we harm them.” It is a stance of strength based on the reality that no peace agreement will ever be finalised with a weak Israel.

A former adviser to Netanyahu says the Prime Minister doesn’t want to be defined by the October 7 failure and that he has three goals: to win the war against Hamas, eliminate Iran’s nuclear program and see ties established with Saudi Arabia. That is an agenda of transformation but seems far beyond his policy capabilities and the limits of his governing coalition.

The longer the war continues the more Israel’s enemies will celebrate its depiction as a rogue state. Any Israeli government that allows this to happen violates the aspirations of its founders and the values of its history. Herein lies the moral dilemma of the Netanyahu ascendancy.

Paul Kelly visited Israel as part of an Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council media tour.

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Why don’t the pro-Palestinians ever call for Hamas to surrender?

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/why-dont-the-propalestinians-ever-call-for-hamas-to-surrender/news-story/00f27cc0266acc0a3a5c25f0aef34484

Gerard Henderson

University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott appeared before Senate estimates on September 20 last year to discuss the Commission of Inquiry into Anti-Semitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024.

He was asked by Liberal Party senator Sarah Henderson if he had failed Jewish students on his campus. Scott replied: “Yes, I have failed them and the university has failed them, and that is why we’ve made significant changes to our policy settings.”

Move forward eight months. On May 31, Natasha Bita reported in The Australian that “a $150,000 pay rise for the University of Sydney’s vice-chancellor Mark Scott pushed his salary above $1.32m last year”. Which suggests that at Sydney University there are those who fail but still receive first-class honours with respect to what, in business circles, is called remuneration.

In the university’s Annual Report 2024, published this week, chancellor David Thodey and Scott acknowledged “we did not get everything right as we responded to widespread protests triggered by the events of 7 October 2023 and their aftermath, and there are clearly differing views on our responses to certain events, particularly the encampment on our Quadrangle Lawns”. The duo went on to say they were committed to learning from those hugely challenging and complex events.

Thodey became chancellor in July 2024 when anti-Semitism was already rife on the Sydney campus. Scott became vice-chancellor in July 2021. Thodey’s background is in business. On the other hand, Scott has worked as a teacher, a journalist, a managing editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, a managing director of the ABC and head of the NSW Department of Education. This background should have equipped Scott with an experience in how to handle students and left-wing activists. But he did virtually nothing when militants, many from outside the campus, set up encampments from early April to late June 2024.

Joanna Panagopoulos revealed in The Australian on June 5 that a report by a SafeWork NSW inspector into anti-Semitism at the university found a “high-risk psychosocial hazardous workplace” was endured for almost a year because of “the inactions of the university to eliminate” hate. It is understood the SafeWork NSW report author is not Jewish and has no connection with the university.

Sportswear giant Nike has terminated its partnership with former Australian of the Year Grace Tame over inflammatory online posts that attacked Jewish supporters of Israel. Picture: Gaurav Kapadia

Sportswear giant Nike has terminated its partnership with former Australian of the Year Grace Tame over inflammatory online posts that attacked Jewish supporters of Israel. Picture: Gaurav Kapadia

Sydney University is not the only campus to turn a blind eye to anti-Semitism following Hamas’s barbaric attack in Israel on October 7, 2023. And it was not the birthplace of the outburst. That occurred on October 9 when a mob of left-wing activists took an unlawful march through Sydney to the Opera House when many chanted what sounded like “Gas the Jews” but some heard as “Where’s the Jews”. An anti-Semitic war cry, whatever was heard. This was before Israel retaliated by invading Gaza.

Perhaps the most notable apparent act of anti-Semitism (I write “apparent” because some individuals have been charged but a court has yet to make a finding) occurred with the arson attack of the Adass Israel Synagogue of Melbourne in Ripponlea.

In a sense, non-violent anti-Semitism has been fashionable among sections of Australia that are in no sense Islamist. For example, Margin Call in this paper has reported on influencer Grace Tame’s ignorant comments about Jews and Israel. As Yoni Bashan has pointed out, Tame appears to be of the view that all Israelis are Jews. This is hopelessly wrong.

Writing in The Saturday Paper on May 10, Michael Gawenda (a former editor-in-chief of The Age) commented on the “under-reporting at the ABC and in the Nine newspapers of the increased hostility towards Jews in Australia”. He added that “there is a view that any increased hostility to Jews must be a reasonable response to the deaths of Palestinians in the current conflict in Gaza”.

In recent months in the US there has been some evidence that the calls of pro-Hamas supporters to move the intifada to outside Israel is beginning to take place.

In mid-April the official residence of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, was firebombed. A suspect who called 911 made reference to “Free Palestine”. On May 21, in Washington, two young Israeli embassy staff members were shot and killed outside a Jewish museum where they had been attending a function. The attacker called out “Free Palestine”. And then last weekend in Boulder, Colorado, an unlawful immigrant from Egypt shouted “Free Palestine” before throwing some kind of firebomb at a group of senior citizens rallying peacefully for the release of the Israeli hostages captured by Hamas.

Charred interior of the Pennsylvania governor’s official residence after a man was arrested in an alleged arson that forced Gov. Josh Shapiro, his family and guests to flee in the middle of the night on the Jewish holiday of Passover. Picture: Commonwealth Media Services/Governor Shapiro office

Charred interior of the Pennsylvania governor’s official residence after a man was arrested in an alleged arson that forced Gov. Josh Shapiro, his family and guests to flee in the middle of the night on the Jewish holiday of Passover. Picture: Commonwealth Media Services/Governor Shapiro office

Appearing on Sky News’ Credlin on June 3, Ayaan Hirsi Ali described the Free Palestine movement as a “mishmash of Marxists, Maoists and Islamist elements”. She said they all wished “to eliminate the state of Israel … and then, on the Islamist wing, they want to kill all Jews”.

It is understandable why citizens of Western democracies, young and old alike, are disturbed by the killings and the depravations taking place in the Israel-Hamas war. A conflict that Hamas started when it broke a ceasefire on October 7, 2023, and slaughtered and kidnapped civilians in the process.

But it should be remembered that all wars are horrific. Hamas can end the war by surrendering (with its surviving leaders going into exile) and returning the hos­tages. Eventually, that’s what Germany did in 1945. Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30 and the German forces in Berlin surrendered two days later. In Japan on August 15 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced that Japan would surrender – it did so formally on September 2 of that year

Before that literally thousands of civilians were killed in the bombing raids on German cities by the Royal Air Force and by the US air and naval forces in parts of Europe and Japan. And there was the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. An estimated 30,000 French civilians died in Operation Overlord in the D-Day campaign of June 1944.

Supporters of the Gazan cause would be well-advised to call on Hamas to surrender and return the hostages rather than verbally attacking Jews on university campuses and elsewhere.

Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

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Hamas agenda on Israel’s war in Gaza is influencing Western media

Hamas has not only successfully infiltrated Gaza but also the Western media, with journalists across the world failing in their duty of fairly reporting Israel’s ongoing war.

Chris Kenny

The media and political professionals of Western liberal democracies are educated and opinionated types who believe they know how best to run the world. It is beyond comical then, and highly disturbing, to see how they are played like fiddles by Islamofascists as adept at feeding lies and propaganda to Western journalists as they are at beheading innocents.

Murderous medieval zealots one minute, Hamas operatives manipulate self-righteous modern journalists the next. In the information age, the barbarians are exerting control over the digital gatekeepers.

And so it was, with Hamas’s control over humanitarian aid under threat (aid that is supposed to feed Gazans at no cost but until now has often been commandeered by Hamas and used for profiteering and control), the terrorists have created trauma and spun lines to a compliant Western media.

The story coming out of Gaza for days is that the Israeli Defence Forces have slaughtered Gazan civilians turning up at the new US-Israeli aid distribution centres designed to hand aid directly to Gazans, bypassing the Hamas henchmen.

Apparently none of the journalists or activists running these stories has stopped to wonder why a country supplying aid would want to murder the people it is feeding. Nor do they seem to have questioned the claims made by Hamas, which has a clear interest in disrupting the new aid arrangements – in fact, it has been a successful tactic, with so many Gazans too frightened to risk turning up at aid centres that deliveries have been delayed.

The only way to explain journalists overlooking this reality is to conclude they are intent on spreading hideous lies or they really believe the Israelis are murderous monsters who slaughter Palestinian civilians without even attempting to hide it. The concept is as illogical as it is monstrous; the only reason anyone is alive in Gaza after 20 months of war is because Israel has avoided targeting civilians, provided Gazans with warnings and safe passage, and facilitated aid deliveries.

If Israel wanted to be rid of Gazans it could have carpet-bombed the Strip in a matter of weeks. Perhaps these journalists and activists believe their own warped publicity.

It is not as though the lies from Hamas and blind, fact-free amplification by the media are new phenomena, catching the media by surprise. There have been numerous clear-cut examples that should have fostered ongoing scepticism.

An eyewitness recounts a deadly incident in southern Gaza, where Hamas reportedly attacked civilians waiting in line for…

In the first days of the war, just 10 days after the October 7 atrocities in 2023, false reports about Israel bombing a hospital and killing 500 people started in The New York Times and spread around the world. “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say” was the initial New York Times headline with a subheading: “At Least 500 Dead in Gaza Attack, as Biden Prepares to Visit to Israel”.

Days of global outrage directed at Israel followed – a propaganda triumph for Hamas – before the claims were proven beyond doubt to be false. A rocket directed at Israel by Hamas affiliate Palestinian Islamic Jihad had misfired, hit the hospital carpark and killed dozens of people.

The damage done to Israel was so comprehensive that it is tempting to wonder whether PIJ’s rocket was misdirected at all. Just as we wonder now whether Hamas deliberately kills Gazans daring to make their way towards non-Hamas aid distribution centres.

“At least 27 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire near aid centre, Gaza authorities say”, a BBC headline screamed this week. “Gaza authorities”, of course, means the information was provided by the Islamist terrorist group Hamas, currently at war with Israel. “More than 20 killed near aid distribution site in Gaza, health officials say” was one New York Times headline. “Health officials”, of course, means officials of Hamas, the terrorist organisation with the most to lose if the new aid program manages to feed Gazans while bypassing Hamas’s malevolent control.

We are left to wonder why so many in the media use these more flattering and less accurate descriptions of their sources. Why do they use terms such as “health ministry” or “Gaza authorities” rather than Hamas authorities or Hamas leaders?

This is dishonest, and deliberately so. It is about building an anti-Israeli narrative that minimises the focus on Hamas’s culpability for everything that is happening to the Gazans, the people Hamas claims to represent but who it uses as cannon fodder, human shields and sacrifices in the name of Islamist propaganda.

Hamas conducts its warfare – physical and psyops – from tunnels and bunkers while Gazans pay the price above ground. Extraordinarily, Western media happily plays the role of accessory in the Hamas information wars.

An IDF-published drone video claims to show Palestinian gunmen and other masked Palestinians opening fire and throwing stones at Gazans heading to collect humanitarian aid

On Wednesday night the ABC reported “at least 27 Palestinians have been killed”, claiming it was a case of “the hungry seeking food and encountering gunfire” as it ran unverified first-hand accounts of shootings, presumably filmed by media under the control of Hamas. It also ran comments by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights spokesman Jeremy Laurence that “attacks directed at civilians constitute a grave breach of international law and a war crime”.

Despite the fog of war and most of the information coming from a listed terrorist group, Israel was again being fitted up for a war crime. The only scepticism evident in the reporting was over an IDF video showing Hamas terrorists firing at civilians – the ABC reported it was filmed at a different location to the aid centre, which hardly seemed the relevant point.

The ABC’s reporter in Jerusalem, Matthew Doran, reliant on the same Hamas-controlled information drip-feed from Gaza, said: “Israeli officials continue to accuse Hamas of trying to undermine the new private aid system in Gaza.” This is the credulity dynamic that plays out in the reporting – the vision, comments and information supplied by murderous jihadists are reported doe-eyed while everything Israel says is reported with a cocked eyebrow.

The previous day ABC newsreader Jeremy Fernandez told us: “Health officials in Gaza say 27 Palestinians have been killed near an aid distribution centre, accusing Israeli forces of opening fire.” “Health officials” is a term that sounds a whole lot more believable than Hamas terrorist sources.

Reporter Doran then referred to what he had “heard from Palestinian authorities”. Again, why not tell us he had heard it from Hamas authorities?

Why the endless efforts to legitimise a listed terrorist organisation that deliberately triggered this war by slaughtering, torturing, raping and kidnapping men, women, the elderly, children and babies? Why the daily efforts to give legitimacy to a terrorist outfit that extends the war every day by keeping live Israeli hostages (and the bodies of their compatriots) as bargaining chips?

For all the desperate nonsense about the possibility of prosecuting Israeli politicians for war crimes, the irrefutable ongoing war crimes of Hamas holding hostages is overlooked. The selective and misplaced outrage is grotesque.

A day earlier the ABC said 31 people were dead and again ran first-person accounts from videotape that must have come out of Gaza courtesy of Hamas, yet it was presented as fact, as if the ABC interviewed these people itself. Then came Dr Marwan Al-Hams from a Gazan field hospital: “It seems the IDF is sending a clear message to the hungry, we will kill you from the sky with planes and missiles or on the ground through starvation and attacks near aid centres.”

An independent medico or a Hamas-approved message? There never seem to be any doubts in the coverage from the ABC, BBC, CNN or many other media organisations.

The ABC then ran footage of a mother saying she would now rather starve than go to the aid centre again. This is exactly the message and outcome Hamas would want to spread if it aims to block the independent centres and get its AK-47s back in control of the aid flow.

We are left to wonder whether these journalists, producers and editors ever stop to wonder why Israel would establish a new aid system with the US just to use it as a slaughterhouse. It is a little easier to fathom why Hamas might want to ensure the independent aid delivery system fails.

Just two weeks ago, plainly fanciful claims about 14,000 babies being on the brink of death in Gaza ran unquestioned around the world. It sounded ridiculous, most journalists didn’t even stop to consider the implausibility, and it was soon demonstrated to have no basis in fact – but too late, the anti-Israel damage had gone global.

In none of these cases do the media corrections, if they come, overturn the public perceptions generated by the initial allegations. Less than a week after the false hospital bombing claim back in October 2023, The New York Times ran something of an apology as an “Editor’s note” that said in part: “Times editors should have taken more care with the initial presentation and been more explicit about what information could be verified.”

That admission came after many days of the world reporting that Israel had deliberately bombed a hospital and killed 500 innocents. This was a huge Hamas propaganda win that set the tone – Hamas has had far more victories in Western media than it has had on the ground in Gaza.

None of this is to say that in a protracted conflict of urban and asymmetric warfare, Israel can do no wrong. Undoubtedly there will be accidents and overreach, and tragically there will be unintended civilian casualties. Israel does not let journalists into Gaza; apart from the normal risks of war, they could be killed or even taken hostage by Hamas. Perhaps they should rethink.

There is only one group that started this war and deliberately prolongs it – Hamas. Whereas the IDF operates under robust political, judicial and media oversight and accountability.

To watch most of the world’s media is to turn all this on its head. They give succour to Hamas, demonise Israel and, in doing so, prolong the trauma – the useful idiots of the jihadists.

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COURT SHOWDOWN FOR PIANIST’S CASE AGAINST ORCHESTRA

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=10b033f1-8742-41c9-bb4f-6cc585c699db&share=true

A Federal Court trial over a political discrimination claim brought against the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra by a concert pianist who criticised Israel’s conduct in Gaza has been set for December.

The MSO was plunged into controversy in August last year when pianist Jayson Gillham claimed onstage that Israel had committed targeted assassinations of Palestinian journalists, a war crime denied by Israel. The MSO initially responded by apologising to audience members and cancelling Gillham’s subsequent performance with the orchestra.

However, the MSO quickly backtracked and sought to reschedule the concert, before it ultimately called the show off, citing “safety concerns”.

In October, Gillham launched legal proceedings against the MSO in the Federal Court, claiming it discriminated against him because of his political belief or activity, which he said was in violation of his rights under the federal Fair Work Act. Gillham also sued the MSO’s then chief operating officer Guy Ross – who is defending the claim – and its former managing director Sophie Galaise, with whom he has since settled.

During a case management hearing on Friday, Federal Court registrar Amelia Edwards said she would fix the matter for a five-day trial to be heard from December 1.

This came after Gillham’s barrister Nilanka Goonetillake told the court it was her client’s “very strong preference” that the matter be dealt with this year. Ms Goonetillake argued that dealing with the matter quickly was consistent with the Federal Court’s statutory obligations and said it was also important that organisations and individuals in similar situations to that of Gillham and the MSO knew where they stood under the law.

Lawyers for the MSO agreed to the December trial, which will be heard before Chief Justice Debra Mortimer.

The court heard the MSO intended to call between eight and 12 witnesses at trial, while Gillham’s lawyers planned to call two, including Gillham.

LILY McCAFFREY

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WHY THE DEFINITION OF ZIONISM MUST BE RECLAIMED

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=12690472-4c1d-481c-a205-f771e06d47bc&share=true

Adam Kirsch

In June 2024, Israeli special forces rescued four hostages from the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. The hostages, kidnapped in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, were being held in residential apartment buildings by civilian supporters of Hamas, and when the Israeli raid met with heavy resistance many Palestinians were killed – almost 300, according to the Gaza health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians; less than 100, according to the Israel Defence Forces

Two days later, pro-Palestinian student groups at several New York City colleges responded by declaring a “citywide day of rage”.

The main protest took place on Wall Street outside the Nova Music Festival Exhibition, a travelling commemoration of the 370 young people killed by Hamas at a music festival in southern Israel. Demonstrators chanted “Long live the intifada” and “Israel go to hell” while setting off flares and waving Palestinian flags.

That evening, a subway passenger took a 20-second video showing a packed carriage in which about a dozen college-age protesters were crowded in with other passengers. In the video clip, as the train stands at a station platform with the doors open, a bearded young man wearing reflective sunglasses and a keffiyeh around his neck calls out, “Raise your hand if you’re a Zionist! This is your chance to get out!”

The other protesters repeat the words in a chant, using the “mic check” technique common at demonstrations. When there is no response, the man declares, “OK, no Zionists, we’re good!” and a woman echoes, “We don’t want no Zionists here.” The man clearly is still feeling the festive atmosphere of the day of rage; at the end of the clip he chuckles and lets out a celebratory “Woo!”

But when the video began to circulate on social media and then made the local news, New Yorkers were less amused. Mayor Eric Adams described the incident as “reprehensible and vile” and the New York Police Department issued a wanted poster for the bearded man. By the end of the month, the 24-year-old New York City native, a lab technician, turned himself in to face a misdemeanour charge of “coercion”

For many American Jews, the subway video was like the scene at the end of a horror movie where the survivors are finally breathing easy and then suddenly the monster’s hand sticks up out of the grave.

It was the kind of episode that used to be common in Jewish life but that we never expected to see in 21st-century New York: bullies using threats and contempt to drive Jews out of a public space, daring them to fight back, laughing when they don’t. Juden raus, the Germans used to say: “Jews get out.”

Does it make a difference to say “Zionists get out” instead? That question now stands at the centre of Jewish life around the world.

Anti-Zionists, at least the shrewder among them, recognise that the post-Holocaust taboo against anti-Semitism has not disappeared entirely from Western society and they make a point of insisting that hostility to Zionists is not the same as hostility to Jews.

Zionism, after all, is not an inherited religious or ethnic identity; it is a political belief that everyone is free to accept or reject. And some Jews do reject it.

According to an October 2024 poll by the Manhattan Institute, 5 per cent of American Jewish voters say they are not supporters of the Jewish stat

That 5 per cent is well represented on elite university campuses, and when pro-Palestine encampments sprang up in April 2024, many pointed to the participation of Jewish students as proof that they could not be anti-Semitic.

At Columbia, the Gaza Solidarity encampment even hosted a Seder, organised by the campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace

“As the largest anti-Zionist Jewish organisation in the world,” JVP’s website declares, “we un­equivocally reject the conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism and reaffirm in the strongest terms that there is no place for anti-Semitism in our movements.”

They must be confounded, then, to find so much anti-Zionist rhetoric employs the traditional grammar of Jew-hatred. Calling for Zionists to be sent to gas chambers invokes the Holocaust. Saying Zionists love to kill babies echoes the old Christian blood libel. No wonder so many members of “our movements” do not recognise any distinction between attacking Zionists and attacking Jews. After all, they know Zionism has to do with the Jewish state, and the Jewish state has to do with Jews, so it follows that any Jewish person or institution is an appropriate target for anti-Zionist agitation.

There is no way to understand today’s anti-Zionism without analysing how the war in Gaza is interpreted by drawing on old patterns of thinking about Jews and Judaism. Only this can explain why Israel’s war, uniquely among military conflicts, is regularly described as a “war on children”, including by UNICEF.

This phrase has never been applied to the US invasion of Iraq and subsequent civil war, which according to a study published in 2013 caused a half-million deaths, or to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where the civilian death toll is at least 40,000.

But for many people, especially in the Arab world, it is an article of faith that the purpose of Israel’s invasion of Gaza is not to destroy Hamas and prevent future October 7 style attacks but to kill Palestinian children.

Similarly, it is an article of faith among Western progressives that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This claim is hard to understand if the word is being used in its dictionary sense, as “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group”.

In the Holocaust, six million Jews were killed and eastern European Jewish civilisation ceased to exist. In the Armenian genocide of 1915-16, the Turks killed up to one million Armenians, effectively erasing that people from the Ottoman Empire. In the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Hutu mobs killed more than 800,000 mostly Tutsi victims in just 100 days, more than two-thirds of the country’s total Tutsi population.

The war in Gaza bears no resemblance to those events, neither in scale nor intent. If Israel’s goal were to destroy the Palestinian people, it would be hard to explain why, for instance, the Israeli military paused operations twice, in September and October 2024 so a UN campaign could administer polio vaccines to 600,000 Palestinian children. As terrible as the death toll in Gaza is, more than 10 times as many people were killed in the Syrian civil war from 2011. Almost 100 times as many were killed in the Congo War of 1998-2003, which few people in the West have even heard of. Yet those conflicts are never described as genocides. Why is the term so insistently applied to the war in Gaza?

One reason is that the image of Israel as a genocidal country was well established in many parts of academe, the left and the Arab world long before October 7.

During the 2014 Israel-Hamas war, in which about 2000 Palestinians were killed, Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, told the UN General Assembly that Israel was waging “a war of genocide”. During the 2009 Israel-Hamas war, in which 1400 Palestinians were killed, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said: “The Israelis were looking for an excuse to exterminate the Palestinians” and demanded: “What was it if not genocide?”

In 2006, the population of Gaza was about 1.3 million; today it is 2.1 million. This statistic alone makes clear that charges of genocide and extermination against Israel were never intended to be statements of fact. Rather, they express a sense that the existence of Israel as a Jewish state itself constitutes a kind of genocide because it is inimical to the national interest of Palestinian Arabs. Sometimes this idea is stated explicitly, as when pro-Hamas marchers in Cuba chanted, “Free, free Palestine/Israel is genocide.”

More common is the kind of implicit association made by US congresswoman Rashida Tlaib in May 2024, when she proposed a resolution stating: “The Nakba did not end in 1948 but continues to this day as Israeli forces commit genocide in Gaza.” The Nakba, or “catastrophe”, is what Palestinians call the flight or expulsion of 750,000 Arabs during Israel’s war of independence. In associating the Nakba with genocide, the resolution echoes a large body of academic discourse.

For example, Marouf Hasian Jr of the University of Utah argues in his book Debates on Colonial Genocide in the 21st Century that “the prototypical, Auschwitz-centred way” of defining genocide as “intentional large-scale mass murder” must be overturned. Hasian says we must “treat genocidal recognition as a rhetorical achievement”; in other words, when enough people decide to call something a genocide, it becomes one.

We can see this happening before our eyes with the war in Gaza, but the effort to redescribe the events of 1948 as a genocide of Palestinians is longstanding. The political motivation is not hard to understand. In the Western world, the Holocaust is the archetypal genocide – the word itself was invented by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish refugee from Poland, during World War II – and the Jews are the archetypal victims of genocide.

It is widely believed that Israel came into existence as a kind of international reparation for the Holocaust. While this is far from the whole story, it is true that the UN voted in 1947 to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in part to provide a home for Holocaust survivors languishing in displaced persons camps in Europe.

To recast Israeli Jews as the agents of genocide, then, is to reverse the rationale for the country’s existence. If the Nakba is like the Holocaust, then Israelis are as bad as Nazis and their moral claim to their country ought to be revoked.

If you talk to Israelis, or pay attention to their press or social media, it is clear they are living in a country at war. They talk about attending shivas for soldiers killed in Gaza or paying condolence calls on the families of hostages; about their family members who have been called up for military service; about taking shelter during missile attacks. And as in every country that goes to war – even with enemies that are much farther away and less directly threatening than Hamas – almost no one has any sympathy to spare for the other side.

In Europe and the US, however, much of the public does not think of Israel as fighting a war against an enemy. Certainly, Gaza is not discussed in the same way as the war in Ukraine, which has cost about as many civilian lives and vastly more soldiers’ lives. This is because of the nature of urban counterterrorist warfare, which cannot be measured in battles won and territory conquered; the difficulty of independent reporting in the war zone; and Israel’s failure to clearly establish and communicate its objectives.

But it is also because many of the loudest voices on Israel have long believed the Jewish state’s wars are illegitimate by definition, because any attempt to preserve the existence of a criminal country constitutes a crime.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, has said repeatedly since October 7 that Hamas has a “right to resist” by attacking Israel, but Israel has no right of self-defence. The supposed legal basis for this idea is that Israel is occupying Gaza in contravention of international law – even though Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and the territory has been governed by Hamas since 2007.

There is no question that Israel has a moral and legal responsibility to investigate the conduct of the war and punish any soldiers or officers who violated the laws of war.

But the evil of war goes beyond the crimes of individuals. War itself is an evil, which can be justified only if it is necessary to prevent worse violence in the future. That is why any country with the means to do so would have responded to a terrorist attack such as Hamas’s by declaring war. Only in Israel’s case is that response construed in terms of genocide.

For many anti-Zionists, the war against Hamas is a genocide for the same reason that the Nakba was a genocide, and every conflict between: because the existence of a Jewish state itself constitutes a genocidal act against Palestinian Arabs. And since Zionism means supporting the existence of the Jewish state, it follows that Zionists are advocates of genocide, morally equivalent to Nazis.

This has long been a staple of anti-Israel rhetoric in the Arab world. In 2022, Abbas said at a press conference in Berlin that Israel had committed “50 Holocausts”. But it is also taken for granted in much of Western academe.

More than a century ago, Zionism allowed the Jewish people to enter the public sphere – first as a political community, then as a sovereign state. Attempts to destroy the state by military force have been thwarted one after another, from the 1948 war to the decimation of Lebanese Hezbollah last year. Now anti-Zionism hopes to achieve what force could not, by revoking the political existence of the Jewish people, which is the precondition for the state’s existence. On a New York subway carriage or the floor of the UN General Assembly, anti-Zionists want to convince the world – and, even more important, Jews themselves – that they have no right to exist in public space.

It is instructive to compare the history of Israel since 1948 with those of India and Pakistan, which were created in 1947 under similar circumstances – British withdrawal followed by civil war.

In the first months after the partition of India and Pakistan, fighting between Hindus and Muslims killed up to two million people, while driving 15 million into exile.

When Bengalis who had been incorporated into East Pakistan seceded to form Bangladesh in 1971, the ensuing war killed up to three million people.

The border between India and Pakistan is still disputed today, more than 75 years after partition, and border skirmishes and terrorist attacks are regular occurrences. Yet when was the last time you heard someone say India or Pakistan shouldn’t exist? Zionism isn’t the only long-established political idea under attack today. Across the past decade, the Western liberal order has been challenged from within and without. Most of its defenders have responded by insisting that criticism of things such as free speech and free trade, the EU and NATO, is simply impermissible, out of bounds. This strategy has failed to halt the rise of populism, nativism and isolationism, and it cannot halt the rise of anti-Zionism either.

Rather, when an idea is challenged, those who believe in it must be able to mount a substantive defence – to show why it is as worthy and necessary today as it was a generation or a century ago.

For Zionists, that means reclaiming the definition of the word from its opponents. Zionism has nothing to do with “creating a racist hierarchy with European Jews at the top”, as Jewish Voice for Peace says, or a “chronic addiction to territorial expansion”, in the words of Australian scholar Patrick Wolfe.

Today, as when it began, Zionism is simply the belief that a Jewish state is necessary for the survival and wellbeing of the Jewish people.

The reasons that inspired the Zionist movement to create Israel, and the UN to recognise it, are no less valid today than in the past. The survival of Israel as a Jewish state is an existential necessity for the millions of Jews living there and millions living elsewhere. Contrary to the fantasies of anti-Zionists, there is no way it could cease to exist without massive violence.

The October 7 attack was a clear preview of what “liberating Palestine” means to Hamas and other militant groups. With the Holocaust still in living memory, it is unthinkable that Israeli Jews would give up the security of their own state and military, and unthinkable for other people, Jews or non-Jews, to ask them to.

In making this case, Zionists must refuse to be intimidated by hostile words or even actions. One way of being intimidated is refusing to acknowledge when Israel does wrong, for fear of giving aid to its enemies. That fear, too, must be resisted. If Israelis are not afraid to protest against their government’s actions, Jews outside Israel should not be afraid to listen to them.

Indeed, steadfast commitment to the existence of Israel is what makes honest criticism of it possible. Both are required if Zionism is to address its greatest unfinished task: securing the future of the Jewish state by finally making a lasting peace between Jews and Arabs.

This is an edited extract from Adam Kirsch’s Jewish Quarterly essay, out now. He is a poet, critic and editor at The Wall Street Journal. His books include The People and the Books: Eighteen Classics of Jewish Literature and On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice.

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HOMES RAIDED IN SYNAGOGUE PROBE

https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=5d4967c4-4ce5-4fda-bfd3-a9c2e4612f43&share=true

Mohammad Alfares

Counter-terrorism police have executed raids across Melbourne’s northern suburbs as part of an investigation into the firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea.

Officers from the Victorian Joint Counter-Terrorism Team swooped on at least three properties on Friday morning, as the months-long probe intensifies.

“Victoria Police and the Australian Federal Police have executed a number of search warrants in Melbourne’s northern suburbs this morning as part of the Joint Counter Terrorism Team investigation into an arson attack at a Ripponlea synagogue last year,” a Victoria Police spokesperson said.

“At this time there are no further updates and the investigation remains ongoing, with further ­updates to be provided when ­appropriate.”

Police have refused to confirm further details, including if any ­arrests were made.

The investigation, which has gripped the city’s Jewish community, has been a top priority for authorities since the targeted firebombing late last year.

Significant progress has been made in the case since the arrests linked to a fire at Lux Nightclub in November. Police have previously confirmed that the same vehicle used in the nightclub incident was seen at the scene of the Ripponlea attack, marking a critical development in the investigation. Convictions relating to the synagogue attack could carry a potential life sentence due to the political or ideological nature of the offence.

Synagogue board member Benjamin Klein said police had briefed leaders on the raid on Friday morning.

“They said no arrests have been made but they’re comfortable with how the investigation’s proceeding,” Rabi Klein said.

“I think whilst we are very happy and comfortable that police are working very hard on it, it does shake you.”

The rebuilding of the synagogue is expected to commence in October.

France opens ‘complicity in genocide’ probes over blocked Gaza aid

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/france-opens-complicity-in-genocide-probes-over-blocked-gaza-aid/news-story/6e5e0cee7decc2778a5fa20401239c43?amp

AFP

French anti-terror prosecutors have opened probes into “complicity in genocide” and “incitement to genocide” after French-Israelis allegedly blocked aid intended for war-torn Gaza last year, they said on Friday.

The two investigations, opened after legal complaints, were also to look into possible “complicity in crimes against humanity” between January and May 2024, the anti-terror prosecutor’s office (PNAT) said.

They are the first known probes in France to be looking into alleged violations of international law in Gaza, several sources with knowledge of the cases told AFp

French anti-terror prosecutors have opened probes into “complicity in genocide” and “incitement to genocide” after French-Israelis allegedly blocked aid intended for war-torn Gaza last year, they said on Friday.

The two investigations, opened after legal complaints, were also to look into possible “complicity in crimes against humanity” between January and May 2024, the anti-terror prosecutor’s office (PNAT) said.

They are the first known probes in France to be looking into alleged violations of international law in Gaza, several sources with knowledge of the cases told AFP.

In a separate case made public on the same day, the grandmother of two children with French nationality who were killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza has filed a legal complaint in Paris, accusing Israel of “genocide” and “murder”, her lawyer said.

The French judiciary has jurisdiction when French citizens are involved in such cases.

Rights groups, lawyers and some Israeli historians have described the Gaza war as “genocide”.

Israel, created in the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust of Jews during World War II, vehemently rejects the accusation.

The French probes were opened after two separate legal complaints.

In the first, the Jewish French Union for Peace (UFJP) and a French-Palestinian victim filed a complaint in November targeting alleged French members of hardline pro-Israel groups “Israel is forever” and “Tzav-9”.

It accused them of “physically” preventing the passage of trucks at border checkpoints controlled by the Israeli army.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, Damia Taharraoui and Marion Lafouge, told AFP they were happy a probe had been launched into the events in January 2024 — “a time when no-one wanted to hear anything about genocide”.

A source close to the case said prosecutors last month urged the investigation in relation to events at the Nitzana crossing point between Egypt and Israel, and the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel into Gaza.

Around that time, hardline Israeli protesters — including friends and relatives of hostages held in Gaza — blocked aid lorries from entering the occupied Palestinian territory and forced them to turn back at Kerem Shalom.

A second complaint from a group called the Lawyers for Justice in the Middle East (CAPJO) accused members of “Israel is forever” of having blocked aid trucks.

It used photos, videos and public statements to back up its complaint.

– ‘Genocide’ complaint –

No court has so far concluded that the ongoing conflict is a genocide.

But in rulings in January, March and May 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ highest judicial organ, told Israel to do everything possible to “prevent” acts of genocide during its military operations in Gaza, including through allowing in urgently needed aid.

In the separate case, Jacqueline Rivault, the grandmother of six- and nine-year-old children killed in an Israeli strike, filed her complaint accusing Israel of “genocide” and “murder” with the crimes against humanity section of the Court of Paris, lawyer Arie Alimi said.

Though formally against unnamed parties, the complaint explicitly targets Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli government and the military.

The complaint states that an Israeli missile strike killed Janna, six, and Abderrahim Abudaher, nine, in northern Gaza on October 24, 2023.

“We believe these children are dead as part of a deliberate organised policy targeting the whole of Gaza’s population with a possible genocidal intent,” Alimi said.

The children’s brother Omar, now five, was severely wounded but still lives in Gaza with their mother, identified as Yasmine Z., the complaint said.

A French court in 2019 convicted Yasmine Z. in absentia of having funded a “terrorist” group over giving money in Gaza to members of Palestinian militant groups Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

– Famine warnings –

Israel said last month it was easing the complete blockade of Gaza it imposed on March 2 but on May 30 the United Nations said the territory’s entire population of more than two million people remained at risk of famine.

A US-backed aid group last week began distributions but reports that the Israeli military shot dead dozens of Palestinians trying to collect food has sparked widespread condemnation. The UN and major aid organisations have refused to cooperate with the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund, citing concerns that it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives.

Hamas fighters launched an attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. A total of 1,218 people died, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

The militants abducted 251 hostages, 55 of whom remain in Gaza, including 32 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory war on Hamas-run Gaza has killed 54,677 people, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry there, figures the United Nations deems reliable.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

It also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif over similar allegations linked to the October 7 attack but the case against him was dropped in February after confirmation Israel had killed him.

jpa-gd-ah/sjw/gil

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US slaps sanctions on four ICC judges over Israel, US cases

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/breaking-news/us-slaps-sanctions-on-four-icc-judges-over-israel-us-cases/news-story/f48ef0760f03226fae9eaaa74c589cf8

The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on four judges at the International Criminal Court including over an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as it ramped up presure to neuter the court of last resort.

The four judges in The Hague, all women, will be barred entry to the United States and any property or other interests in the world’s largest economy will be blocked — measures more often taken against policymakers from US adversaries than against judicial officials.

“The United States will take whatever actions we deem necessary to protect our sovereignty, that of Israel, and any other US ally from illegitimate actions by the ICC,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.

“I call on the countries that still support the ICC, many of whose freedom was purchased at the price of great American sacrifices, to fight this disgraceful attack on our nation and Israel,” Rubio said.

The court swiftly hit back, saying in a statement: “These measures are a clear attempt to undermine the independence of an international judicial institution which operates under the mandate from 125 States Parties from all corners of the globe.”

Israel’s Netanyahu welcomed the move, thanking US President Donald Trump’s administration in a social media post.

“Thank you President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio for imposing sanctions against the politicised judges of the ICC. You have justly stood up for the right of Israel,” he wrote on Friday.

– War crimes –

Human Rights Watch urged other nations to speak out and reaffirm the independence of the ICC, set up in 2002 to prosecute individuals responsible for the world’s gravest crimes when countries are unwilling or unable to do so themselves.

The sanctions “aim to deter the ICC from seeking accountability amid grave crimes committed in Israel and Palestine and as Israeli atrocities mount in Gaza, including with US complicity,” said the rights group’s international justice director, Liz Evenson.

Two of the targeted judges, Beti Hohler of Slovenia and Reine Alapini-Gansou of Benin, took part in proceedings that led to an arrest warrant issued last November for Netanyahu.

The court found “reasonable grounds” of criminal responsibility by Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant for actions that include the war crime of starvation as a method of war in the massive offensive in Gaza following Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Israel, alleging bias, has angrily rejected charges of war crimes as well as a separate allegation of genocide led by South Africa before the International Court of Justice.

The two other judges, Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza of Peru and Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda, were part of the court proceedings that led to the authorization of an investigation into allegations that US forces committed war crimes during the war in Afghanistan.

– Return to hard line –

Neither the United States nor Israel is party to the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court.

But almost all Western allies of the United States as well as Japan and South Korea, the vast majority of Latin America and much of Africa are parties to the statute and in theory are required to arrest suspects when they land on their soil

Trump in his first term already imposed sanctions on the then ICC chief prosecutor over the Afghanistan investigation.

After Trump’s defeat in 2020, then president Joe Biden took a more conciliatory approach to the court with case-by-case cooperation.

Rubio’s predecessor Antony Blinken rescinded the sanctions and, while critical of its stance on Israel, worked with the court in its investigation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

ICC judges in 2023 issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the alleged mass abduction of Ukrainian children during the war.

Both Putin and Netanyahu have voiced defiance over the ICC pressure but have also looked to minimize time in countries that are party to the court.

The ICC arrest warrants have been especially sensitive in Britain, a close US ally whose Prime Minister Keir Starmer is a former human rights lawyer.

Downing Street has said that Britain will fulfil its “legal obligations” without explicitly saying if Netanyahu would be arrested if he visits.

Hungary, led by Trump ally Viktor Orban, has parted ways with the rest of the European Union by moving to exit the international court.

Orban thumbed his nose at the court by welcoming Netanyahu to visit in April.

sct/dhw/tym

Israel accused of arming Palestinian gang who allegedly looted aid in Gaza

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/05/israel-accused-of-arming-palestinian-gang-who-allegedly-looted-aid-in-gaza

Gang ‘of about 100 armed men’ operate in eastern Rafah with tacit approval of IDF in apparent attempt to counter Hamas

Lorenzo Tondo in Jerusalem

Fri 6 Jun 2025 05.39 AEST

Israel’s government has been accused of arming a Palestinian criminal gang whose members have allegedly looted humanitarian aid, in an apparent attempt to counter Hamas in Gaza.

Satellite images and videos verified by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz showed on Thursday that a new Palestinian militia has expanded its presence in southern Gaza, and is operating inside an area under the direct control of the Israel Defense Forces.

The group, which has also been accused of ties to jihadist groups, is reportedly led by a man known as Yasser abu Shabab, a Rafah resident from a Bedouin family, known locally for his involvement in criminal activity and the looting of humanitarian aid.

According to media reports, Abu Shabab’s group, which calls itself the “Anti-Terror Service”, consists of about 100 armed men who operate in eastern Rafah with the tacit approval of the Israeli armed forces. It has variously been described as a militia and a criminal gang.

The Times of Israel cited defence sources who said that Israel provided members of Abu Shabab’s faction with Kalashnikov assault rifles, including some weapons seized from Hamas. The operation was approved by Israel’s security cabinet and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the newspaper reported, noting that its article had been approved for publication by Israel’s military censor.

In a video posted on social media late on Thursday, Netanyahu said Israel had “activated” some Palestinian clans in Gaza, on the advice of “security officials,” in order to save lives of Israeli soldiers.

The prime minister’s office had earlier said that “Israel is working to defeat Hamas in various ways, on the recommendation of all heads of the security establishment.”

The former defence minister and opposition lawmaker Avigdor Lieberman repeated the allegations and alleged that Abu Shabab’s group was affiliated with the Islamic State terror 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,” Lieberman, who heads the opposition Yisrael Beiteinu party, told Kan Bet public radio. “To my knowledge, this did not go through approval by the cabinet.”

The basis for Lieberman’s allegation of ties to IS was not clear. Abu Shabab’s group has previously been accused of involvement in smuggling operations linked to Egyptian jihadi groups.

A security official told Israeli news outlet Ynet that the arming of Abu Shabab was approved and led by the Shin Bet internal security service, and described the operation as “planned and managed”, with the goal of “reducing Israeli military casualties while systematically undermining Hamas through targeted strikes, infrastructure destruction and the promotion of rival local forces.”

The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Displaced Palestinians walk along a road carrying belongings

Displaced Palestinians walk along a road to receive humanitarian aid packages from a US-backed foundation in Rafah on Thursday. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

In recent weeks, Abu Shabab has published anti-Hamas and anti-Palestinian Authority messages while promoting his militia’s efforts on Facebook.

Abu Shabab’s links with Israeli forces were confirmed by his family, which issued a statement last week formally disowning him.

“We, like everyone else, were surprised by video footage broadcast by the resistance showing the involvement of Yasser’s groups within a dangerous security framework, reaching the point of operating within undercover units and supporting the Zionist occupation forces, who are brutally killing our people,” the statement said.

“We affirm that we will not accept Yasser’s return to the family. We have no objection to those around him liquidating him immediately, and we tell you that his blood is forfeit.”

Abu Shabab has reportedly claimed his group were protecting aid convoys, while Hamas has accused him of looting the aid trucks.

On 28 May, Jonathan Whittall, the head of United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in occupied Palestinian territories said: “Israel has publicly claimed that the UN and NGO aid is being diverted by Hamas. But this doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. The real theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point into Gaza.”

When contacted by the Guardian, Whittall confirmed he was “referring to gangs such as Abu Shabab.”

On Wednesday, a labour union representing truck drivers in Gaza said it was halting transport of aid deliveries within the strip after an incident in which several truckers were shot dead by gunmen.

The Private Transport Association said it was calling the strike in response to an incident a day ago in which a convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian aid was attacked by gunmen in the central Gaza.

“This crime is not the first of its kind, but it is by far the most serious in a series of recurring assaults aimed at obstructing relief operations and preventing vital aid from reaching hundreds of thousands of civilians facing dire humanitarian conditions,” the statement said.

Jihad Sleem, vice-president of the Special Transportation Association, who lost his relative, Mohammed al-Assar, in the attack, said he did not know who the gunmen were.

Asked if he suspected Abu Shabab was behind the killings, he said: “It wouldn’t surprise me if he was involved in these attacks. He’s a gangster.”

Jamal Risheq contributed to this report