Media Report 2025.08.06
FPM Media Report Wednesday August 6 2025
We cannot stand by’: Government sends strongest signal yet on Palestinian recognition
Matthew Knott
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has discussed efforts to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza with the head of the United Nations as the government sends increasingly strong signals it will join a coalition of nations recognising a Palestinian state next month.
Albanese also had a phone call with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday, in which they committed to meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September.
Albanese spoke to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday to discuss the upcoming general assembly, a conversation government sources said was part of an escalating set of diplomatic encounters as international pressure mounts to recognise Palestinian statehood.
The call had previously been reported, but not that the pair spoke about Palestine.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has used her strongest language on the issue this week, heightening the sense of urgency to recognise Palestine by arguing that time was running out to keep a two-state solution alive.
“There is a risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise if the international community [doesn’t] move to create that pathway to a two-state solution,” she told ABC radio on Tuesday.
“It has been my long-held position that there will be no peace and security for the people of Israel unless we resolve to a Palestinian state. That has been my view for decades.”
Her comments came as Israeli media outlets reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planned to order the full military occupation of Gaza in a last-ditch effort to force Hamas to surrender and to recover the remaining Israeli hostages taken during the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.
Former United States ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro was one of many Middle East experts who decried the plan, saying it would be a “disaster” leading to the deaths of more Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages.
Wong used even more forceful language about Palestinian recognition in a television interview on Monday night, saying there had been “a lot of co-ordination” with other countries on the issue and that it has been remarked this could be “the last hope” to salvage any prospect of a Palestinian state.
“I hope that’s not the case, but we cannot, we cannot stand by with what is happening in Gaza and not add momentum towards two states,” she told the ABC’s 7.30.
“We cannot stand by whilst the prospect of a Palestinian state is diminished on the ground by settlements and other statements; we have to find a way to push for … two states.”
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin called for Wong to publicly acknowledge that Hamas had stymied attempts to negotiate a ceasefire since May.
“Israel accepted the internationally brokered ceasefire that would have seen the unfettered flow of aid, the phased return of hostages and a pathway to a permanent end to the war,” he said. “It is unsatisfactory for this material fact to be omitted, giving the false impression that Israel is the barrier to the ceasefire and not Hamas.”
Ryvchin added: “Our community desires peace and a permanent end to the conflict, but this can only be achieved by ending Palestinian terrorism, ending the hostage crisis and then supporting Israelis and Palestinians in charting a peaceful future through direct negotiations.
“Recognising a Palestinian state before this happens is a doomed policy that has no prospect of delivering peace.”
Hamas said in a weekend statement that it could not yield its right to “armed resistance” unless an “independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital” is established. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 and claims all the holy city as its capital, even though the vast majority of the international community wants East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Hundreds of retired Israeli security officials on Monday urged US President Donald Trump to pressure the Netanyahu government to end the war in Gaza, saying in an open letter: “It is our professional judgment that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel.”
The letter argued that the Israeli military “has long accomplished the two objectives that could be achieved by force: dismantling Hamas’s military formations and governance”.
“The third, and most important, can only be achieved through a deal: bringing all the hostages home,” they said.
“Chasing remaining senior Hamas operatives can be done later.”
Australians want ‘pathway to peace’ in Middle East: Rishworth
PM speaks with Macron on Gaza, climate conference
By Nick Newling
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron overnight.
The pair discussed their support for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, and their commitment to see aid flow into Gaza.
Last month France announced it would recognise a Palestinian state in September, which led to similar statements, with caveats, from Canada and the UK.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and French President Emmanuel Macron.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
A readout of the call provided by government spokespeople said the leaders also discussed Australia’s bid to host next year’s COP climate change conference. France is supporting Australia’s bid to co-host the conference with the Pacific.
There has been an ongoing stalemate with Turkey over who will host the next meeting, with Adelaide to host the conference should Australia be successful.
The leaders also discussed the importance of the Australia-EU free trade agreement, and planned to meet at next month’s United Nations General Assembly meeting.
By Daniel Lo Surdo
Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Amanda Rishworth said Australians want to see a “pathway to peace” in the Middle East, as the Albanese government sends increasingly strong signals it will join a coalition of nations recognising a Palestinian state in September.
Rishworth didn’t answer a question probing whether Labor was planning to recognise Palestine in the near-term, repeating previous comments that such recognition was a matter of time without committing to a timeline.
Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Amanda Rishworth.
Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Amanda Rishworth.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
“We do need a pathway to peace,” Rishworth said. “We continue to work with international partners on the way forward with that as well as … to get aid into Gaza, but I think across the board Australians are pretty distressed about what is happening in Gaza at the moment and do want this conflict to end.”
Calls for Palestinian recognition have intensified in the past two weeks, after Canada, the United Kingdom and France announced plans to recognise Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly next month.
How Netanyahu squandered his moment to halt the war in Gaza
By Patrick Kingsley
Jerusalem: When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led the country to a military victory over Iran in June, both his allies and rivals portrayed it as his finest achievement. Flush with newfound confidence and authority, Netanyahu seemed finally to have gained the political capital he needed to override opposition from his far-right government allies to reach a truce in the Gaza Strip.
Six weeks later, the prime minister has squandered that moment. The talks between Hamas and Israel are, yet again, stuck. Israel is now pushing for a deal to end the war in one go, instead of in phases. The move brings negotiations to where they were 19 months ago, when mediators last tried to reach a comprehensive deal, and it is just as likely to fail as it did then.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives with US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth for a meeting at the Pentagon last month.Credit: AP
Now as then, both Hamas and Netanyahu are refusing to make the compromises needed for such a comprehensive deal to work.
“As long as this is the government – and assuming it doesn’t fundamentally change its course – there will be no comprehensive agreement, and the hostages will not return,” wrote Oren Setter, a former member of Israel’s negotiation team, in a column on Monday in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot. “The opposition needs to understand this, the public needs to understand this, and the media needs to understand this,” Setter added.
In short, the credit Netanyahu accrued following the war with Iran in June has evaporated, both domestically and overseas.
International condemnation of the growing starvation in Gaza – which aid agencies and many foreign governments have largely blamed on Israel’s 11-week blockade on the territory between March and May – is at its peak. Partly to protest Israel’s responsibility for that situation, several of the country’s long-standing allies have recognised a Palestinian state, or pledged to do so in the near future.
In the United States, most Democratic senators voted last week to block some arms sales to Israel. A Republican lawmaker, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has accused Israel of genocide, an accusation it strongly denies.
Domestic opposition to the war in Gaza is at an all-time high, and calls are growing for the remaining hostages held by Hamas to be returned through a diplomatic deal. Israel’s ability to sustain the war, amid growing fatigue among its military reservists, is increasingly under question. After a rise in death by suicide of reserve soldiers, the military has set up a committee to investigate how to better support those leaving service.
“Israel is in the tightest spot it has been in at any point in the war,” Michael Koplow, an analyst at Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based research group, said.
“It is dealing with a societal crisis over the continued war and plight of the hostages, a military crisis over the lack of clear aims and reservist fatigue, a diplomatic crisis over its close European allies lining up to unilaterally recognise Palestinian statehood, and an existential crisis over its eroding standing in the US,” Koplow said.
The protraction of the Gaza conflict also reflects US President Donald Trump’s failure to capitalise on the leverage he accrued during the war with Iran. By joining Netanyahu’s attacks, Trump gave Israel a symbolic victory. At the time, analysts expected him to demand that Netanyahu repay the favour by drawing the war in Gaza to a close.
“He had all the leverage in the world to say to Netanyahu, ‘Now we need to end this,’” Daniel Shapiro, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research group, and a former US ambassador to Israel, said.
“Instead, Netanyahu seemed to persuade Trump to give him more time,” Shapiro said. “Now, things are just dragging and dragging.”
Within Gaza, the delay’s result has been catastrophic. Despite Israel’s sudden decision to let in more food last week, Palestinians in Gaza are still dying every day from starvation, according to Gaza’s health authorities.
Israeli soldiers have continued to shoot and kill civilians trying to access a deeply problematic new food distribution system that forces people to cross Israeli military lines to reach distribution sites. Desperate for alternative sources of food, large crowds of civilians continue to block and ransack aid convoys.
Within Israel, the delay has heightened discontent among the government’s critics. If Netanyahu appeared decisive and bold with his strikes on Iran in June, now he is once again perceived as dithering and beholden to the views of his far-right coalition partners.
A growing number of Israelis – either concerned for the hostages held by Hamas, or about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, or both – are calling for an end to the war. On Monday, a group of former security chiefs – including two former army chiefs of staff, three former heads of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet; and three former directors of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency – released a video that ended with the caption: “End the war!”
The generals said the war, which was set off by Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, began as a just war but has since become endless and pointless.
“It was a defensive war,” Ami Ayalon, a former Shin Bet chief, said in the video. “But once we achieved all its military objectives, once we achieved a great military victory against all our enemies, this war stopped being a just war,” Ayalon added. “This is leading the state of Israel to the loss of its security and its identity.”
Netanyahu says the war’s objectives have not yet been achieved – that the battle must continue until Hamas has been destroyed and the 20 remaining living hostages in Gaza are released. Hamas and its allies released videos in recent days of two such hostages, looking starved and skeletal.
“We will not be broken,” Netanyahu said in a statement on Sunday after the footage was circulated online. “I am filled with an even stronger determination to free our kidnapped sons, to eliminate Hamas, to ensure that Gaza no longer poses a threat to the state of Israel.”
‘I can’t go back’: Netanyahu’s prolonged war risks mutiny in the ranks
Yet the government’s critics say Hamas is already decimated, its leaders mostly dead and its arsenal severely depleted. They fear that continued fighting in Gaza will do little meaningful damage to Hamas, but will endanger the hostages still held in the enclave, and further harm Israel’s tattered reputation.
For nearly 18 months, Netanyahu has avoided halting the war so he can keep intact his coalition government, which includes senior ministers who seek to annex Gaza and replace much of its Palestinian population with Israeli civilians.
The backbone of Israel’s fighting force – its part-time military reservists who combine battlefield service with civilian life – has become increasingly exhausted, traumatised and reluctant to return to what is now Israel’s longest-ever high-intensity war.
Now, even full-time soldiers are battle weary: Three conscripts were sentenced to jail last month for refusing, on mental health grounds, to re-enter Gaza, prompting a public outcry that led to the cancellation of their jail terms.
Compounding these frustrations, the government is pushing ahead with efforts to extend an exemption from military service for ultra-Orthodox Jewish Israelis, whose leaders have long backed Netanyahu.
The government is also investing time and resources in firing the attorney-general, who oversees Netanyahu’s long-running prosecution for corruption. Netanyahu denies the corruption charges, and he has said his government’s efforts to overhaul the judicial system are unrelated to the trial.
But to his critics, those moves have bolstered the impression that Netanyahu has prioritised his own personal interests above his country’s cohesion and its strategic goals.
Related Article
Smoke from a bomb blast during an Israeli airstrike on the Ain Jalut towers in Nuseirat, central Gaza, on Saturday, July 20, 2024. The Israeli military ordered civilians to leave parts of the Gazan city of Khan Younis due to a renewed assault against Hamas, even as it reduced the size of an already overcrowded humanitarian zone where they could potentially take shelter. Photographer: Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
US and Israeli officials float idea of ‘all or nothing’ Gaza deal
“Netanyahu stymied the chance to bring all the hostages home three times, and some say it was four times,” wrote Nahum Barnea, a veteran Israeli commentator, in a column Monday. “Make no mistake: He wanted the hostages to return no less than others, but unlike other people, he wasn’t prepared to pay the price.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Letters
Why people like me are taking to the streets.
PROTESTS
There have been questions raised about why people take part in peaceful mass demonstrations (Letters, 5/8). I believe I can give the prime reason. We live large distances away from many of the world’s humanitarian problems, but we feel an emotional connection to the people who are suffering in those places. We can’t personally express our feelings to them and their rulers, or undertake any meaningful action to help the victims, but we can join together and share our feelings with other concerned, like-minded people here. It is beneficial to us to know that we are not alone in our feelings, whether of anger or grief or anything else, and in so doing feel a sense of solidarity with the far-away victims. Many people will not or cannot write letters to, or phone, our politicians asking them to take action on our behalf, but large gatherings of people are a visible sign to them of how widespread our feelings are. I remember how uplifting an anti-Vietnam march was in helping me feel that there were many others who wanted the pointless killing and destruction to stop. It was a comfort to me. That’s reason enough to encourage demonstrations rather than try and forbid them or meet them with police force. That’s not what our police should be doing.
Don Jordan, Mt Waverley
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Who will rescue the children?
Who is to judge the so-called “self-righteous anger of Melbourne keffiyeh-wearing performative protesters” (Letters, 4/8)? I was there at Sunday’s protest, as I have been before. My feeling was not self-righteous anger, nor righteous anger. It was not anger at all, but sorrow. For the first time I wore a keffiyeh. It was not performance. It was an expression of sympathy with suffering Palestinians.
As a Quaker and a pacifist, I would much prefer the protest was in silence for that would reflect the profound sorrow I feel for the lives being lost in Gaza due to starvation, and people being slaughtered as they desperately seek food. In 1939 British Quakers were instrumental in rescuing 10,000 German and Austrian Jewish children in the “kindertransport” trains that took them to the UK. Who will rescue the Palestinian children now?
Dorothy Scott, Macclesfield
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Symbol of a nation insulted
After the burning of the Australian flag at a pro-Palestinian rally it is about time that protests that are disrespectful and disruptive to our citizens be required to meet standards – or else be stopped. Media condemnation is not adequate as a control and deterrent, it probably fuels their actions. This has nothing to do with the freedom to protest – this is about the fabric of and wellbeing of our society. There are laws that restrict what we can say and can do in a social context, added to these are a wide range of subjects that have established standards/norms of acceptable behaviour in Australia. For example, defamation is illegal and we are developing a stronger attitude and community response to domestic violence.
Burning our national flag is an abhorrent action. Will they now burn the flag of our Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders? How do our war veterans and servicemen and women feel when the flag they fought for and stand for is desecrated?
Ross Kroger, Barwon Heads
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Act of shame
Unsurprisingly, the cowards burning the Australian flag on the King St Bridge wore masks to hide their identities. They should go live in maybe Iran, Iraq or Syria and see if they feel more comfortable with those countries’ flags.
Geoff Lipton, Caulfield North
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Widen support for action
Noting the worldwide impetus to urgently end the Gaza war and to establish a Palestinian state, could the pro-Palestine demonstrators consider tweaking the chant from “Free free Palestine” to maybe “Two state solution now.” This may assist in increasing more widespread support. And help disarm opposition that now is not the time to recognise a Palestinian state.
Carlo Ursida, Kensington
Benjamin Netanyahu is running out of options as tide of opinion turns
Paul Kelly
World leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian PN Mark Carney, bottom left, and UK PM Keir Starmer, bottom middle are applying the pressure over Gaza on Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Pictures: AFP/Getty Images
109 Comments
The flaws in the Gaza war campaign of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu grow more dangerous each day as casualties mount, images of starvation are transmitted around the world and Western democratic opinion turns against Israel.
The terrorist group Hamas, broken yet not extinguished, gains fresh leverage as Western leaders, desperate to be seen to act, use their coming recognition of a Palestinian state as a transactional weapon against Israel.
The fantasy in this process is that Western pressure can become a catalyst for a two-state solution, a transformation that will occur only when the two parties – the Palestinians and Israel – willingly endorse this leap. Western leaders, posing as statesmen but driven by politics, will deliver Palestinian recognition, its impact more likely to be counter-productive than beneficial.
What matters is Arab opinion. With Hamas on its knees there is an opportunity in the recent statement by Arab nations condemning Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that called on the terror group to lay down its weapons, release the hostages and terminate its rule in Gaza.
This is a potential breakthrough moment. The goal is “an independent and sovereign Palestinian state” – a declaration to challenge both Hamas and Israel.
In response, Hamas, purporting to speak for the Palestinian people, demanded “unconditional international recognition” – incredibly, this is the policy of significant public figures in Australia but not the position of the Albanese government. It would mean Australia recognising Palestine unconditionally, a stance of strategic irresponsibility and moral bankruptcy, no matter how many people crossed the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Significantly, the declaration arising from a joint France/Saudi Arabia initiative, and signed by Arab nations and the EU, calls for a demilitarised Palestinian state next to Israel and, as an immediate step, the deployment of a temporary international stabilisation mission under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority that has signed up to the same principles.
Hence the pivotal role of the ageing, corrupt and anti-Semitic PA President, Mahmoud Abbas, whom Anthony Albanese spoke to on Tuesday morning as part of our diplomacy.
Palestinian recognition is now the cause that cannot be stopped. The test is whether it will help or hinder. Global sentiment has turned decisively against Israel – the singular achievement of Netanyahu. Israel’s legitimacy has always depended upon its moral standing in the world, a reality that derives from the origins of its creation. Netanyahu has gone far to extinguish that standing.
There is no point in saying it is the fault of Hamas. Netanyahu is responsible for the decisions he has taken and refused to take. Israel is the overwhelming military power in this equation – and it is judged on this basis.
Since he launched operation Gideon’s Chariots in May – an expanded Israeli military operation in Gaza – Netanyahu has been locked into a campaign of diminishing gains and escalating damage to Israel. The incremental military gains come at a disproportionate and unjustified price.
Israel’s supporters who deny this ignore the overwhelming evidence. The earlier decision to block humanitarian aid to Gaza to pressure Hamas has produced a devastating legacy.
Israel is fighting a war unlike any in the history of the Jewish state – a long war inflicting massive Palestinian casualties, in images sent around the world, the victims some of the most deprived peoples in the Middle East, with starvation now ignited as an alleged war crime by Israel.
Much of the moral standing, legitimate grievance and justified military retaliation that defined initial perceptions of Israel after the October 7 massacre have now been dissipated, diminished or lost. The damage has been accentuated by the right-wing extremist ministers in the government who promote the idea of displacement of the Palestinian people, more West Bank settlements, even the spectre of West Bank annexation.
Penny Wong reflects the new moralism, saying: “There will be no Palestine left to recognise if the world does not act” – implicitly blaming Israel for the current slaughter and starvation. Albanese and Wong see the Harbour Bridge demonstration as reflecting the sentiments of the Australian people. On 7.30, Wong said the public felt “distressed, angry, upset, really horrified” by events in Gaza.
Pressed on whether Israel was using starvation as a war tactic, Wong said: “It is impossible to justify the withholding of aid from women and children.” Albanese says Israel is in breach of international law and brands Netanyahu’s denial of starvation in Gaza as “beyond comprehension”.
Casting Labor as the upholders of the peace process against a resistant Israel, Wong said Australia was doing what it could “to preserve the possibility of a Palestinian state.” Australia in heroic guise.
On display now is the collision between agitated and self-righteous Western leaders and a reckless Netanyahu whose response to the failure of his policies is to double down on them. Witness the latest reports from Israel that his plan is to fully occupy Gaza. Netanyahu’s office supposedly told the media that if IDF chief, Eyal Zamir, doesn’t like the full takeover, then he should resign.
There is now a legion of former PMs, military leaders and intelligence chiefs demanding an end to the war and repudiating Netanyahu’s tactics. The mistake Israel’s supporters in Australia have made is being too unforgiving of Netanyahu.
When he launched his expanded campaign in May, Netanyahu said there were three aims – defeating Hamas, freeing the hostages and ensuring Israel isn’t threatened from Gaza. Yet in Netanyahu’s own judgment, he has failed on all three counts.
Hence the idea of taking full control of Gaza. But that won’t change the fundamentals: the damage to Israel will endure for years. What does “complete defeat” of Hamas constitute? Formal surrender? Netanyahu can’t deliver that.
Hamas is not a conventional army; it is a paramilitary force that lives within the population.
The deeper problem is Netanyahu’s military tactics are decoupled from any political strategy. He violates the essential rule of war: without a matching political strategy for Gaza, the military campaign cannot sustain a successful outcome. Netanyahu is resistant to legitimate Palestinian political aspiration. His pivotal calculation, it seems, came in 2024 in the Israeli cabinet when far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told Netanyahu that if he did a deal for a ceasefire then he would have no government. Brutal as that.
Netanyahu kept his government, prosecuted the war and lost any hope for a settlement. Thinking that Israel can control Gaza’s future or annex more of the West Bank has no enduring political foundation. Netanyahu’s flaw is that he cannot offer Saudi Arabia the conditions it needs to make the decisive leap to diplomatic recognition of Israel – those conditions being an end to the war and Israeli concessions towards a two-state solution. Netanyahu lacks the courage to broker a settlement.
US President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the West Wing of the White House on Tuesday, February 4, 2025.
The next step has been utterly predictable. Western progressive governments in France, the UK and Canada, moving to Palestinian recognition – and in the case of Keir Starmer, trying to threaten Israel into concessions using recognition as a weapon.
Albanese has been more restrained. He said Australia’s recognition won’t be a “gesture” – the test being it must promote the two-state solution. Albanese said that means excluding Hamas, guaranteeing Israel’s right to exist, and democratic reforms in the Palestinian territory, issues where Australia has no influence. These tests are heroic; hopefully the new Arab position can advance them.
Albanese is right to put conditions on recognition. That’s critical. But how can such conditions be met? What problem are these Western leaders trying to solve: the Middle East crisis, or their domestic political challenges?
They seem to have forgotten something: Israel is a democracy. You can’t threaten, intimidate or impose a two-state solution on Israel. Western leaders seem ignorant of the meaning of October 7 – that massacre told most Israelis there was no Palestinian partner for peace. Contrary to some misguided impressions in Australia, the Israeli public is deeply sceptical about a two-state solution.
Given his character, Netanyahu will want to demonstrate to the world that Palestinian recognition doesn’t work. Might he move towards annexation of the West Bank? The outsider with influence is Donald Trump. What role will he play?
Benjamin Netanyahu clashes with military chiefs over plan to occupy Gaza
Richard Spencer
Benjamin Netanyahu holds limited security meeting
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a limited security meeting. The goal of the
Israel’s senior leaders were locked in a row last night (Tuesday) over Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to expand the war in Gaza and “fully occupy” the territory.
The Israeli prime minister met key ministers and military staff for three hours to discuss the next stage of the war in the absence of any talks about a ceasefire or a peace deal.
The chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, “presented options” for continuing the campaign, according to a statement. Before this, however, leaks that Zamir opposed the prime minister’s plan to expand the fighting led to an extraordinary response from other ministers as well as the prime minister’s son.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, who was excluded from the meeting yesterday (Tuesday), demanded that Zamir obey Netanyahu’s instructions.
“The chief of staff must say clearly that he will fully carry out the orders of the political echelon, even if it’s decided to go for full conquest and a clear result,” he wrote on X.
The prime minister’s son Yair, 34, who is an outspoken advocate for his father’s views from his home in Miami, attacked a journalist who had criticised Netanyahu’s plan, implying that he had written it “under dictation” from Zamir.
The cargo ramp of a German Air Force (Luftwaffe) A400M Atlas military transport aircraft is opened before releasing humanitarian aid pallets during an airdrop relief mission over the Gaza Strip.
The cargo ramp of a German Air Force (Luftwaffe) A400M Atlas military transport aircraft is opened before releasing humanitarian aid pallets during an airdrop relief mission over the Gaza Strip.
“If the one who dictated this tweet to you is who we all think it is, this is a rebellion and an attempt at a military coup that fits a banana republic in Central America in the Seventies,” he posted on social media. “And it is completely criminal.”
Netanyahu, along with President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, rejected Hamas’s latest ceasefire proposals last month.
The prime minister said on Monday that he intended to implement a new plan for overcoming Hamas and achieving his “three goals” in the war: “defeating the enemy”, freeing the hostages and ensuring Gaza is never again a threat to Israel. That plan was said to include a full takeover of the Gaza Strip, including areas that have not been attacked in recent months.
However, there have been increasing reports of war fatigue in the army and terms of service are being repeatedly extended. Zamir is also said to feel that there is no clear outline of how he is to achieve Netanyahu’s goals.
Zamir was defended by Gideon Saar, the foreign minister, who said it was important for the chief of staff to express his views honestly and clearly.
Israel Katz, the defence minister, who also attended the meeting, took a middle ground but appeared to refer to the row while talking to troops.
“Once the political leadership makes the necessary decisions, the military echelon, as it has done in all fronts of war so far, will professionally implement the determined policy,” he said. “My role as the defence minister in charge of the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] is to ensure that this will be the case, and that is what I will do.”
The prime minister’s plan appears to be based on the assumption that Hamas is holding out – and holding the hostages – in the fraction of the strip, perhaps a quarter, that is not directly controlled by the Israeli military.
His aides say the proposal does not mean Israel intends to occupy the strip permanently, with a return to the “occupation” of before 2005, when the IDF and some settlers withdrew and handed over the administration to the Palestinian Authority. Hamas took over a year later in a mini-civil war within the Palestinian factions.
However, the proposal leaves unclear how long the IDF would be expected to stay in Gaza and what it would do if it continued to fail to locate the hostages, rescue them and capture or kill the remaining Hamas militants.
THE TIMES
Hamas starves Jews and Palestinians, and Israel gets the blame
Gerard Baker
It says so much about the enemy Israel is up against that both images are part of the campaign against Israel.
As Israel faces a blitzkrieg of international condemnation again, mobilised in part by a global press happy to supply the ammunition, it is important to remember one thing.
In the war between the Jewish state and its enemies in Gaza, one side is deliberately starving innocent people to the point of emaciation. One side irrevocably denies the right of its adversary to exist. One side would, if it could, conduct a genocide against the other, wiping every last remnant off the face of the planet.
That side isn’t Israel.
In the past 10 days, two images have told two ostensibly different but paradoxically identical truths about this conflict.
On July 25 decent people everywhere were shocked by the image of a desperate Palestinian child, skeletal and frail, cradled by his mother, published, among other places, on the front page of The New York Times. His mother told the paper that her child was born healthy but was now suffering from malnutrition. Muhammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq was portrayed as a victim of a famine induced by the Israeli government’s restriction of food distribution in Gaza.
This weekend, to predictably less global attention, another image was published, this one of an Israeli man who was abducted by Hamas on the day it murdered 1200 people in Israel and kidnapped hundreds of others. He was one of the young people seized while attending the Nova music festival in southern Israel. Unseen for several months, he appears in the video seriously emaciated, ghostly pale and gaunt – a once vibrant young man who has spent nearly two years in the hell of a Hamas prison.
The first image, we now know, was a misleading one. The child wasn’t a previously healthy victim of Israeli starvation. He was born with cerebral palsy, which was primarily responsible for his debilitated state. The Times clarified this in an editor’s note a few days later, though it was likely seen by a fraction of those who saw the original story.
The second image wasn’t misleading at all: Evyatar David, 24, terrified and helpless, peering out of the darkness of a Gaza tunnel, in a picture reminiscent of an inmate of Bergen-Belsen in 1944.
It says so much about the enemy Israel is up against that both images are part of the campaign against Israel. The only thing Hamas likes better than a starving Jew is a starving Gazan child. Both are useful for its ends. The former horrifies a credulous world so it puts international pressure on the Israeli government to end the combat. The latter taunts Israeli hostage families so they put similar pressure on the government. If there were a Goebbels prize for propaganda, Hamas would win it every year. It should be a source of shame that so much of the West’s media is gulled or persuaded into playing the Leni Riefenstahl part in the campaign.
What is so sickening about this – and the deafening chorus of condemnation Israel receives for its war effort – is that it is so far from the underlying moral truth of this war. Israel is the side that wants lasting peace and security. Its enemies want a state of permanent and existential war and suffering for the innocents.
None of this is to say Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is blameless in his prosecution of this war. You can believe, as I do, that Israel is right in its effort to extirpate Hamas. You can think, as I do, that it has mostly conducted its war with the correct balance of lethal force for combatants and protection for innocents. But you can also believe it is responsible for the current humanitarian crisis.
It is – characteristically – Israelis who in the past week or so have most reliably documented the scale of that crisis, with detailed reporting on the surging price of flour and other staples, evidence of severe shortages. On my Free Expression podcast last week, Nadav Eyal, a commentator for Yediot Ahronot and Ynet, argued that the Israeli government made two critical mistakes that prompted the crisis: cutting off the food supply after the ceasefire in March in an effort to pressure Hamas to negotiate, and believing there was sufficient food already available. Then in May it tried to obviate Hamas’s control of the food supply by taking over distribution of that food under the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, with inept results.
But these are mistakes – errors of judgment that can and should be corrected – not war crimes to be prosecuted. They shouldn’t be treated as opportunities for feckless, weak political leaders in the rest of the world to help Hamas pursue its ends. France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer seized on the latest Hamas propaganda to promise recognition of a Palestinian state.
These are cynical moves, driven by the domestic political needs of two failing leaders terrified of the radical Muslims in their own countries and the rising number of leftists who champion their cause. But their larger, insidious effect is to divert the West’s attention from the moral reality of this war that Israel didn’t seek.
The Wall Street Journal
A Gaza takeover would be Bibi’s ultimate gamble
Cameron Stewart
Benjamin Netanyahu would be taking the biggest gamble of the Gaza conflict so far if he is serious about his reported plan for full Israeli military occupation of the Strip.
Netanyahu has not publicly confirmed reports in the Jerusalem Post that he intends to conquer Gaza completely or that he told Israel Defence Force chief of staff Lieutenant-General Eyal Zamir that if the plan does not suit him, he should resign.
It is always possible that this is a deliberate leak aimed at maximising negotiating pressure on Hamas, and that Netanyahu has no intention of taking such a dramatic military step.
But if the Israeli Prime Minister is determined to order such a takeover, then the Gaza war will enter a new, bloody and highly controversial phase.
The Israeli military currently occupies around 75 per cent of Gaza but much of the remaining 25 per cent includes the large urban centres where the remnants of Hamas are hiding. The problem is that this is also where the 20 or so remaining live hostages are believed to be held. Any Israeli major military action to flush out Hamas would almost certainly place the surviving hostages at direct risk.
There are many other downsides to a full Israeli military takeover of Gaza, but Netanyahu’s options of achieving his dual aim of destroying Hamas and ensuring his own political survival are narrowing by the day.
There are growing calls from within Israel to end the war now by making a deal with Hamas to release all hostages and end the fighting.
Some 70 per cent of Israelis want Netanyahu to make this deal even though it would be an imperfect peace, in that Hamas – although a shadow of its former self – would still exist as a political and military entity in Gaza.
Such a peace deal would almost certainly ensure Netanyahu’s political demise because it would be a clear failure of his central war aim of removing Hamas from power and destroying it as a military force. As such, it would be unacceptable to the right-wing nationalists he needs to prop up his government coalition and who have demanded that Israel occupy all of the Gaza Strip and stay there indefinitely.
Yet Netanyahu faces major obstacles – social, political, military and diplomatic – to the sort of military campaign needed to totally take over the Gaza Strip.
Socially, he is losing the argument inside Israel for a prolonged war as calls to prioritise the release of hostages over ongoing conflict get louder.
Politically, Netanyahu is increasingly isolated from mainstream Israeli opinion, with a group of former security chiefs – including two former army chiefs of staff, three former heads of Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, and three former directors of Mossad, the foreign intelligence agency – this week calling on him to end the war.
The military obstacles to a campaign of total conquest of Gaza begin at home with Israel’s military leaders reportedly opposing the idea, believing it will achieve too little at too high a cost. Israel’s soldiers are exhausted and the ability to replenish the ranks is dwindling. There are also serious doubts about whether the sort of urban warfare required would succeed in destroying the remnants of Hamas, while the casualty rate for Israeli soldiers would be high.
One in three Israelis now believes Hamas cannot be completely defeated militarily.
Diplomatically, such a campaign in urban zones would inevitably lead to yet more civilian casualties, at a time when Israel is fast losing its remaining friends on the international stage because of revulsion over the death and suffering of Gazans, both through war and through Israeli-inflicted hunger. A major military campaign by Netanyahu may well trigger a rift with its last major ally, the Trump administration, at a time when Donald Trump appears to be losing patience with Netanyahu, and with the war itself.
Hamas is taking advantage of all of these factors by avoiding any serious peace negotiations, including by adding absurd new demands such as the need for an independent state of Palestine to be established before it agrees to any ceasefire. As things now stand, Hamas shows no signs of surrendering power in Gaza or disarming. Netanyahu either has to accept an imperfect peace – which would see the hostages released but him likely losing office – or continue to fight an increasingly unpopular war. If the reports are correct, he seems to have made his choice.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson backs Israel’s West Banks claims
Richard Spencer
House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson has become the highest-ranking American official to visit a settlement in the West Bank, and lent implicit support to Israeli hardliners seeking to annex the territory.
Mr Johnson was part of an American delegation including US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, his daughter, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and three congressional Republicans taken to Ariel, one of the territory’s largest settlements.
The unannounced trip, said to be private and not co-ordinated with Israeli officials, was overseen by Marc Zell, an American-Israeli activist and chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel. He described the visit as “amazing” and reported a speech given by Mr Johnson.
An Israeli border guard looks through the scope of his rifle during the demolition of a building in the
“Speaker Mike Johnson says that the mountains of Judaea and Samaria are the rightful property of the Jewish people,” Mr Zell said. “He criticises those erstwhile allies of Israel who are calling to recognise a Palestinian state.
“He closes with a statement that as the US begins to celebrate its 250th anniversary, the US should use the occasion to remind the American people of its Judeo-Christian foundations that were formed here in the Land of Israel.”
The Israeli establishment regularly calls the West Bank by its biblical names of Judaea and Samaria. Right-wing members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet are calling for the area to be annexed, but to the UN and most Western governments the West Bank is considered occupied Palestinian territory. They also view the Israeli settlements as illegal under international law.
US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson made a private visit to one of the West Bank’s largest Israeli settlement Picture: Getty Images
US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson made a private visit to one of the West Bank’s largest Israeli settlement Picture: Getty Images
President Donald Trump last week directly challenged Mr Netanyahu over images of starvation from Gaza, and has said he wants to see an end to the war.
Mr Netanyahu is torn between his right-wing cabinet members, who are urging an escalation and no more talk of a ceasefire, and much of the security establishment, which sees the army as making little further progress against what remains of Hamas.
The argument has divided Israeli society. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, representing many hostages’ families, accused Mr Netanyahu of “leading Israel and the hostages to the abyss” over his refusal to agree a deal and his insistence on pushing ahead with attempts to use military force to pressure Hamas.
However, at a committee meeting at the Israeli parliament, the HMFF was opposed by other families, who believe a military response is justified, and Tally Gotliv, an MP from the ruling Likud party, who said critics of the government’s policy should just “stay quiet”.
The Times
‘He must be saved!’: Brother of emaciated Israeli hostage pleads for his release
AFP
This image from an undated video released on Sunday by Hamas, shows Israeli hostage Evyatar David marking a food log on a calendar inside the Gaza tunnel where he is being held.
This image from an undated video released on Sunday by Hamas, shows Israeli hostage Evyatar David marking a food log on a calendar inside the Gaza tunnel where he is being held.
The brother of Israeli hostage Evyatar David called on the world to “come together” to secure his freedom following the publication of a video in which the emaciated captive was shown purportedly digging his own grave.
David, 24, is one of 251 people taken captive by Hamas and its allies during their October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza.
Last week, Hamas released propaganda videos showing him severely undernourished and visibly weakened, including one in which he digs with a shovel in the sandy floor of a tunnel, saying he is preparing his grave.
“The world must come together now … and demand his release. He must be saved!” his brother Ilay David said in an interview Tuesday with AFP in Kfar Saba, near Tel Aviv, at the family home where they both were raised.
The recent videos of Evyatar David and fellow hostage Rom Braslavski have sparked outrage and fear for their safety among Israelis, as well as condemnations of Hamas from abroad.
In captivity for nearly 22 months, David has since become a symbol of the ongoing ordeal of the 20 hostages believed to still be alive among the 49 held by Hamas.
Red and black posters demanding his release hang on the walls of the family’s living room, the same posters that plaster walls across Israel in solidarity with the hostages.
On February 23, Hamas had released a video showing David sitting in a vehicle alongside another hostage as they were forced to watch a staged ceremony marking the release of three other captives during a brief ceasefire that later collapsed.
“That was the last sign of life we had from him,” Ilay David told AFP. “We thought then that was the worst possible cruelty … These new images show just how urgent it is to get him out of that tunnel,”
‘Complete defeat’
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the army must “complete” the defeat of Hamas in Gaza to secure the release of hostages, ahead of an expected meeting with security chiefs on an updated war plan.
“It is necessary to complete the defeat of the enemy in Gaza, to free all our hostages and to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel,” Mr Netanyahu said during a visit to an army training facility.
Israeli media reported that Mr Netanyahu was expected to sit down in Jerusalem later on Tuesday with the chief of staff and the defence minister, and that he was considering ordering the total occupation of the Palestinian territory.
The timing of the meeting has not been officially confirmed. “Netanyahu wants the Israeli army to conquer the entire Gaza Strip,” said a report on public broadcaster Kan.
Palestinians rush to the scene as air pallets, carrying humanitarian aid, parachute down after being dropped from a military plane over Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip. Picture: Eyad Baba/ AFP
Palestinians rush to the scene as air pallets, carrying humanitarian aid, parachute down after being dropped from a military plane over Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip. Picture: Eyad Baba/ AFP
Mr Netanyahu said Monday he would convene the cabinet later in the week to approve new instructions.
“Several cabinet members who spoke with the prime minister confirmed that he has decided to extend the fight to areas where hostages might be held,” Kan reported.
The private daily Maariv declared: “The die is cast. We’re en route for the total conquest of Gaza.” However, some major media outlets such as Channel 12 have questioned whether the rumoured expansion of military operations is merely a negotiating tactic, and whether Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir would oppose such a decision.
“The Chief of Staff is required to express his professional opinion clearly and unequivocally to the political leadership. I am convinced that he will do so,” Foreign Minister Gideon Saar wrote on X.
While a reconquest plan has not been officially confirmed, it has already drawn an angry response from the Palestinian Authority and Gaza’s Hamas-run government, which insisted it will not shift its position on ceasefire talks.
“The ball is in the hands of … (Israel) and the Americans,” senior Hamas official Husam Badran told AFP, adding that the militant group wanted to “end the war and the famine”.
Desperate families
After 22 months of combat sparked by the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas that killed 1219 people and saw hundreds kidnapped, the Israeli army has devastated large parts of the Palestinian territory.
More than 60,933 Palestinians have been killed, according to figures from Hams-run Gaza’s health ministry, and humanitarian agencies have warned that the territory’s 2.4 million people are slipping into a catastrophic famine.
But Mr Netanyahu is under pressure on several fronts.
Domestically, the desperate and vocal families of the 49 remaining hostages are demanding a ceasefire to bring their loved ones home.
Around the world, humanitarians are pushing for a truce to allow in food to the starving, and several European capitals have announced plans to recognise Palestinian statehood, despite fierce US and Israeli opposition.
Meanwhile, Mr Netanyahu’s far-right allies in his ruling coalition want to seize the opportunity of the war to reoccupy Gaza and tighten control of the occupied West Bank.
Foreign Minister, Mr Saar was in New York, where Israel’s US ally was helping organise a UN Security Council meeting to focus world attention on the fate of the hostages.
The defence ministry civil affairs agency for the Palestinian territories, COGAT, said Tuesday that Israel will partially reopen private sector trade with Gaza to reduce its reliance on UN and aid agency convoys and international military airdrops.
“As part of formulating the mechanism, a limited number of local merchants were approved by the defence establishment, subject to several criteria and strict security screening,” COGAT said.
Letters The Australian
A march of division
Let’s not kid ourselves. If a lone protester had unfurled an Israeli flag during the protest on the Harbour Bridge, a riot would have broken out, with the lone protester injured by the mob, or worse. No wonder the police were worried. The protest wasn’t about humanitarian causes; it was anti-Israel and pro-Hamas. When will all our leaders speak out against the division that is infecting our once great nation.
Rosemary McGeorge, Windaroo, Qld
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The recent Sydney Harbour Bridge protest in support of a situation in a foreign land – which blocked access for those getting to work, emergency services and public, costing police time and expenses estimated to be $2m plus the clean-up required afterwards – has to be paid for by all taxpayers. It is a forced expenditure on an unrequired event most are opposed to. It was in support of a foreign event caused by Hamas terrorists and has nothing to do with Australia.
Foreign-instigated protests should be banned, along with any that support terrorism, as they do not involve Australia. The costs of this and all protests have to be met by taxpayers including the massive majority who disagree with the issues.
In a democracy, users must pay for services. This must apply equally to protesters. If not, then there must be the same free services made available to all – free council rates, transport, registration and government fees.
GJ May, Forestdale, Qld
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Israel must have peace
There can be no peace in the Middle East until all the Arab nations acknowledge the right of Israel to exist peacefully without having to defend itself from terrorist organisations. Hamas terrorists knowingly started the war, which now prevails.
Nightly news bulletins continually show Palestinians pleading for food and medical assistance, but none of them ever demands that Hamas gives up all hostages and disarms to end the conflict that it started. The world should not forget who started this war and that Israel has had to defend itself many times since its creation as a state.
Peter Jaggard, Watermans Bay, WA
I worked as a doctor on the ground in Gaza. Here’s how Australia could change lives
By Mohammed Mustafa
The 25,000 in Melbourne and 100,000 in Sydney, who, on Sunday all marched for Palestine – can’t be wrong. Add in those elsewhere across Australia who massed to support Palestine, to end the hunger and death there, and you have an idea of the strength of people’s commitment to ending the conflict.
The situation in Gaza is now as potent and widespread a political issue as it was when the “Free David Hicks” campaign saw his face in windows and on lawns across the country. The only Australian to ever be incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay on terrorism charges, the public outcry over his imprisonment saw the then prime minister, John Howard, face enormous pressure to bring him home, and he did.
Our PM, Anthony Albanese, is facing similar pressure now that countries like the UK, Canada and France have all committed to recognise Palestine as a state. He wants to wait, and he and the Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, have their reasons. But regardless, it is clear that the Australian public will continue to push for stronger action against what is happening in Gaza than pure rhetoric.
Perhaps there is an answer to that, a way to make Australians feel that their government reflects their frustration with the Gaza situation, and one which promotes Australia’s global leadership, without being overly political, in this most politicised of situations.
There is currently in Jordan, just across the border with Gaza, a fully functioning mobile maternity and neonatal hospital. Set up by the charity, Pious Projects USA, the hospital would take a mere seven days from the moment it sets down to when it is operational, staffed by Jordanian healthcare workers.
It’s a hospital that even the Israelis can’t or shouldn’t object to. It has its plumbing incorporated into its above-ground structure, so there are no tunnels that the Israeli Defence Forces often cite as a fear for harbouring militants.
And – way more importantly – the hospital offers real hope to the 50,000 pregnant women who, according to ActionAid Palestine, have no access to functioning hospitals, prenatal care, basic medicines, ultrasounds and safe deliveries. Many of them are having caesarean sections without anaesthesia. In some cases, women bleed to death during childbirth, and there are no incubators for babies born prematurely.
The Israelis may prevent food and water from crossing into Gaza from Jordan, because of fears insurgents will hijack it – but surely allowing the set-up of a fully operational maternity hospital, with Jordanian staff, would be an apolitical act, and one that would resonate with pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups globally.
But consider an even greater act – and one that is led by Australia. The same template for the maternity hospital could be translated into a Children’s Hospital in Gaza with Pious Projects USA ready to roll out just such a venture.
Imagine an Australian Children’s Hospital, in Khan Younis, in Southern Gaza. The facility could be operational within months – with 100 beds, designated neonatal and paediatric intensive care units, emergency and surgical care departments, rehabilitation, and trauma-informed care services. It would be run by a consortium of countries including the UK, Canada, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and New Zealand, and led by Australia.
The Indonesian government has already offered support due to their experience in building and operationalising the Indonesian Hospital in Bait Lahia in the Gaza Strip.
A Children’s Hospital in Gaza must be run by a number of countries as custodians of the hospital. With the imprimatur and support of nation states like Australia, a Children’s Hospital would surely be safe from bombing, if for no other reason than the global outrage against Israel would be enormous if it did so.
Recently the UK Foreign Minister, David Lammy, pledged his government’s support on the floor of the UK Parliament and the Irish government has given its commitment to a children’s hospital. Conversations are happening at levels with the Canadian and New Zealand governments as well. Australia as the chance to join, even lead this.
Remember a children’s cospital in Gaza is not just for now – it will be part of the rebuilding process when peace comes to the region, a training hub for the next generation of Palestinian doctors, attracting healthcare workers to a region where Palestinian health care workers, those that remain alive, are exhausted.
On Sunday, Australians showed they want their government to assist in the peace process. Leading a push for a children’s hospital is surely a start.
Dr Mohammed Mustafa is an emergency physician trainee. He recently returned from Gaza where he worked as a doctor.
James Morrow opinion: Moral vanity, double standards revealed by Gaza protest signs
After Tony Abbott, the rule was clear: Attend a protest with offensive signs, and you’re guilty by association. But all bets are off when it comes to Palestine, writes James Morrow.
James Morrow
In 2011, then-opposition leader Tony Abbott showed up at an anti-carbon tax rally outside Parliament House where attendees were holding up a banner calling Prime Minister Julia Gillard “Ju-LIAR, Bob Brown’s bitch”.
Naturally, Labor and large segments of the press leapt on the moment to tar Abbott as a misogynist, saying that his decision to show up and speak amounted to an endorsement of the sign and its ugly sentiments.
Years later the event still rankled.
In 2015, Gillard herself would say of the incident, “I don’t know why this wasn’t a career ending moment for Tony Abbott.”
Put aside the way Abbott’s enemies used everything he ever did from drinking a beer to glancing at his watch at the wrong moment to tar him as the greatest enemy of women this side of the Ayatollah.
Opposition leader Tony Abbott speaking at the anti carbon tax rally in Canberra in 2011. Picture: AAP Image/Alan Porritt
The precedent was set, and ever since the rule has been clear.
If you show up at a rally where people hold offensive signs or chant offensive chants, you may as well have held the sign or shouted the words yourself.
So (speaking of the Ayatollah), why is it that in 2025, at Sunday’s so-called “march for humanity” in support of Palestine, tens of thousands of people have gotten a get out of cancellation free card for appearing at an event where people carried giant placards celebrating Iran’s supreme leader?
Nor was it only the Ayatollah who was feted.
Photos and videos taken at Sunday’s pro-Palestine rally on the Sydney Harbour Bridge showed marchers carrying banners said to be associated with al-Qaeda and the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is banned in a number of countries.
Others carried flags that read, “Resistance God’s Army” done up with colours and logos designed to stay just on the right side of a ban on Hezbollah flags.
Similar scenes were recorded in Melbourne, where locals held their own protest and burnt an Australian flag for good measure.
And of course there were the chants: “Intifada”, “From the river to the sea”, “Death, death, to the IDF.”
Despite all this – and despite the precedent set back in 2011 – right there up the front were all sorts of luminaries of the left, from Julian Assange to Craig Foster to a swag of Labor MPs.
, Foreign Minister Penny Wong would tell the ABC’s 7:30 that the march was “extraordinary” and “I think demonstrates what we all feel.”
Speak for yourself, minister.
Yet in some ways more disturbing was the fact that along with the self-appointed great and the good were the tens of thousands who went along for the ride and thought this was OK.
Let us be clear here.
Plenty of ordinary people who probably consider themselves moderate, sensible lefties, who sit on diversity committees at work, and who listen to the ABC religiously thought nothing of tromping across the bridge in a torrential downpour amid al-Qaeda banners and chants of “death, death to the IDF.”
Did any of these people stop and think, “Hey, I would love to see the war end in Gaza and the Palestinians to get a state of their own but maybe I don’t need to hook up with this mob to get there?”
The easy answer would be to say that this one-sided march revealed the latent anti-Semitism that has long lurked under the surface in some quarters of the left (and, to be fair, the right as well).
While no one would suggest the celebs and pollies who showed up harboured any Jew hatred, it is safe to say that there was no small extremist element in the crowd either.
So how to explain the moral short circuit of those middle class types who went along despite this element – to say nothing of the rule of signs – just to post a selfie showing they too were there on the bridge?
Did none of them stop to think that perhaps they were being used as props by more malevolent forces?
Here one can point to ignorance of a complex situation stirred up with a toxic, weaponised compassion and a preening vanity that demands to be seen to be on the “right side of history”.
This ignores both ancient and recent history to treat Israel as the villain and Hamas (which has committed unspeakable crimes against the residents of Gaza) as the poor, beleaguered underdogs
And it fits perfectly with the various decolonise narratives that are so fashionable on the left and which hold that not only Israel but Australia as well is an illegitimate settler-colonial state.
Meanwhile, noticeably absent were any signs or chants calling for the remaining Israeli hostages to be released – something that would go a long way towards ending the war.
Nor in any of the coverage was there any mention of calls for Hamas to heed the calls by all 22 Arab nations to disarm and clear out of Gaza to allow the Palestinians to start rebuilding and get on with their lives.
‘Deplorable’: Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan lashes masked protesters who burned Australian flag at Melbourne pro-Palestine rally
A group of masked pro-Palestine demonstrators have been condemned for their “deplorable” act during a massive demonstration.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has slammed the “deplorable” actions of a group of protesters who burned the Australian flag during a pro-Palestine rally at the weekend.
Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Melbourne in support of Palestine, calling for an end to the humanitarian crisis that has gripped the Gaza Strip for months.
A planned crossing of the King St Bridge was stopped by police in riot gear – leading to confrontations and protesters splintering off and heading back to their starting point at the State Library.
Extraordinary scenes emerged on the Spencer St bridge after some protesters stopped on the side of the road.
Photos and footage at the scene capture the masked demonstrators burning the Australian flag and spray-painting “Abolish Australia” on the road.
Some broke out into chants of “Death, death, death to the IDF” – referring to the Israeli Defence Force.
Speaking on the Today show on Monday, Ms Allan condemned the incident.
“It’s deplorable, it’s a deplorable action” she told the program.
Ms Allan reiterated the rest of the protest was “peaceful” and there were no arrests.
She said it was “completely cowardly” to turn up to protests while masked, as it could “only signal the intent”.
Footage from Channel 9 captured the group disrupting traffic – one furious woman on her way to hospital getting out of her car to give them a spray.
It is not clear whether the group are associated with the Palestine Action Group, which organised the protest along the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The group has been contacted for comment.
Australia has no law that specifically criminalises the burning of the national flag.
In NSW, historic scenes emerged on Sunday as almost 100,000 demonstrators peacefully marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge after attempts to block the protest failed in court.
Protesters crossed the bridge about 2pm, chanting “free, free Palestine” and waving placards.
NSW Police were on scene to keep the peace after their attempt to stop the demonstration – on the grounds it would endanger public safety – failed.
At 3pm, they issued an urgent request for protesters to stop the march on safety fears, citing a possible “crush” at the northern end of the bridge.
“Participants have been asked to stop proceedings across the bridge to avoid a crowd crush at the northern end of the harbour bridge,” the police said in what they called a “protest safety intervention”.
“Once the procession has come to a halt, protesters will be asked to turn around and walk back toward Wynyard to avoid a risk of injury due to the huge number of people taking part.
“Police believe the safest route back is to walk back across the bridge given the huge numbers to avoid overwhelming the public transport system and a potential crowd crush scenario.”
The rally otherwise proceeded peacefully and without any significant incidents.
Famous faces joined in the protest, including former NSW Labor titan and former foreign affairs minister Bob Carr, soccer icon Craig Foster and Julian Assange.
Boxer Anthony Mundine and journalist Antoinette Lattouf were also spotted in the crowd.
Lebanese president calls for Hezbollah to disarm by year’s end
The Lebanese government has instructed its army to disarm Hezbollah by the year’s end in an unprecedented move the Iran-backed militant group argues will leave Lebanon vulnerable to Israel.
Lebanon’s government has tasked its army with developing a plan to restrict arms to the state by year end in an unprecedented move that paves the way for disarming Hezbollah.
After a nearly six-hour cabinet session on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) headed by President Joseph Aoun on disarming the Iran-backed militant group, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said the government “tasked the Lebanese army with setting an implementation plan to restrict weapons” to the army and other state forces “before the end of this year”.
The plan is to be presented to the cabinet by the end of August for discussion and approval, he said.
A November ceasefire deal that sought to end more than a year of hostilities including two months of all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah stated that Lebanese government authorities such as the army, security forces and local police are “the exclusive bearers of weapons in Lebanon”.
Salam said the cabinet would continue discussions this week on a proposal from US envoy Tom Barrack that includes a timetable for disarming Hezbollah.
The disarmament plan comes after Hezbollah’s leader Naim Qassem rejected the latest version of a US-proposed roadmap for it to disarm.
Qassem argued it would leave Lebanon vulnerable to Israel.
The brother of Israeli hostage Evyatar David – who last week appeared weak and emaciated in a Hamas propaganda video – also pleaded for his release on Tuesday.
David, 24, is one of 251 people taken captive by Hamas and its allies during their October 7, 2023
Last week, Hamas released propaganda videos showing him severely undernourished and visibly weakened, including one in which he digs with a shovel in the sandy floor of a tunnel, saying he is preparing his grave.
“The world must come together now… and demand his release. He must be saved!” his brother Ilay David said in an interview Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) with AFP in Kfar Saba, near Tel Aviv, at the family home where they both were raised.
“These new images show just how urgent it is to get him out of that tunnel,” he said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has restated Australia’s support for a two-state solution in a phone call with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas.
The call comes amid mounting pressure on Mr Albanese to recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly next month, after France, the UK and Canada all conditionally said that they would.
Mr Albanese has neither committed to nor ruled out doing so.
“Prime Minister Albanese reiterated Australia’s call for the immediate entry of aid to meet the needs of the people of Gaza, a permanent ceasefire, and the release of all hostages,” according to a readout of a call with Mr Abbas.
“Prime Minister Albanese also reinforced Australia’s commitment to a two-state solution because a just and lasting peace depends upon it.
“President Abbas thanked Prime Minister Albanese for Australia’s economic and humanitarian support.
“The leaders discussed deepening co-operation across a range of areas and agreed to meet on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.”
ISRAEL ORDERS FULL MILITARY OCCUPATION OF GAZA
It comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignored pleas to end the war in Gaza and ordered a full military occupation of the Palestinian territory to force Hamas to free Israeli hostages.
Mr Netanyahu told ministers on Monday (Tuesday AEST) that he will seek cabinet backing for the plan, despite objections from within the Israel Defense Force and ex-Israeli military chiefs, The Times of Israel reported citing Hebrew media.
A senior official close to the premier is quoted in Ynet as saying: “The die is cast — we are going for a full occupation of the Gaza Strip.”
The move would see Israeli forces, which already control about 75 per cent of Gaza, take over the remaining areas and conduct operations where the hostages are believed to be held, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The move was reportedly made without the input of the Israeli military’s chief of staff Eyal Zamir — with Mr Netanyahu instructing him to fall in line or resign, according to the internal memo sent out.
Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said ahead of a UN Security Countil meeting on Tuesday local time that “the world must put an end to the phenomenon of kidnapping civilians. It must be front and centre on the world stage”.
SHOCK AND DISTRESS OVER HOSTAGE VIDEOS
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s escalation comes after Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad published last week three videos showing two hostages who appear weak and emaciated, causing deep shock and distress in Israel.
Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the ongoing Gaza war, 49 are still held in the Palestinian territory, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
David, who turned 24 in captivity, was abducted during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Picture: AFP
Senior Israeli officials who discussed the occupation plan with Mr Netanyahu believed Hamas would not free the remaining hostages without being forced to surrender, local Channel 12 reported.
“If we do not act now, the hostages will die of hunger and Gaza will remain under Hamas control,” the officials told the local outlet.
US President Donald Trump and Mr Netanyahu were planning to deliver Hamas an ultimatum, demanding the group return the remaining hostages being held in Gaza and agree to disarmament, or Israel’s devastating military campaign will continue.
EX-ISRAEL PM AND IDF CHIEF DENOUNCE FULL-SCALE INVASION
Tuesday’s development comes as 19 retired Israeli leaders, including former prime minister and IDF chief Ehud Barak, in a video released Sunday urged Mr Netanyahu to end the war and said Israel had accumulated too many losses in Gaza.
The officials accused Mr Netanyahu of keeping the war alive for the sole purpose of preserving the fragile right-wing coalition that controls his government.
“We are on the precipice of defeat,” said former Mossad director Tamir Pardo, referencing the mass backlash against Israel over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
“What the world sees today is of our own creation,” he said of the images of starving children in Gaza.
The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry denounced what it called a “leaked” plan and urged the international community to intervene to quash any new military occupation.
NSW government kills debate on protesters paying for police presence after exceeding cap
By Alexander Lewis
In short:
The government has effectively killed a bill to introduce legislation that would charge protest groups for police fees if they held more than three demonstrations a year.
The bill was reintroduced following the weekend’s pro-Palestinian march over Sydney Harbour Bridge, which drew crowds of over 100,000 people.
Two Labor MPs told the ABC there was also “heated” debate about a motion on Gaza during caucus on Tuesday.
A renewed push to limit activists to staging three protests a year with taxpayer-funded crowd control has been shut down by the NSW government.
After the weekend’s pro-Palestinian march over Sydney Harbour Bridge, Shadow Attorney-General Alister Henskens attempted to bring on debate for a bill — first introduced in February — that proposed a ‘user pays’ system for protest organisers after reaching a cap.
“This bill is not taking any side on the issues that were subject of the protest on Sunday,” Mr Henskens told parliament.
“The current legislation does not give any guidance to courts as to how they are to determine the public interest.
“What we’ve seen is millions of dollars being spent on policing instead of on health, education and public transport. There’s been a huge drain on our policing resources.”
But the government voted against debating the proposal on Tuesday, effectively killing the bill.
The proposal could have forced protest organisers to pay or contribute to the cost of policing after three annual protests.
Premier Chris Minns said the “strong view” of senior government counsel was that it could be “unconstitutional”.
However, he has not ruled out legislation to prevent regular protests that disrupt “critical infrastructure” like the harbour bridge, following the Supreme Court decision on Saturday for the march to go ahead.
“We can’t have open season on the bridge. We need to have some kind of orderly process where we balance people’s rights to have a protest in Sydney — it’s a big international city — without closing down critical infrastructure,” Mr Minns told radio station 2GB.
“I want to make sure my ducks are in a row … I’m not ruling out legislation.
“I realise that will be controversial, but I think even a lot of people that were at the protest on Sunday would appreciate that you can’t knock the bridge out every weekend.”
Free Palestine and watermelon sign at pro-Palestinian protest in Sydney CBD
The government voted against debating the protest cap proposal. (ABC News: Liam Patrick)
NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman said it was a fair demand that, after three free demonstrations, the right to protest was balanced against cost to taxpayers and diversion of police resources.
“We offered the government a way to strike a fair balance when it comes to protest law,” Mr Speakman said.
“The right to protest is fundamental in a liberal democracy, but it’s not an absolute right.
“It has to be balanced against public safety, against the diversion of police resources, against the cost to the taxpayer and against the right of other citizens to use their public infrastructure and go about their daily business.”
‘Heated’ debate in Labor over Gaza
In the lead-up to the protest, Mr Minns faced internal criticism from Labor MPs who suggested political overreach after he stated the bridge march should not go ahead.
Two of his ministers, Penny Sharpe and Jihad Dib, joined the protest on Sunday, as did several MPs, including Julia Finn, Lynda Voltz, Stephen Lawrence and Anthony D’Adam.
Two Labor MPs also told the ABC there was “heated” debate about a motion on Gaza during caucus on Tuesday.
They said the language was ultimately watered down from condemning the destruction on the strip to expressing serious concerns.
One MP, who asked to remain anonymous because of caucus rules, said the premier was criticised over a perception in the community he had picked sides in the conflict.
Why banning future bridge protests could be risky for Chris Minns
The NSW premier has said publicly that he doesn’t regret his opposition to Sunday’s protest. He will face caucus today knowing several colleagues marched.
While the government is reviewing the Supreme Court’s judgement, legal expert Simon Rice from Sydney Law School described the decision as “unremarkable”.
Professor Rice said Justice Belinda Rigg ultimately decided freedom of expression in this case outweighed NSW Police’s public safety concerns.
“It’s another in a string of decisions the Supreme Court makes from time-to-time when police are concerned about safety and it weighs up competing considerations,” he said.
“It’s not a special decision except that it was on the harbour bridge.
“A future protest could be on the harbour bridge, but that depends on the factors the court weighs up next time.”
Former Human Rights Watch chief Kenneth Roth says only Donald Trump can stop Benjamin Netanyahu and war in Gaza
By Paul Johnson
By Marina Freri
Kenneth Roth believes US President Donald Trump wields great influence over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Reuters: Kevin Mohatt)
director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, says the one man who can hold Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to account and put an end to the war in Gaza is US President Donald Trump.
His comments echoed those of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who last week called for Mr Trump to show real leadership on the ongoing war in Gaza.
During an interview on 7.30, Mr Roth — who is Jewish and the son of a Holocaust survivor — said world leaders must do more than voice outrage at the ongoing situation in Gaza.
“There’s increasing movement towards sanctioning Israeli officials who are responsible,” Mr Roth told 7.30.
“There’s increasing legitimacy of the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court, but frankly, the one person with leverage over Netanyahu is Trump.
“He alone could condition arms sales and military aid to end the mass atrocity being committed in Gaza.
“I don’t think it’s impossible to push Trump to do that. He is breaking with Netanyahu in various ways. He’s spoken about that he’s not yet at that stage, but it’s possible to get him there.
“That’s what it’s going to take to end these war crimes.”
Mr Roth’s comments came after 90,000 protesters walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday, calling for an end to Israel’s war in Gaza.
Mr Roth said public opinion might be enough to force the hand of a populist leader like Donald Trump.
“Trump is not indifferent to public opinion,” Mr Roth said.
“Netanyahu is a sophisticated guy; he sees he’s losing the American public and could therefore lose Trump.”
Reasons for the shift include images of starving and emaciated children in Gaza being broadcast around the world, while the Israeli government issued multiple denials on the issue.
Netanyahu’s ‘blatant war crimes’
The allegations of using starvation as a weapon of war have formed part of charges brought against Mr Netanyahu and former minister of defence Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court.
Mr Roth, who is also a qualified lawyer, said he believed that nothing would see those charges rescinded.
A man wearing a suit and tie.
The former head of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, was very critical of Benjamin Netanyahu. (ABC News)
“Those are blatant war crimes,” Mr Roth told 7.30.
“They violate the Geneva Convention requirement that an occupying power allow access to humanitarian aid to a people in need.
“That defines Gaza.
“The fact that Netanyahu committed this crime … that he stops is not a defence to the months upon months in which he was committing the crime.
“The fact that these arrest warrants have been issued, this crime is going to be prosecuted.”
Mr Roth believed the establishment of a Palestinian state would face obstacles, such as Hamas, past failures of the Palestinian Authority and Mr Netanyahu’s unwillingness to see it happen.
But he said the United States could play a major role in removing those obstacles.
“Hamas has said that it would contemplate disarming and leaving Gaza if there were a clear path to a Palestinian state,” Mr Roth said.
“If we accept that as a negotiating position, then the main obstacle is Netanyahu, who basically has said, ‘over my dead body, there’s not going to be a Palestinian state.’
“The only way to get past that comes back to President Trump.
“It comes back to his enormous leverage. The $3.8 billion in annual aid he gives to Israel and massive flow of arms; if he were to say this only continues if you allow the Palestinian state, that allows us to stop the slaughter in Gaza, things like this can happen.”
Antisemitism envoy’s approach ‘counterproductive’
Mr Roth told 7.30 he considered antisemitism “a real issue” for him and a real “hazard” for Jewish people, but criticised Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, for selecting a controversial definition of antisemitism to base her work on.
Ms Segal speaks in a conference room.
Jillian Segal was appointed as Australia’s antisemitism envoy in 2024. (AAP: Dan Himbrechts)
In her recently released report, Ms Segal urged the Australian government to “require consistent application and adoption” of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, calling it the “gold standard” in an interview with 7.30.
Critics, including the definition’s lead author, say it is being used to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies.
Mr Roth agreed.
“This is a completely counterproductive approach to fighting antisemitism,” he told 7.30.
“The IHRA definition undermines the fight against antisemitism because it has come to be used over and over as an excuse to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel.”
The risk in the reliance on the IHRA definition, Mr Roth said, was to undermine the fight against antisemitism.
“It cheapens the concept of antisemitism when it’s very much needed. It basically prioritises defence of the Israeli government over the defence of Jews around the world,” he said.
“I have no problem with having a special envoy focused on fighting antisemitism, but if that envoy is really pushing a definition of antisemitism that amounts to defending and stopping criticism of Israel, that is counterproductive.
“That is unhelpful for what Jews need to combat a genuine problem.”
Palestinian Australian principal takes six months’ stress leave after more than 100 family members die in Gaza
By national education and parenting reporter Conor Duffy and the Specialist Reporting Team’s Gemma Breen and Miwa Blumer
In his lush Gold Coast backyard, Sami Muamar is haunted by a nightmare that’s set a world away in Gaza.
In a recurring dream, he’s safe in Australia while his sister and extended family are drowning in hellfire.
“It is literally hell. Hell, because they live in a tent, there is no clean water, and in the tent, it’s hot, they can’t even have air,” said Mr Muamar, the principal at one of Australia’s largest Islamic schools on the south side of Brisbane.
Every time he picks up his phone, he receives reminders that his family back home is living on a cup of lentils a day — if they’re lucky — and he dreams of being able to rescue them.
“It’s just a nightmare — and it’s not for one week, two weeks, three weeks. It is for almost two years,” he said.
Mr Muamar has tried unsuccessfully to secure his sister a visa to join him in Australia and, while he sends money overseas, he’s wracked with guilt and helplessness that he’s not doing more.
Sami Muamar speaking to his sister Hend, who is living in Gaza with her family. (Supplied: Sami Muamar)
“When I look at the group chat, I think of my sister, and I can show you her photos. I talked to her the other day. She’s skin and bone from hunger. There’s no food,” Mr Muamar said.
“I said, ‘What do you eat?’ And she started crying.”
Mr Muamar said he stopped counting the numbers of his extended family who had been killed in the conflict when the total reached 130.
He provided the ABC with names for 112 relatives and said all but one had been killed in air strikes.
The ABC was able to verify that 103 of those names were listed on a Gaza Ministry of Health database containing the names of 58,380 people reportedly killed during the conflict.
A devout Muslim, Mr Muamar is comforted by his belief that his dead relatives are being cared for in the afterlife, but that’s no solace for the living.
“The suffering is for those who are living and that’s what hurts the most — the mothers, the fathers, the children who lost their parents — that’s the agony,”
Mr Muamar said.
“The loss is not only for my family, it is for every single family actually. I know people in Brisbane that lost similar numbers to us.”
Family death toll continues
Mr Muamar left the Gaza Strip in 2002 and said he had no “real connection” with some of his lost relatives.
Others, like his cousin Tamim Abu Muammar, he’s known since birth and their deaths cut to the bone.
Tamim Muammar, his wife and three daughters were reportedly killed in an Israeli air strike while his two young sons survived.
“He’s the one I grew up with, we played together when we were children, we [went] to school together and he was a really good man,” Mr Muamar said.
“It hit me so much when I lost him. It’s just really difficult to think of him, his wife, his kids. They are like five years old.”
Tamim’s daughter smiles on a couch with a number 5 birthday balloon behind her.
Tamim’s daughter was killed in Gaza. (Supplied: Sami Muamar)
Another cousin, Salih Mahmood Muamar, was among 14 paramedics killed and buried in a mass grave in March.
An Israeli investigation of the incident led to the sacking of a deputy commander and a report detailing “professional failures”.
For Mr Muamar and many others in Australia, these deaths are observed in real time on family group chats.
Two weeks ago, he received blow-by-blow updates about his nephew Ahmed Mahmoud Muamar, also a teacher, who was buried under rubble after leaving his tent to seek food.
Ahmed Mahmoud Muamar pictured with a dress shirt on and flowers in the background.
Ahmed Mahmoud Muamar was a teacher in Gaza. He was buried under rubble after leaving his tent to seek food. (Supplied: Sami Muamar)
“My nephew … went to go get a kilo or two kilos of flour from the Israeli-American humanitarian station, they call it, and while he was going home — he did not get anything — he is shelled with the rockets,” Mr Muamar said.
“Luckily he managed to get out of the rubble after six or seven hours, they got him out. He lost two of his kneecaps, two broken legs, lots of bruises.
He said that final sleepless night waiting for an update was “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.
Personal toll too great
After 22 months of war, Mr Muamar is exhausted and has reluctantly stepped down as principal to restore his mental health after struggling to sleep and focus.
Sami Muamar is wearing traditional dress and standing in a function room with others in the background.
Sami Muamar is proud of his work as a principal. (Supplied: Sami Muamar)
“The school means a lot to me. The school is my community, my friends, my colleagues, the students are like my kids. I love them so much,”
Mr Muamar said.
He wants the wider community to know other Palestinian Australians are suffering and is speaking up because the current war seems interminable
“What has been happening is literally a genocide. It is an ethnic cleansing,” Mr Muamar said.
“At the beginning I understand the reaction of Israel. I understand it’s a normal revenge.”
Israel has denied allegations of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
An estimated 50 Israeli hostages remain in Gaza, fewer than half of whom are believed to be alive, kidnapped in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, that started the war.
‘Like being a butcher, not a doctor’
Mohamed Mustafa is a Palestinian Australian and one of the few people in Australia who has seen the destruction inside Gaza.
The trainee doctor just returned from the second of two visits since the start of the war volunteering as an emergency doctor.
“You’re working in a concentration camp. No food, no water, no electricity. You’re not allowed to bring in medical supplies with you. 2,000-pound bombs are going off hundreds of metres away from you,” Dr Mustafa said.
“Children are coming in dismembered [and] we don’t even have proper sutures, pain killers. It’s like being a butcher, not being a doctor.”
Dr Mustafa also has a wife in Gaza and knows the pain of searching for updates on loved ones.
“We have times where the communication goes down for three days and you just look at the news and you see where the bombs drop,” Dr Mustafa said.
“To watch it unfold in real time, to watch it live-streamed on our phones, I don’t think anyone has been in this unique position to watch the destruction of their families and their homes … it makes it very hard to be a Palestinian.”
Dr Mustafa said his community felt dehumanised by their representation in the media.
“Those hundreds of people that are killed [every day] — they have names, they have identities, they have feelings, they have family. And that’s what we have to deal with almost every day as a Palestinian community here in Australia,”
Dr Mustafa said.
Trauma brought to the forefront
Back at the Islamic College of Brisbane, CEO Ali Kadri supports Mr Muamar’s decision, even though the school starts term three without its principal.
Mr Kadri is a leader in his community who turned down an approach to be the federal government’s Islamophobia envoy.
He said it was an important time to recognise the suffering in parts of the Australian community.
“The challenges are immense. People think this is happening far away but it’s not really happening far away; it’s happening on our mobile screens, it’s happening on our tv screens and it’s human beings suffering,”
Mr Kadri said.
He said the most important thing people could do now was empathise.
Back at Mr Muamar’s house, he’s retreated to his garden and is hoping he’ll find some peace.
“When you plant a seed and you see it coming back, it gives you hope of life,” Mr Muamar said.
“What I’ve seen of Gaza, it’s destructive. I have hope of planting a seed and making something new. It makes you think there is hope for coexistence.”
Netanyahu meets with security officials amid reports Israel is considering full takeover of Gaza
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-06/netanyahu-contemplates-full-take-over-of-gaza/105617816
Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly considering a full takeover of Gaza. (AP: Mark Schiefelbein)
In short:
Israeli media is reporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is leaning towards a full takeover of Gaza.
It comes amid concerns from military figures that such a move would place further strain on the Israel Defense Forces.
Another eight people have died of starvation and a further 79 have been killed by Israeli fire, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has met with senior security officials to finalise a new strategy for the war in Gaza, with Israeli media reporting he is leaning towards a complete military takeover of the strip.
Despite intense international pressure for a ceasefire to ease hunger and appalling conditions in the besieged Palestinian enclave, efforts to mediate a truce between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas have collapsed.
Eight more people died of starvation or malnutrition in the past 24 hours, Gaza’s Health Ministry said, while another 79 died from Israeli fire in targeted attacks or while seeking aid.
Israel disputes these figures but does not release its own to counter them.
Israel is facing global pressure to act on concerns of a hunger crisis in Gaza. (AP: Mariam Dagga)
The prime minister’s office said in a statement that Mr Netanyahu held a “limited security discussion” lasting about 3 hours during which military chief of staff Eyal Zamir “presented the options for continuing the campaign in Gaza”.
An Israeli official earlier told Reuters that Defence Minister Israel Katz and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, a confidant of Mr Netanyahu, would also attend the meeting to decide on a strategy to take to a cabinet meeting expected to take place on Thursday.
Benjamin Netanyahu and Itamar Ben Gvir shake hands on the floor of the Israeli parliament.
Right-wing members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir (right), advocate for the full occupation of Gaza. (Reuters: Oren Ben Hakoon)
Takeover of Gaza reported to be option
Israel’s Channel 12, citing an official from Mr Netanyahu’s office, reported the prime minister was leaning towards taking control of the entire territory.
Such a move would reverse a 2005 decision to withdraw from Gaza, while retaining control over its borders, a move right-wing parties blame for Hamas gaining power there.
It was unclear, however, whether Mr Netanyahu was foreseeing a prolonged occupation or a short-term operation aimed at dismantling Hamas and freeing Israeli hostages.
Many Israelis are also calling on the government to reach a deal that would see the war end and hostages safely returned. (AP: Maya Alleruzzo)
The prime minister’s office declined to comment on the Channel 12 report.
“It is still necessary to complete the defeat of the enemy in Gaza, release our hostages and ensure that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel,” Mr Netanyahu told new recruits at a military base.
Family of hostage calls out propaganda
The family of an Israeli hostage featured in videos released by Hamas says their son is the victim of a “vile” propaganda campaign, accusing the Palestinian militant group of deliberately starving him.
“We are not giving up on any of these missions.”
On Saturday, Hamas released a video of Evyatar David, one of 50 hostages still held in Gaza, appearing emaciated in what seemed to be an underground tunnel.
The images shocked Israelis and sparked international condemnation.
Throughout the war, there has been sustained international pressure on Hamas to release the remaining hostages, of whom Israeli officials estimate 20 are still alive.
Most hostages have been released during ceasefires following diplomatic negotiations. Israel broke the last ceasefire.
Israeli military feels strain
A Palestinian official told news agency Reuters the suggestion of a full takeover of Gaza might be a tactic to pressure Hamas into concessions, while the Palestinian Foreign Ministry urged foreign nations to take heed of the reports.
“The ministry urges countries and the international community to treat these leaks with utmost seriousness and to intervene urgently to prevent their implementation, whether these leaks are meant to exert pressure, test international reactions, or are genuine and serious,” the official said.
Bundles of aid are seen floating to the ground with parachutes.
Further air drops of humanitarian aid were seen in Gaza on Tuesday local time. (Reuters: Mahmoud Issa)
Israel’s coalition government includes far-right politicians who advocate the annexation of both Gaza and the West Bank and encourage Palestinians to leave their homeland.
Nearly two years of fighting in Gaza have strained the military, which has a small standing army and has had to repeatedly mobilise reservists.
Throughout the war, it has pushed back against the idea of Israel fully occupying Gaza.
In a sign of differences between some members of Israel’s ruling coalition and the military, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir used a post on X to challenge military head Lieutenant General Zamir to confirm he would comply with government directives even if a decision was made to take all of Gaza.
A statement from Mr Netanyahu’s office said the Israel Defense Forces were “prepared to implement any decision that will be made by the Political-Security Cabinet”.
Israel acknowledges hunger but denies starvation
The war was triggered when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capturing 251 hostages.
Israel’s military response has devastated the tiny, crowded enclave, killing more than 61,000 people — mostly civilians — according to Palestinian health authorities.
Israel’s campaign has forced nearly all of Gaza’s more than 2 million people from their homes.
Some 188 Palestinians, including 94 children, have died from hunger since the war began, according to Gaza authorities.
An Israeli security official, in a briefing to reporters, acknowledged there might be hunger in some parts of Gaza but rejected reports of famine or starvation.
On Tuesday, Israeli tanks pushed into central Gaza but it was not clear if the move was part of a larger ground offensive.
Reuters
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