media Report 26.04.2025

FPM Media Report 26.04.2025
IN POLL SHADOW, RYAN’S FIRMLY A ZIONIST
https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/html5/reader/production/default.aspx

Mohammad Alfares – Alexi Demetriadi
Kooyong MP Monique Ryan has declared she’s a supporter of Zionism and conceded that she made “mistakes” after October 7, having previously backed an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and voiced support for the United Nation’s Hamas-linked aid agency.
Her fellow teals failed to back Dr Ryan’s vocal support for ­Zionism as she said she “utterly supported” Israel’s self-determination and supported calls for a ­judicial inquiry into rising anti-Semitism in Australia. Jewish leaders have welcomed Dr Ryan’s new stance, but urged her rhetorical support to be accompanied by parliamentary action amid criticism of her voting being closely aligning with that of the Greens.
Dr Ryan’s support for Israel’s existence comes as she faces a challenge in her Melbourne seat from Liberal Amelia Hamer in what appears to be one of the ­Coalition’s last hopes of flipping one of the six seats it lost in 2022’s “teal wave”.
At a community forum in Kooyong on Thursday, Dr Ryan said she was supportive of Zionism, which she defined as “belief in the right of Jewish people to make a homeland in Israel and in the self-determination of Israel”. “I’m ­utterly supportive of that,” she said. Although Jewish leaders welcomed her stance, they warned that supporting Israel must go ­beyond “sound bites”.
“Monique’s voting record, including voting often with the Greens and continued backing of UNRWA funding, suggest otherwise … Support for Zionism can’t end at a sound bite,” Zionism Victoria president Elyse Schachna said. “Backing Zionism and the Jewish community means opposing those who deny Israel’s legitimacy or excuse terrorism, and we haven’t consistently seen that from Monique.
“The Jewish community is paying close attention and actions will always speak louder than words.”
But Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Daniel Aghion said he was “pleased” to see Dr Ryan voice her support of Zionism. “Dr Ryan acknowledged she had made mistakes since ­October 7 and would have done things differently,” he said.
“At a time of equivocation and even outright hostility from other members of the crossbench, such as the Greens, it is refreshing to see strong agreement between Dr Ryan and Ms Hamer on many key issues for the community.”
The Australian asked each of the other six teal incumbents if they would affirm their support of Zionism, but was either pointed towards previous appearances at candidate forums or didn’t receive a response. It comes after Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel was met with grumblings from Jewish constituents last week after she avoided directly labelling herself a Zionist during a debate with Liberal candidate Tim Wilson – the division’s former MP – at a different forum.

She did not respond to questions on Friday.
The Liberals’ best chance to flip teal seats are in Victoria, where Dr Ryan is defending a 2.2 per cent margin. Ms Daniel is on a margin of about 3 per cent.
Dr Ryan also revealed she had raised concerns directly with university leaders about the rise of anti-Semitism on campuses, singling out Deakin, Monash and Melbourne as institutions that had responded inadequately after Hamas’s October 7 attacks.
“They hadn’t got on to things as well as they could have,” she said, adding it was important to balance free speech with student safety.
“What I think we need to do … is a judicial inquiry into anti-Semitism – and one of the things it must look at is university campuses.”
The Kooyong MP also addressed her decision to co-sign a 2024 letter calling for the restoration of aid to Gaza via UNRWA, the UN humanitarian agency now banned by Israel for its alleged links to Hamas.
“Children are dying in Gaza … undergoing surgery without ­anaesthesia,” she said. “I won’t apologise for wanting to provide aid to children who are dying.”
Dr Ryan added she only supported cutting funding to UNRWA if the government found alternative delivery methods, but conceded the organisation had “deeply problematic” elements.
Peter Dutton this week committed to redoing security checks for Palestinians granted visitor visas but Dr Ryan told the forum that she trusted Australia’s ­“extremely stringent” systems.
Although Dr Ryan was spotted ducking out from the floor of parliament when the Greens moved a motion in May that called for a Palestinian state to be recognised she reiterated her support on Thursday for a two-state solution.
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Donald Trump says former President Joe Biden ‘allowed Hamas to become rich’
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/middle-east/professional-failures-led-to-killing-of-palestinian-medics-in-gaza/news-story/1217882d27f978891067224baf750796

US President Donald Trump has made a stunning claim over who he believes is the person responsible for the death and destruction in Israel and Gaza.
Tiffany Bakker,Merryn Johns and Emily Macdonald
Donald Trump said former US President Joe Biden is the one with blood on his hands when it comes to who is most to blame for the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Mr Trump made the comments in an interview to Time Magazine to mark his first 100 days in office.
“I would say that the blame for that is Biden more than anybody else, because I had, as you know, Iran was broke, and he allowed them to become rich,” Mr Trump said.
When the journalist asked if Mr Trump laid more blame with Mr Biden than he did Hamas, the president doubled down.
“There was no money for Hamas. There was no money for Hezbollah. There was no money,” Mr Trump said.
“Iran was broke under Trump, and you know that, he knows that, broke. They had no money, and they told Hamas, we’re not giving you any money.
“When Biden came and he took off all the sanctions, he let China and everybody else buy all the oil, Iran developed US$300 billion in cash over a four-year period.
“They started funding terror again, including Hamas.
“Hamas was out of business. Hezbollah was out of business. Iran had no money under me. I blame the Biden administration, because they allowed Iran to get back into the game without working a deal.”
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HAMAS TO MEET MEDIATORS IN CAIRO
A Hamas delegation will meet Egyptian mediators in Cairo on Saturday for talks on a Gaza ceasefire, a senior official from the Palestinian militant group told AFP.“The Hamas negotiating delegation, headed by Khalil al-Hayya, has left for Cairo,” senior Hamas official Taher al-Nunu said Friday. “It will meet with Egyptian officials tomorrow to discuss Hamas’s vision for ending the war,” he added, reffirming that that Hamas’s weapons “are not up for negotiation”.
GAZA FOOD STOCKS DEPLETED
The UN’s World Food Programme said Friday it had depleted its food stocks in war-ravaged Gaza, where Israel has blocked all aid for more than seven weeks.
After 18 months of war, the situation in Gaza “is probably the worst” it has been, the UN’s humanitarian office has said, with the head of the world body’s Palestinian refugee agency decrying the aid stoppage on Friday as “politically motivated starvation”.
ISRAELI STRIKES KILL 55 IN GAZA
Gaza rescue teams and medics said Israeli air strikes killed at least 55 people on Thursday, as the military threatened an even larger offensive if hostages were not freed soon.
“If we do not see progress in the return of the hostages in the near future, we will expand our activities to a larger and more significant operation,” Israel’s army chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir said.
The warning came as the army issued fresh evacuation orders for northern areas of Gaza ahead of a planned attack.
Earlier in the day, six members of one family – a couple and their four children – were killed when an air strike levelled their home in northern Gaza City, the civil defence agency said in a statement.
Nidal al-Sarafiti, a relative, said the strike happened as the family was sleeping.
“What can I say? The destruction has spared no one,” he told AFP.
Nine people were killed and several wounded in another strike on a former police station in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, according to a statement from the Indonesian hospital, where the casualties were taken.
“Everyone started running and screaming, not knowing what to do from the horror and severity of the bombing,” said Abdel Qader Sabah, 23, from Jabalia.
Israel’s military said it struck a Hamas “command and control centre” in the area but did not say whether it was the police station.
In another deadly attack, the bodies of 12 people were recovered after the Hajj Ali family home, also in Jabalia, was struck, the civil defence said.
Another 28 people were killed in strikes across the territory, medics and the civil defence agency reported.
P.L.O. TO CREATE VICE PRESIDENT POSITION
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) voted on Thursday to establish the position of vice president, potentially paving the way for a successor to Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas.
The move follows years of foreign calls to reform the organisation, and comes as Arab and Western powers envision an expanded role for Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) in the post-war governance of the Gaza Strip.
“A vote was held to create the position of vice president,” Rizq Namoura, a member of the PLO’s central council, said in an interview with Palestine TV, adding the outcome was “almost unanimous” in favour of establishing a number two role for the first time in the organisation’s history.
The Palestinian official news agency Wafa confirmed the vote. Palestinian analyst Aref Jaffal said the new role was created to pave the way for someone to take the reins from Abbas, now 89, “as there are many things the Palestinian situation requires”.
“The Palestinian political system is already miserable, so I believe that all these arrangements are a prelude to creating a successor to Abbas,” Jaffal, the director of the Al-Marsad Election Monitoring Center, told AFP.
In the event of Abbas’s death or resignation, the vice president would be expected to become the acting head of the PLO and of the State of Palestine, which is recognised by nearly 150 countries, according to Palestinian officials.
SPAIN SCRAPS ISRAELI ARMS DEAL AFTER UPROAR
Spain cancelled a contract to buy bullets from an Israeli company following pressure from the Socialist-led government’s far-left coalition partner – a move swiftly condemned by Israel.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, one of the most outspoken critics of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, halted weapons transactions with Israel after the outbreak of the war following Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The interior ministry sought to terminate the 6.8-million-euro ($A12.1m) contract with Israeli firm IMI Systems, which was to supply bullets to the Spanish Civil Guard police force.
On Thursday government sources said the contract would be “unilaterally” terminated.
“The investment board for dual-use material will deny this company permission to import this equipment to our country for reasons of general interest and, immediately afterwards, the interior ministry will terminate the contract,” the sources added.
Israel said it “strongly condemns” the decision to cancel the contract, and accused the Spanish government of “sacrificing security considerations for political purposes”.
Spain “continues to stand on the wrong side of history – against the Jewish state that is defending itself from terrorist attacks”, Israel’s foreign ministry said in a statement to AFP.
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Israelis protest against Gaza war with rare outcry over Palestinian casualties
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/25/we-have-lost-our-humanity-holocaust-survivors-call-for-end-to-war-in-gaza

Holocaust survivors gathering on Holocaust Memorial Day speak out against Palestinian starvation and suffering
Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Quique Kierszenbaum in Tel Aviv
Fri 25 Apr 2025 23.43 AEST
Few days speak so profoundly to the soul of Israel than Holocaust Memorial Day. As the country sat in silence on Thursday to remember 6 million Jews exterminated by the Nazis, the same refrain was, as always, repeated by many: never again.
But for some across Israel, as the war in Gaza continues to ravage the Palestinian people and wipe out entire families, never again had come to hold another meaning.
As the country’s most powerful politicians, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, attended a ceremony on Thursday morning at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, three Holocaust survivors in their 80s stood at the entrance holding a sign aloft: “If we have lost our compassion for the other, we have lost our humanity.”
About 40 miles (64km) away in a square in central Tel Aviv, thousands, including descendants of Holocaust survivors, stood holding photos of Palestinian children who had been killed since the war began. Dozens more lined the roads of the city dressed in black, holding out empty pots to symbolise the starvation of those in Gaza.
Israeli demonstrators hold empty pots to represent the starvation in Gaza in Tel Aviv on the day Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Israeli demonstrators hold empty pots to represent the starvation in Gaza in Tel Aviv on the day Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
In recent months, particularly since the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel collapsed in March, the country has been rocked by protests. These demonstrations have loudly called for an end to the war in the name of saving the remaining Israeli hostages left in Gaza, 24 who are still believed to be alive, and to bring back the bodies of the 35 dead. Yet starkly absent has been mention of the suffering and devastation being brought upon the civilians of Gaza by Israel’s relentless onslaught.
Over 51,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the ground and air assault began on 8 October 2023 after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel the day before. Almost 2,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war resumed in March. The Gaza health ministry, which counts the dead, does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but more than half of those killed have been women and children.
For many in Israel, the horrors inflicted in the 7 October 2023 attack, when thousands of Hamas militants stormed kibbutzes, towns and cities in southern Israel and committed terrible atrocities, killing more than 1,200 people, and taking 251 hostages, including a nine-month-old baby, have left them cold to the plight of any Palestinian – particularly while hostages remain captive in Gaza.
As tens of thousands of Israelis have been called up to serve, many currently have family members on the frontlines. Meanwhile, the human ordeal of Gaza is largely absent from mainstream Israeli media. To some, the Hamas attack proved that as long as Palestinians remain in Gaza, Israel will never be safe.
Yet a small but growing number of voices within Israel have begun to push back, calling for an end to the war both to save the hostages and stop the massacre of human life in Gaza. A growing number of letters written by army and air force reservists, retired and even serving officers, have demanded the government end the war, not only in the name of Israeli lives but also innocent civilians in Gaza.
Veronika Cohen, 80, a Holocaust survivor who was born in the ghetto in Budapest, said she had come to protest outside Yad Vashem on the day of remembrance because: “I don’t think we can remember our suffering without acknowledging the suffering of Gaza, the deaths of tens of thousands of children, the starvation that’s going on this minute, for which we are partially responsible. It occupies the same place in my heart.”
She acknowledged that she was in the minority in Israel when it came to speaking up about the terrible cost of the war to Palestinian life. “People here see Palestinians as the other and that’s why they have created a barrier,” she said. “They have managed not to feel their pain and I find that incomprehensible. To me, when I read the stories of their suffering in Gaza, it blends completely into how I feel about the Holocaust.”
Cohen’s eyes filled with tears as she recalled seeing a recent photo of a young Palestinian boy whose arms had been blown off by Israeli missile strikes in Gaza. “The news story said that when he woke up from his operation, the first thing he did was turn to his mother, and he said: ‘how will I hug you now?’ To me, that’s a Holocaust story. And that’s why we are here: to try to awaken people to their pain in any way we can.”
Ruth Vleeschhouwer Falak, 89, who survived the Nazi-occupation of the Netherlands as a child, said she was standing there because “in the 1930s, if Germans had stood up loudly against the Nazi party, maybe they wouldn’t have been able to do what they did to us. Speaking up is not a choice for me.”
“The saying is never again; that means never again for anybody. That’s really what we’re standing here for,” added Ilana Drukker Tokotin, 87, who spent her childhood in hiding from the Nazis.
Yet the few who have tried to bring the voice of Gaza into the anti-war protests have regularly faced fierce resistance, if not outright violence, from police. After the death of more than 500 children in Gaza in the past month alone, Standing Together, a progressive movement of Israelis and Palestinians, decided to hold an anti-war protest on Holocaust Memorial Day that was primarily dedicated to the children who had been needlessly killed by Israel in Gaza as well as the Israeli hostages still held captive.
Yet after applying for permission, police told the group they were banned from holding up posters of children killed in Gaza and certain phrases such as “ethnic cleansing” were also forbidden. It was not the first time activists had faced such pushback; at other protests, police have regularly confiscated any posters bearing the faces of Gaza’s killed women and children or used force to break them up.
People in a public square hold up signs that show children killed in Gaza
A demonstration organised by Standing Together calls for an end to the bloodshed. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
“There was nothing new about this attempt to silence any mention of Gaza – the only difference this time was that the police foolishly put it in writing,” said Alon-Lee Green, the co-director of Standing Together. The group not only successfully challenged the ban in court but also then began taking donations to put the photos of Gaza’s child victims of the war on posters and bus stops across central Israel, with almost 200 and counting.
“There has been a complete unwillingness among many here to engage with the human cost of the war in Gaza, even anger to anyone who expresses empathy for Palestinians, but I think after the government restarted the war, something is beginning to shift,” said Green. “This killing is done on the land we share and by our own hands. How can we ignore that any longer?”

On Thursday night, in the same square where the hostage protests have been taking place for months, thousands gathered to hold photographs of children in Gaza aloft; chubby-cheeked babies, giggling toddlers and whole families of siblings clutching each other’s hands at they sat in their best outfits, all killed in the past 18 months.

“It’s unbearable to see the faces of these children, who are no different to my children, who were killed by us,” said Noa First, 46, an artist who attended the protest, clutching a photo of baby girl D’na Khatib. “My grandparents fled the Holocaust in Germany, I’m so glad they are not alive on this remembrance day to see what Israel has become.”
A boy sits in the rubble of a building in Gaza
Israel ends mention of humanitarian zones as Gaza war grinds on
However, there have also been visceral and hostile responses to these protests, speaking to the complexity of speaking out in the current environment. As Thursday’s demonstration took place, a far-right group gathered to shout through a megaphone: “Put down your bullshit signs. Those are the new Nazis on the other side of the border.”
As around 50 people gathered in Tel Aviv to stand silently in a line holding empty saucepans to protest at Israel’s ongoing aid blockade on Gaza – which has prevented all food, water and medicines going into the Palestinian territory for more than 50 days – they were met with indifference and anger. “Traitors,” screamed one man loudly at them, while another cursed loudly at the protest. “You should all be in Gaza,” he shouted.
Among those participating, holding a sign that said “starvation is a war crime” was Shira Geffen, an award-winning Israeli actor and film-maker. “In Israel, people want to ignore that we are the ones responsible for not only killing Palestinians with bombs but also hunger. But the angrier they get at our protests, and the more the police try to silence us, the louder we will scream.”
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Macnamara has been a safe Labor seat for a century. Here’s how it can change hands
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-26/federal-election-2025-macnamara-liberal-labor-green-race/105208434

By Kate Ashton
On a blue-sky day at a shopping strip in Melbourne’s inner south-east, Ripponlea resident Tom is unwavering about voting Green in the upcoming federal election.
Tom will vote in the electorate of Macnamara, which spans inner-city suburbs south and south-east of Melbourne’s CBD, including Port Melbourne, Albert Park, St Kilda and down to Ripponlea and Caulfield at its southern boundary.
The electorate that covers this area (formerly called Melbourne Ports) has historically been a safe Labor seat, but it’s become an unusual three-way contest, with the vote split almost equally between Labor, Liberal and the Greens at the last election.
It means there’s a genuine chance Labor could lose the seat, with the Greens the most likely threat.
Higher-density housing developments and gentrification within the electorate has seen the Green vote climb steadily in Macnamara in the last two decades.
Tom said he was voting for the Greens because he cared most about global issues, like welcoming refugees.
“I don’t care about personal local issues at all, other than homelessness,” he said.
While multiple voters in Macnamara agreed housing was an important issue, others told the ABC they were concerned by climate change, community safety, antisemitism and economic management.
Labor now ‘vulnerable’ in Macnamara, Greens victory possible
Macnamara’s sitting MP is former parliamentary adviser Josh Burns, a Caulfield-born son of Jewish migrants, who is from Labor’s right faction and has held the seat since 2019.
His two key opponents are former charity sector worker Sonya Semmens for the Greens and Indigenous-investment fund manager Benson Saulo for the Liberals.
While both are running for the first time in Macnamara, Ms Semmens ran for the Greens in neighbouring federal electorate of Higgins at the last election.
And, perhaps surprisingly given he is now the Liberal candidate, Mr Saulo was also previously a member of, and unsuccessfully ran to be pre-selected as the Greens candidate for Melbourne’s northern-suburban electorate of Cooper (formerly Batman), in 2015.
Mr Saulo acknowledged his previous membership of the Greens but said “his views have grown and matured since then”.
Benson Saulo has Wemba Wemba, Gunditjmara and Papua New Guinean heritage. (ABC News: Kate Ashton)
At the last election, Josh Burns won Macnamara on a margin of 12.2 per cent against the Liberals.
Normally that kind of margin would put the electorate in a ‘very safe’ Labor category. But there’s a real possibility Labor could lose the seat it has held for more than a century.
As the ABC’s election analyst Antony Green summarises, Labor is now “vulnerable” to a Greens victory in Macnamara, which should be viewed as a “safe non-Liberal” seat.
How the Greens can win Macnamara
To understand why the Greens have a chance in Macnamara, it helps to look at the results at the last federal election.
There has been a small change in the electorate’s boundaries since 2022, but it is not expected to affect the result.
In 2022, Labor, Liberal and the Greens attracted about a third each of the Macnamara vote.
Want even more? Here’s where you can find all our 2025 federal election coverage
With the margin so small between the top three candidates at the last election, it’s unclear which two candidates will end up in the final count for Macnamara.
When we don’t know who will be in the top two, the result becomes harder to predict.
In 2022, the Liberal (33.7 per cent) and Labor (33.5 per cent) candidates made the top two, with the Greens in a close third place, meaning Greens voter preferences were distributed, delivering the
But if Labor’s vote slips and places them in third, they can’t win.
What are preference deals and who is making them?
Photo shows Pauline Hanson cocks her head to the side while looking down her nose between the shoulders of two menPauline Hanson cocks her head to the side while looking down her nose between the shoulders of two men
Two of Australia’s most striking populist figures are again at odds; this time, over preference deals.
In that case, distributed preferences of Labor voters would determine the result, creating a pathway for a Green victory.
A Liberal victory is unlikely because no matter if it’s Labor or Greens in third, Greens preferences would typically elect Labor, and vice versa.
That remains the case even though Josh Burns has broken with Labor tradition and is running an ‘open’ how-to-vote card, where he does not tell voters how to preference other candidates.
Analyst Green said that may reduce the proportion of Labor voter preferences that flow to the Greens (usually about 85 per cent), but the majority would still go Green.
Macnamara is now a marginal race
Antony Green says a more accurate margin for Macnamara based on the three candidate percentages, would be Labor 0.4 per cent ahead of the Greens.
“Here in Macnamara, your vote is unusually powerful … there’s only 300 votes between Labor and the Greens,” Ms Semmens told a candidate forum this week.
An election sign for a Greens candidate on a terrace house beside a house with a sign for a Liberal candidate.
Antony Green says Sonya Semmens is Josh Burns’s biggest threat, but the Liberal Party says Benson Saulo is in contention. (ABC News: Kate Ashton)
Both Josh Burns and Sonya Semmens have told voters, this seat is a Greens-Labor contest, and the Liberals cannot win.
But a Liberal Party spokesperson disagreed and said recent polling has Labor’s vote collapsing in Macnamara, and Benson Saulo can absolutely win.
“13,200 Jewish community members feel totally abandoned,” the spokesperson said.
Candidates chasing Jewish votes in Macnamara
About 10 per cent of the Macnamara electorate is Jewish, with the figure far higher in some parts of the electorate (more than 40 per cent of the population in Caufield, at the last census).
Labor is clearly concerned some of those voters will abandon the party in response to rising antisemitism as well as the government’s response to the Israel-Gaza war.
It’s widely speculated this concern was behind Mr Burns running the open how-to-vote card, so Jewish voters do not see him as preferencing the Greens, who are perceived as pro-Palestine.
Though when asked directly, Mr Burns told the ABC the open how-to-vote was because: “I respect and trust my constituents to make informed decisions about their preferences.”
Greens candidate Ms Semmens also takes issue with the perception that Jewish voters are anti-Green.
She told the ABC Jewish voters are “diverse with many different concerns,” including things the Greens are campaigning on like climate, housing and cost-of-living.
Jewish voters abandoning Labor following terror attack, antisemitic incidents
Multiple Jewish community members living in Macnamara told the ABC their vote would be swinging to the Liberals.
About a block away from the local shops in Ripponlea, is the Adass Israel synagogue, which was fire-bombed in December in an incident state and federal police are still investigating as a terror attack.
Nearly five months on, no arrests have been made.
A young Jewish mother and former Labor voter in Ripponlea said she would now be voting for the Liberals because she believed Labor had handled rising antisemitism “poorly,” leaving her feeling fearful.
“I want to be able to walk safely in the streets,” she said.