Mike O’Connor: Anti-Semitic protesters highlight our hypocrisy

People who enjoy the freedoms that Australians fought and died for but preach hate and genocide are not worthy of the protection our laws give them, writes Mike O’Connor.

In February 1945, more than 1200 Allied aircraft bombed the German city of Dresden, creating a firestorm in which more than 25,000 civilians perished.

During the Allied invasion of France following the D-Day landings, tens of thousands of French civilians died.

The decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan in World War II led to 135,000 people perishing in Hiroshima and 64,000 in Nagasaki.

There were no calls for a ceasefire back then, no calls for hostilities to be suspended because of civilian casualties.

We paused – or at least some of us did – last Saturday and offered up a minute’s silence on Remembrance Day in honour of all those service men and women who died in the defence of our country.

The mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb dropped by the B-29 bomber Enola Gay over Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. Picture: AFP Photo/Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

It is a harsh reality of war that civilians die as well.

We waged total war against Germany and Japan because the survival of our democratic civilisation and its institutions depended on defeating them.

Today the Israelis are doing the same.

Their survival depends on the military defeat of Hamas, a terror organisation which is dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state and all those who live within it.

It is easy for Foreign Minister Penny Wong, sitting safely in an ABC TV studio, to announce that the Australian government is pushing for a ceasefire to call on Israel to stop “the attacking of hospitals”.

Article 51 of the UN charter recognises all states have an inherent right to self-defence and to take what action is necessary to prevent likely future attacks.

The Australian Jewish community in front of the Sydney Opera House during a rally in Sydney on October 29. Picture: AFP

As noted by columnist Henry Ergas, the 1977 Geneva Additional Protocols make it clear that the primary responsibility for protecting civilians and facilitating their evacuation from a combat zone lies with the party that controls the territory in which they are located, in this case Hamas.

It is naive in the extreme to presume that if a ceasefire of any length was to be declared, Hamas would lay down its arms and sit quietly while civilians left Gaza.

It would use the time to re-arm and reorganise and ensure further civilian casualties.

It is disturbing to see violent pro-Palestinian protests in our country which reek of anti-Semitism. Everyone has the right to protest but not to incite hate and violence.

The chants of “gas the Jews” at a protest rally at Sydney Opera House should send a shudder down the spine of any Australian with more than half a brain.

Last week, a Muslim cleric in Sydney gave a sermon in which he cited scriptures calling on Muslims to kill Jews and has since dared authorities to take action against him.

Pro-Palestine supporters in a rally at Sydney Town Hall on October 9. Picture: David Swift

He knows he is protected by our guarantees of freedom of speech.

Had someone ascended a pulpit and preached a sermon encouraging the congregation to kill Muslims, I cannot but imagine the outrage that would follow.

How strange it is that our woke society agonises over which pronoun to use – he, she, it – and attacks people who defend biological gender but which is happy to sit back while genocide is preached.

Last week, the Greens showed what a waste of space and oxygen they are when they marched out of the Senate in protest against Israel’s ongoing actions in Gaza.

Have they done so to protest humanitarian abuses in China and Myanmar or at the murder, rape and torture being carried out by Russian troops in Ukraine? You know the answer.

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

The pro-Palestinian cause, however, is embraced.

By their actions, they are de facto supporters of Hamas.

Not a word about the atrocities inflicted on Jewish women and children.

Not a word about parents being mutilated in front of their children.

I struggle to understand the mindset of people in this country – who enjoy the freedoms for which those people who we honoured on Remembrance Day fought for – use these freedoms to preach hate and genocide.

They are not worthy of the protection that our laws give them.

We have to shout them down and show them that they are alone in their bloody-minded fanaticism.

Israel was invaded and is fighting for its survival.

We have never known invasion, and please God we never will.

But we can feel safe in the knowledge that should that happen, all we have to do is send the Greens to the front line and get them to demand a ceasefire.

That should do it.