Akerman: Gazans need only one thing from Hamas
Unconditional surrender is the only policy Australia should pursue with the prospect of helping Gazans live prosperous lives free of terrorism, writes Piers Akerman.
Opinion
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Only unconditional surrender on the part of Hamas will give Gazans the opportunity to live free and build a real economy.
But the weak West in its desire to appease the Islamists will not back Israel’s desire to eliminate the barbaric terrorist regime enslaving Gaza. The lessons of World War II have been forgotten. At the 1943 Casablanca Conference, US President Franklin Roosevelt and UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed that it was pointless to negotiate an armistice with Germany, Italy or Japan. The US and Britain would only tolerate an unconditional surrender as a negotiated armistice would simply end the fighting, leaving the Axis nations in control of their conquered territories.
That’s why calls for a ceasefire by Israel in its conflict with Hamas are absurd. After surrendering, both Germany and Japan were able to build strong economies and sound governments with aid from Western nations with whom they were trading within a decade. The people of Gaza can only hope to achieve the same results but they can’t look to Arab nations for support because Palestinians – since Arafat – have been destructive to every host government wherever they have sought refuge.
Australia’s foreign policy on this issue is totally confused. Foreign Minister Penny Wong has taken the leftist view that the people of Gaza are somehow separate from their elected Hamas government and that we should fund the corrupt UN refugee agency UNRWA which has been found to harbour terrorists who were actively involved in the October 7 attack. Though temporarily suspended, Australian government funds have for years been used by UNRWA to finance schools named after terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank which teach a curriculum designed to instil hatred in children from kindergarten upwards.
Even the very woke New York Times recently conceded the veracity of intelligence reports showing around 1200 of UNRWA’s roughly 12,000 employees in Gaza were linked to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and about half have close relatives who belong to the Islamist groups which have been designated as terrorist organisations by the US and others.
The report said 23 per cent of UNRWA’s male employees had ties to Hamas, a higher percentage than the average of 15 per cent for adult males in Gaza. Nearly half of all UNRWA employees also had close relatives who also had official ties to the militant groups. According to the Wall Street Journal, one UNRWA Arabic teacher was also a Hamas militant commander and took part in a terrorist attack on a kibbutz where 97 people were murdered and 26 were kidnapped.
The ABC, in particular global affairs editor John Lyons but also Radio National presenter Patricia Karvelas, promotes UNRWA and a resumption of Australian funding despite numerous warnings that the agency turned a blind eye to terrorists in its ranks. Lyons has long expressed anti-Israeli views and as recently as last Sunday described Israel’s precisely targeted attacks on terrorist chiefs in Gaza as “saturation bombing”. The veteran reporter was said to have claimed last week he was embarrassed to work at the ABC after temporary radio host Antoinette Lattouf was sacked for her social media comments on the conflict.
ABC management should invoke its anti-bias guidelines and send him elsewhere. The ABC, which relies on Hamas for casualty figures, has ignored a study – again from the New York Times – which demonstrates that Israel’s military actions have produced far lower ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths than in any comparable urban warfare. This is especially significant considering that Hamas deliberately increases civilian deaths by using women and children as human shields.
Unconditional surrender is the only policy Australia should pursue with the prospect of helping Gazans live prosperous lives free of terrorism.
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