Muslim leader’s ‘legitimate resistance’ call exposes growing gulf

The interview began unremarkably. Just after 8am on Wednesday, Islamic Council of Victoria (ICV) president Adel Salman joined ABC journalist Patricia Karvelas on RN Breakfast to explain why his organisation had asked the Victorian government to cancel an official iftar event.

Salman, a businessman who has led the peak representative body for Victoria’s 270,000 Muslims through their most confronting circumstances since September 11, explained why, given the horrific and ongoing loss of life in Gaza, the ICV didn’t think it was the right time for a celebratory dinner.

Adel Salman, president of the Islamic Council of Victoria.Credit: Jason South

From there, the conversation took an unexpected turn.

Pushing the case for the Australian government to take stronger action against Israel, which has promised to push ahead with a planned offensive in southern Gaza despite UN warnings of catastrophic consequences, Salman compared the war in Gaza to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

When Karvelas pointed out that the two conflicts weren’t comparable, as Israel’s actions were a response to the atrocities of October 7 that killed 1200 Israelis, Salman described the events of that day as “legitimate resistance”.

The interview went as follows.

Salman: “Clearly, if there were crimes committed by the October 7 attackers and the Palestinians who did launch that attack on October 7, clearly they have to also be held to account. But you need to look at the historical context.

“We are talking about 75 years of occupation and we are talking about 16 years of the siege of Gaza. Israel through that siege of Gaza are actually occupying Gaza, because they determine what comes in, what comes out.

“We need to understand that the Palestinians have a right to resist. It has to be legitimate resistance, it can’t just be wanton violence.”

Karvelas: “This isn’t a legitimate case of resistance, is it?″⁣

Salman: “It is absolutely legitimate for the Palestinians to try to break this siege of Gaza, which is a form of occupation.”

Karvelas: “I am talking about October 7.”

Salman: “I am not going to condemn the Palestinians for resisting. I am not going to condemn Palestinians for trying to break the siege on their territory.”

Lest there be any misunderstanding of the ICV’s position, Salman reiterated this view a few moments later in the interview.

“We denounce any violence and killing of civilians,” he said. “What we don’t denounce, very clearly, is legitimate acts of resistance and for the Palestinians to rise up on October 7 and say we are no longer going to tolerate this siege, this occupation, that is legitimate.”

Salman did not accept that on October 7, Israeli civilians were slaughtered en masse by Hamas terrorists in the single deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. While accepting that some civilians were killed, Salman suggested that Hamas’ principal targets were Israeli soldiers and challenged whether October 7 could be fairly characterised as a terror attack.

He said that the October 7 death toll, and the circumstances in which people were killed, were both contested issues.

Salman has spoken previously to The Age about the impact the war in Gaza is having on Australian Muslims. “There is a deep, vicarious trauma that we are feeling because of what is happening to Palestinians,” he said last year. “If you are not from our background you won’t get how visceral this issue is.”

Salman has also refused since October 7 to condemn Hamas’ atrocities or to lay any blame for the appalling situation in Gaza on the refusal of the Hamas leadership to return Jewish hostages and its willingness to use Palestinian families to shield its fighters.

Alex Ryvchin, the co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

His comments on ABC radio drew an immediate response from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), which said they “demonstrated the sick and depraved mindset of pro-Palestinian activists”.

“To defend mass slaughter, abduction, rape of young girls at gunpoint as their families were forced to watch, the carnage at a dance festival, as resistance … is difficult to comprehend,” ECAJ co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said.

Salman’s interview reveals the chasm that has opened between Jewish and Islamic leaders in Victoria and Australia over the past five months.

This divide will only become deeper if the war – which has already killed an estimated 30,000 Palestinians – escalates into a major Israeli military offensive in the besieged southern town of Rafah, where an estimated 1.4 million Palestinians have sought refuge.

The Israeli government has publicly said that the offensive will coincide with Ramadan, a holy month on the Muslim calendar, where daytime fasts are broken with iftar dinners. The prospect of the ICV sitting down to share a meal with the Victorian government – or any Jewish leaders – appears remote.

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