Most journalists in Australia still don’t understand the politics of the Middle East – even after the ceasefire between Israel and Iran imposed by US President Donald Trump.
At least the ABC has finally started platforming expatriate Iranians who want the country’s mullahs overthrown, ending the fiction of Iranians rallying around their flag.
On the Israeli side, the ABC reported on Antoinette Lattouf’s court win against it last Wednesday, claiming she had been exposing Israeli genocide.
Lattouf and fellow activists here have never condemned the actual October 7 war crime by Hamas and its murdering of 1200 women, old people and children in their homes on a Saturday morning, and young people at a dance party for peace before taking 250 living hostages into Gaza.
These activists refuse to acknowledge the genuine genocidal intent in the Middle East is not harboured by Jews against Palestinians but by Iran and its Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi proxies against Israel and all Jews.
Even the silliest keyboard warriors should by now be able to figure out the obvious.
If Israel could take out so much of Iran’s infrastructure in a country 75 times its size, 1500km away in only 12 days, how quickly could it flatten Gaza, 70km south of Tel Aviv, and about the size of Melbourne, if that were its intent?
The truth is Israel has wanted nothing to do with Gaza since it unilaterally withdrew under then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2005.
Members of the media union in Australia famously signed a document in late 2023 saying the October 7 attack needed to be understood “in context” – meaning they believed Hamas was leading a popular resistance.
In fact the events since – including the destruction of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and the smashing of Hamas, the Houthis and now the bombing of Iran – can only be understood in the context of the actual genocidal intent of the October 7 murderers, who tried to enlist Hezbollah to join its attack in a letter revealed by the Jerusalem Post last week. Both terror groups act for Iran.
Much media coverage last week focused on the “shock and awe’’ of Trump’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Most ignored the hard work already done by the Israeli Air Force and Mossad’s penetration of Iran’s military.
Whatever the status of its nuclear program, Israel had already taken out much of Iran’s missile manufacturing capability, many of its missile launchers, much of its radar and anti-aircraft weaponry, most of the top scientists in its nuclear program and its key military leaders.
These included Iranian Armed Forces chief of staff, General Mohammad Bagheri, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander in chief Hossein Salami, IRGC headquarters chief Gholamali Rashid, IRGC aerospace commander Ali Hajizadeh, IRGC head of intelligence Mohammad Kazemi and a dozen other senior officers.
Add the political chief of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, killed sleeping in his bed in central Tehran last year; Hezbollah’s long-time commander Hassan Nasrallah, bombed in Lebanon; Hamas’s Gaza military chief Yahya Sinwar and his brother Mohammad, both killed in Gaza.
Trump is now happy to leave the Iranian regime in charge and criticises any suggestion Iran may be able to restart its nuclear program.
For Trump, this is not a matter of life and death but a notch on his belt as commander-in-chief.
For Israel it’s about much more. It’s potentially a matter of survival for a tiny country of nine million that has every reason to take Iran at its word when it pledges to drive the Jews into the sea.
Still, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, subjected to a tirade by Trump in the early hours of the ceasefire last Monday, was happy with the support of the US, its stealth bombers and bunker-busting technology. He wants to participate in future Trump-led negotiations to spread the Abraham Accords which may end up including Saudi Arabia.
Before the Saudis join, Trump will need to show them a peace plan for Gaza and at least progress on a two-state solution.
This will require a Palestinian “partner for peace”, which probably excludes much of the existing Palestinian Authority hierarchy under Mahmoud Abbas and requires the complete removal of Hamas.
It’s worth looking at the response of media in the Arab world to the strikes on Iran.
MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) on June 2 quoted a series of Saudi journalists supporting the US and Israeli strikes.
Journalist Abd al-Aziz Al-Khames wrote: “Iran wasted billions that went down the drain at the expense of its people’s livelihood. Will reason prevail, with Iran launching an economic development project instead of a military one?”
Saudi journalist Wafa Al-Rashid wrote: “Some regimes are not only a burden on their own people but on all of humanity. They feed on oppression, export chaos, impoverish the world and destroy the people”.
Yet in Australia, activists such as academic Randa Abdel-Fattah have been portraying the actions of Israel in Iran as evil, even though it did not target civilians and Iran’s retaliation did. She re-posted many pro-Iranian commentators on social media and mocked Israelis for having bomb shelters and safe rooms.
It’s all part of a dehumanisation of Jews that thrives in academia and media in Australia.
Of course, Israelis don’t want to be up to their necks in rooting out Hamas fighters hiding behind civilians and under hospitals and schools. Israelis just want their hostages back and don’t want to risk the lives of any more young Israeli soldiers, 879 of whom have been killed since October 7. Nor do they want to starve Palestinian civilians.
The majority of Australia’s media do not accept what has been obvious for 18 months: Hamas is behind the killings at food drops because it steals aid and resells it at inflated prices to pay for its munitions.
Can anyone really be stupid enough to believe that the new joint US-Israeli food provider GHF (Global Humanitarian Foundation) is spending tens of millions of dollars on aid just so Israeli soldiers can shoot people who arrive to collect it?
It supports GHF because UN aid was being commandeered as soon as it arrived.
Netanyahu, on Wednesday, gave the IDF 48 hours to come up with a new plan to ensure GHF aid was not stolen by Hamas.
Yet on ABC’s 7.30 last Wednesday, stand-in host David Speers gave UNICEF spokesman James Elder eight minutes to claim, with no primary source evidence, that the IDF was shooting civilians. No mention of the Israeli military’s own publicly available video evidence of Hamas stealing this aid and at times shooting at Gazans who did not want to surrender their food parcels.
Israelis wonder why Western journalists believe the health employees of an Islamist death cult but not representatives of a democratically elected government that allows Palestinians to vote and takes in Palestinian gay refugees who Hamas wants to execute.
Trump’s Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday criticised the media for raising doubts about the effectiveness of the US strikes.
He had a point when he claimed too many US journalists were more concerned with denigrating Trump than reporting the facts.
Conversely, journalists should seek the truth: has the Iranian nuclear program been destroyed and were its 400kg of 60 per cent enriched uranium destroyed with it? We will no doubt find out eventually from Israeli intelligence.
By Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was out of hiding and proclaiming a glorious Iranian win over Israel and a slap in the face for the US. The regime was ramping up executions of Iranians suspected of supporting the Israeli and US attacks.
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