Journos fail to grasp basic terror truths
The inauguration of president-elect Donald Trump on Monday and Israel’s military success against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran indicate parts of the Western world are waking up to the realities of power.
In much of the West the celebration of feelings over facts in everything from gender and the media to international diplomacy has been driven by a 21st century take on Marxist thought.
Rather than focus on material improvement for the working class, this politics is the province of upper middle class professionals who prioritise the imagined right of individuals never to feel offended. Hence men can be women and Islamist terrorists can be progressives even if they subjugate women and murder homosexuals.
The election of Trump has sent the world a message. Voters prize common sense. They are OK with polite tolerance but not when it damages their own societies.
They want Trump to “Make America Great Again’’ because they saw Joe Biden and Barack Obama draw lines in the sand with authoritarian dictators who ignored the most powerful nation in history because they did not fear its leaders.
This is not just about wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Think the red-line ultimatum Obama issued against former president Bashar al-Assad in Syria in August 2012 if he used chemical weapons against his own people. He did so a year later.
In the years after the 2001 al-Qa’ida attacks in New York and Washington and the 2002 Bali bombings, much discussion in newspapers such as this one centred on the nature of tolerance. Should a tolerant society such as Australia’s allow the extreme intolerance of Islamist radicals?
In the self-consciously progressive left media – the old Fairfax papers – the discussion was less clear-eyed.
Was the West betraying its own democratic ideals by, for example, imprisoning Islamists at Guantanamo Bay while they were being questioned without having received a fair trial?
Was the West to blame for Islamist attacks on Western targets because it was more concerned with Middle Eastern oil than Middle Eastern social conditions?
This column called this “the root causes” view in a piece published on October 14, 2023, about the October 7 pogrom in southern Israel. In this view, Western victims of Islamic terror, whether in Israel, the US, Bali or Paris, bring terror on themselves because they do not recognise the problems of the Islamic world.
Never mind much of the Islamic world, particularly the Arab world, is ruled by some of the richest, most repressive leaders on Earth who privately support Islamist terror with oil money. And don’t forget the open anti-Semitism of many of the Arab world’s leaders, journalists and intellectuals who quote the Koran to justify murdering Jews.
Today in parts of Australia’s political left, the “root causes” view has morphed into outright sympathy for Islamism. Uni students praise Osama bin Laden’s manifesto, many support the October 7 slaughter of 1200 innocent Israeli civilians and decry Israel, one of the rare countries in the Middle East where women and gays are safe.
The UN, with 56 Muslim majority country members – and affiliated NGOs such as the World Health Organisation – openly run interference for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. The Western left follows.
Palestinian Australian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah has this month repeated several false claims that Israel attacked civilians at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza and wrongfully imprisoned its director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya. Some posts about Safiya imply he is a saintly figure, yet he is a Hamas colonel.
Melanie Phillips on Substack on January 1 referred to a then 12-month-old report in The Times of Israel quoting the hospital’s former director, Ahmad Kahlot, admitting Hamas had offices in the hospital. Kahlot said he had been a lieutenant colonel with Hamas since 2010. He said 16 staff members were part of the organisation’s Al-Qassam terror organisation. Phillips quoted a Palestinian news site referring to Dr Safiya as a colonel.
Links between Hamas and UN-supported education, aid and medical facilities in Gaza have been known for years. The UN investigated links between Hamas and UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency) as far back as 2014.
Politicians should not be surprised at the rise in anti-Semitism in the West: the media casually reports Israeli military actions against embedded Hamas forces in hospitals and schools as if Israel is deliberately targeting children and the sick.
Just as bad has been reporting alleging Israel is deliberately starving Gazans. Never mind that in no other conflict would the party first attacked be held responsible for feeding the civilian population of its attacker. This column reported on April 7 last year that Israel’s aid convoys into Gaza had reached pre-war levels, even though much of the media was lazily repeating Hamas and UN propaganda about famine. Hamas creates the aid problem. It and other terror groups are stealing aid and selling it to Gazans at inflated prices.
US National Public Radio on November 20 showed the anti-Semitic mentality of Israel’s critics. It reported only 11 of 109 UN aid trucks had succeeded in deliveries the previous weekend. The rest had been stolen by armed militias.
Rather than call on Hamas to secure aid deliveries, NPR quoted a UN spokesperson demanding Israel do more to prevent attacks on aid convoys.
Just as dehumanising of Israelis have been silly reports criticising conservative Israeli government member Itamar Ben-Gvir for admitting he had last year blocked a hostage deal with Hamas.
Abdel-Fattah and journalist Antoinette Lattouf who have reposted on X criticism of Ben-Gvir must know even the Jerusalem Post has acknowledged the hostage deal agreed last Wednesday presents real dangers to Israel: the release of perhaps a thousand Palestinian convicted terrorists in return for the 94 remaining Israeli civilian hostages, many of whom may already be dead.
It was the 2011 release of 1026 Palestinian prisoners in return for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit that allowed Yahya Sinwar back to Gaza. Now dead, Sinwar had been sentenced to four life terms for the abduction and murder of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of four Palestinians in 1989. Sinwar led the October 7 pogrom.
The Jerusalem Post has conceded Israel risks a repeat with the latest ceasefire, which unarguably rewards hostage taking. Ben-Gvir threatened to quit the government on Thursday because he thinks the latest ceasefire presents grave dangers to Israel.
Journalists often misunderstand the point of terrorism. Islamist attacks in Western countries are designed to show young Muslims the West cares more for white victims than it does for Muslim victims in Islamic countries.
Similarly, October 7 and the sacrificing of innocent Palestinian lives in Gaza are designed to make young Muslims believe the West values Jewish lives more than Palestinian lives.
Back to strength of leadership. No one knows if Trump’s second presidency will be a success.
Yet The Times Of Israel last Thursday reported two Arab sources involved in the Gaza ceasefire talks believe Trump’s negotiator, Steve Witkoff, achieved more in one tense weekend of talks with Netanyahu than Biden did the entire previous year.