Much of world more preoccupied with Israel’s response than Hamas’ atrocities

Deepening concern, expressed on the weekend by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, about prospects for a wider, even more destructive war in the Middle East is well-founded. Not since the barbaric October 7 massacre of Jews by Hamas terrorists have prospects for a more extensive conflict looked more portentous.

A week of rapidly escalating violence involving Iran and its proxies at the fulcrum of the so-called “axis of resistance” (or, more correctly, “axis of evil”) that has taken hostilities beyond Gaza and Israel has left no doubt, as London’s Sunday Times reported, that the region is “on the brink of implosion”. Yet much of the world appears preoccupied less by that ominous prospect than by dishonestly overlooking the monstrous atrocities committed by Hamas. Israel’s response to the events of October 7 has unquestionably resulted in heavy damage and loss of innocent life in Gaza but this has been in the face of a refusal by Hamas to release hostages taken in the terror raids. Hypocritically, certain groups seek to make Israel out to be the villain of all that is happening. That is certain to be the dominant argument when the Jewish state is arraigned on charges of “genocide” made by South Africa at a hearing before the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Thursday – with no mention, of course, of Hamas’s slaughter of Jews.

In just the few days before Mr Blinken arrived on his fifth emergency trip to the region since the October 7 pogrom, assassinations, bombings and hijackings across at least five countries showed the depth of the crisis caused by the fallout from a war that is about to pass the 100-day mark. Last week’s assassination in the heart of Beirut of top Hamas terrorist leader Saleh al-Arouri has inflamed tensions with Hezbollah. Lebanese officials said Arouri’s killing was a suspected Israeli attack. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied carrying out the strike. Militants in Lebanon launched about 40 rockets into Israel on Saturday in response.

Hezbollah remains, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, the world’s “most heavily armed, non-state actor”, with more than 130,000 rockets and missiles. Its full-scale involvement in the war would have a profound effect. Tensions, at boiling point across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon following Arouri’s assassination, are matched elsewhere across the Middle East. An Israeli airstrike that killed Sayyed Razi Mousavi, veteran commander of Iran’s deadly Quds Force, added another dimension to the crisis. So has the assassination in a US airstrike on Baghdad last Thursday of Mushtaq Taleb al-Saidi, an Iraqi leader of a pro-Iranian militia. Meanwhile, Iran’s Yemen-based Houthi rebel proxies show no sign of ending their attacks on shipping lanes through the Red Sea that are vital to the global economy, carrying more than 15 per cent of the world’s seaborne cargo.

The expanding crisis is incontrovertibly putting the entire world, not just the Middle East, at risk. Yet the global preoccupation appears to be not with finding ways to rein in Iran’s palpable villainy and destroy its terrorist proxies, but with what Israel is doing in Gaza to annihilate Hamas. That will be brought into sharp focus in Thursday’s ICJ proceedings. The 84-page indictment amounts to a grotesque “blood libel” that reeks of hypocrisy and double standards by a government that should know more than most about the iniquities of racism and sectarianism. South Africa’s leading role in the ICJ case over Gaza shows what a crackpot country it has become since Nelson Mandela left the scene. Its lead role in the ICJ case is part of a broader move against Israel that has put many among South Africa’s small Jewish community in fear for their lives, despite Jewish leaders such as the late Helen Suzman having played leading roles in destroying apartheid.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham on the weekend warned the Albanese government against saying or doing anything to support the ICJ case against Israel. “Australia should maintain a strong commitment in support of Israel’s inherent right to self-defence after Hamas’s horrific targeting of civilians,” he said. That is advice Anthony Albanese, after his embarrassingly inadequate response to the US request for an Australian warship to join a coalition force to combat terrorism in the Red Sea, would do well to heed.