NSW police’s shameful act towards Jewish community

Pro-Palestine protesters release flares in Sydney on Monday. Picture: David Swift

NSW police disgraced themselves on Monday, strongly warning Sydney’s Jewish community to stay away from the CBD for the lighting of the Opera House’s sails in blue and white, the colours of the Israeli flag. If, as a NSW police spokeswoman claimed, safety was “the first priority”, police were duplicitous allowing a pro-Palestinian rally before the lighting. The rally could have been held at another time or place. In our democracy, the right to demonstrate matters. But the Greens’ support for the pro-Palestinian rally after Hamas’s unprovoked, barbaric attack on Israeli civilians also was shameful. As Australian Jewish Association chief executive Robert Gregory said: “As Israeli women, men, children and elderly are being hunted down, raped, beheaded and butchered in the street, the NSW Greens are joining others tonight at a ‘rally for Palestine’ calling for ‘no war’ on terrorist-run Gaza.” It defied credibility, as NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president David Ossip said, that any person could attend rallies that celebrated the rape of Israeli girls and kidnapping.

The grotesque spectacle of Palestinian supporters in Lakemba and Greenacre in southwestern Sydney celebrating the Hamas attacks on Sunday showed Australia is not immune from jihad fanaticism. It is deeply disturbing that some in our nation are so comfortable with terror that they let off fireworks to applaud the murder and maiming of civilians. Giving more sanction to savagery has no place in a civilised society. Applauding the cruelty inflicted on more than 100 hostages, some soaked in blood and dragged by the hair to be taken to Gaza as human shields and bargaining chips, was unconscionable.

Sheik Ibrahim Dadoun told demonstrators in Lakemba the attacks on Israel “are an act of resistance. I’m elated, it’s a day of courage, it’s a day of pride, it’s a day of victory, this is the day we’ve been waiting for. Seventy-five years of occupation, 15 years of blockade. What happened yesterday was the first time our brothers and sisters broke through the largest prison on Earth”. Those claims have no credibility. Israel, which ceded Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005, has been allowing 17,000 Gazans to work in Israel each day. The so-called prison has supplied Gaza’s two million people with electricity, water, food and hospital care when Palestinian leaders turned to it for treatment. Gazans were subjected to border controls because Hamas turned it into a vast terrorist encampment where Iran has built up a vast armoury. Attitudes such as that of former foreign minister and NSW premier Bob Carr that Hamas has “won a tactical success” and that Palestinians “have a right to resist an illegal occupation” are naive and dangerous. They are on a par with the absurd notions of those in the Labor Party who want Australia to recognise what is palpably a non-existent Palestinian state.

As Israel’s death toll from Saturday’s terrorist invasion rose above 700 and 100,000 Israeli troops massed in preparation for a ground invasion of Gaza, it is Hamas, forcing Israel to exercise its right to defend itself, that will be culpable for the toll inflicted. As the US vows to provide military equipment for its longtime ally, the coming assault is likely to result in huge casualties on both sides. It will be complicated by the plight of the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. They are likely to be misused as human shields in densely populated Gaza.

Amid mounting evidence about Iran’s role in planning the assault on Israel – confirmed by senior Hezbollah and Hamas members – the prospect of a wider Middle Eastern conflict is increasing. Five days before the onslaught launched from Gaza – at a meeting in Beirut on Monday last week, The Wall Street Journal reported – Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which had worked with Hamas since August to plan the air, land and sea incursions, gave the green light for the assault.

Senior Israeli officials have pledged to strike at Iran’s leadership if Tehran is found responsible for killing Israelis. They cannot reasonably be expected to do otherwise. Destroying Hamas in Gaza is the immediate target. But as Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz and Andrew Stein wrote in the New York Post: “The only way to stop Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s recurring attacks against Israel is to treat Iran as the attacker and punish it more than its puppet organisations … Iran, through its surrogates, has waged war on Israel. Under international law, Israel has the right to retaliate militarily. It also has the right to take pre-emptive military action to prevent the mullahs from obtaining nuclear weapons they have threatened to use against Israel.” That, however, would be easier said than done. It would raise the stakes enormously. And Iran, taking advantage of years of US dithering, has buried much of its nuclear program deep underground. But if it is not severely punished for instigating the attacks on Israel, it will not be deterred from its ongoing support of terrorists. Groups such as Hamas have wider ambitions than destroying Israel. A video of a Hamas leader, recorded in December and reported by The Jerusalem Post on Monday, revealed his goal to destroy “infidels” around the world and impose Islamic order. Failure to crush the terrorists will have implications far beyond Israel.