Protests no help to Palestinians

If the 3200 “creatives” who signed a letter demanding a ceasefire and Israel’s “withdrawal from Palestinian territories” believe they will make a difference to what is happening in Gaza they are deluded. The serious folly of such gestures has been underlined by the principled resignation of writer and playwright Ruth Ritchie from the board of the Sydney Theatre Company amid fallout from a keffiyeh protest by actors in its production of The Seagull. Such “Free Palestine” protesters overlook the reality of Hamas’s barbaric massacre of Jews on October 7, the worst since the Holocaust.

Last week UN Security Council secretary-general Antonio Guterres, a former socialist prime minister of Portugal who leads what is supposed to be the world’s foremost peacemaking body, invoked powers not used for decades to force debate on an Arab demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. It included not a word of condemnation of Hamas or its mass killings, rapes and kidnappings. Mr Guterres’s action, as Adam Creighton wrote, “brought the UN into further disrepute, offering more evidence for those who claim the top UN bureaucrat is providing cover for Hamas”. Thirteen of the UN Security Council’s 15 members, led by China and Russia but also including France and Japan, supported the ceasefire demand. Britain abstained and Mr Guterres’s ploy was defeated when the US wisely used its veto. What is needed now is not a ceasefire that will serve Hamas but for Israel to be supported to bring the conflict to an end with Hamas vanquished. That is what the civilised world achieved against Islamic State. It must do so again.

No amount of dissembling and obfuscation changes the reality that Hamas’s terrorism has done immense damage to the cause of a “free Palestine”. Those wilfully playing into Hamas’s hands are complicit in that damage. As reported on Monday, an Israeli interrogation of a high-ranking former Hamas cabinet minister, Yousef al-Mansi, quoted him criticising the terrorists’ current leadership for “destroying the Gaza Strip (and) setting its people back 200 years”. UN agencies such as UN Women, which disgracefully took 57 days before uttering a single word that could be construed as criticism of Hamas’s October 7 rampage, should heed such assertions. Georgina Williams, who chairs UN Women Australia, needs to do better than attack Coalition MPs who have voiced concern about the UN agency’s failure. Those who should know better, such as University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill, who resigned amid outrage after insisting that calls for the genocide of Jews did not necessarily go against the university’s code of conduct, have not done themselves or the future of Palestinians any good.

What Hamas wants – desperately – is another, more prolonged, ceasefire to allow it to regroup and rearm to prepare for what some of its leaders have promised will be more attacks such as that of October 7.