Sydney’s night of shame as Hamas set to kill hostages

As Hamas prepares to kill Israeli hostages, including civilians, one by one, and film and broadcast their deaths, an unforgettable night of shame unfolded outside the Sydney Opera House. “Gas the Jews, f..k the Jews,” hundreds of flag-waving Palestinian supporters roared. Inciting racial hatred is a serious crime in NSW, with heavy fines and jail terms. But the only person arrested on Monday night was Jewish businessman Mark Spiro for allegedly “breaching the peace”. His crime was to emerge from Town Hall station carrying a rolled-up Israeli flag. He had intended to “bear witness to a group of people that were celebrating the atrocities, the pogrom, that the Jewish nation has not witnessed since the Holocaust”. He was at the Palestinian protest for a few seconds before NSW police hauled him away. Yet nobody was arrested when the Israeli flag was burned on the Opera House steps.

“I never thought we would crumple to this,” John Howard said on Tuesday. “It’s totally beyond the pale as far as I’m concerned … To have people chanting those things, it is a catastrophic descent from civility that I never thought I’d see.” The police’s double standards were deeply offensive, especially in view of NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley’s admission that the pro-Palestinian rally in the CBD and Opera House precinct “was not approved by police”. Yet it was the Jewish community that police warned to stay away, not the unauthorised protesters. As Mr Howard said: “If you’re a law-abiding Jewish person in Sydney who wanted to go along to the Opera House (which was lit up in blue and white, the colours of the Israeli flag) and told you had to stay at home, what is this?” At the very least, Ms Catley owes the Jewish community an abject apology, which so far she has refused to make.

Three days after Hamas’s diabolic attack on Israel and its citizens, lack of leadership from Labor at federal and state level is a problem. Two of the Albanese government’s most senior ministers from western Sydney – Tony Burke and Chris Bowen – have failed to condemn wholeheartedly anti-Israel preachers and activists from their electorates who led rallies celebrating Hamas’s attacks. At one rally at Lakemba, in Mr Burke’s seat, speakers described the attacks as an act of courage and resistance. NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley has perched on the fence, urging everyone to show restraint, calm down and go home.

“How can you remain calm when demonstrators are invoking the memory of the Holocaust?” Mr Howard said. “People remain calm in that? … We need leadership from the top, we aren’t getting that at the moment.” The Greens also have exposed their ugly, anti-Semitic underbelly. NSW Greens MP Jenny Leong described the decision to light up the Opera House in blue and white as appalling. The party promoted the Palestinian rally on social media. And leader Adam Bandt said the occupation of Gaza must end. But with savagery now the trademark of Hamas, those demanding a “free Palestine” and recognition of Palestinian statehood need to recognise their cause has been dealt a massive setback.

Amid the turmoil whipped up at the Opera House on Monday night, where the abhorrent rally was attended by Gerard Buttigieg, 19, the son of NSW Labor upper house MP Mark Buttigieg, the responses from too many Labor politicians, in general, have been weak and hesitant. More forthright, unequivocal statements are needed from Foreign Minister Penny Wong who, on the first day, called for “restraint”. And Anthony Albanese should call a meeting of the national security committee of cabinet, as Peter Dutton says, with 10,000 Australians in Israel, the protests by terrorist sympathisers in Australia and warnings the conflict posed a new risk to the global economy. There is no doubt the war will destabilise the strategic landscape of the Middle East and the wider world.

But as Gerard Baker wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “we must recognise the atrocity primarily for what it is – another attempt to annihilate the Jewish people. The spectacle of paramilitaries going house to house shooting Jews, dragging their dead bodies through the streets, and brandishing them as spoils is as shocking as it is familiar. For Jews, this is their history played out one more agonising time. Another year, another place, another pogrom. Even the state of Israel, that magnificent homeland they have built for themselves in the desert, with its world-beating technology and its fearsome security forces, can’t fully protect them from the undying, putrid hate of anti-Semitism.”

As about 300,000 Israeli soldiers and reservists muster in preparation for a ground invasion of Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was correct when he told US President Joe Biden in a phone call that Israel had no other choice but to proceed. That is despite the fact it inevitably will cost many more lives and cause vast damage. Hamas’s warning that it will publicly execute one of more than 100 hostages it is holding in response to each missile fired at Gaza will make the campaign extraordinarily difficult. Such executions were the trademark of Islamic State, prompting Mr Netanyahu’s comparison that “Hamas is ISIS”. Operating from a similar playbook and philosophy – including killing its own by forcing them to jump off buildings when they do not toe the line – the observation is close to the mark.

While no one wants a full-blown conflict with Iran, the ayatollahs’ regime should be isolated and punished for its role in organising and resourcing the attacks on Israel. That, too, would pose dangers. Russia and China both have close alliances with Iran. Those ties have been crucial to Iran’s ability to withstand sanctions imposed by the US and other Western nations. And Russia relies on Iran for military equipment, especially sophisticated drones, which Vladimir Putin is using against Ukraine.

Thirteen years ago, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, alarmed about Iran’s subversion, presciently urged the US to “cut off the head of the snake” by launching military strikes to destroy Tehran’s emerging nuclear program. Israel and the world must not pay the price for Washington’s failure to heed his warning. Mr Biden’s rapid deployment of a battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford to the eastern Mediterranean is a warning Iran should not ignore. It signals that, if necessary, the US is prepared to use its immensely powerful military resources to support Israel, which once seemed almost impregnable, against the existential threat that has rarely been as serious. Far more than Israel’s security and that of the wider Middle East is at stake.