ASIO war-of-words violence warning over Israel
The nation’s top domestic security agency has warned of the potential for ‘opportunistic violence’ in Australia following Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel.
The nation’s top domestic security agency has warned of the potential for “opportunistic violence” in Australia following Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel, calling on “all parties” to refrain from stoking division amid fears domestic extremists could take advantage of community unrest.
As pro-Palestinian groups plan further rallies in coming days, ASIO head Mike Burgess said he had not lifted the national terrorism threat level, but the agency was on alert for indications of planned violence.
“I remain concerned about the potential for opportunistic violence with little or no warning,” the ASIO director-general said.
Mr Burgess said the potential for such violence was distinct from planned attacks, declaring ASIO was well placed to detect threats to security from politically motivated and communal violence.
“In this context, it is important that all parties consider the implications for social cohesion when making public statements,” he said. “As I have said previously, words matter. ASIO has seen direct connections between inflamed language and inflamed community tensions.”
Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Rubenstein said the warning was “unfortunately all too relevant to the current situation in Australia”, with anti-Israel protests forcing heightened security at Jewish schools and community institutions.
“Australian multiculturalism is successful because it is built on a foundation of mutual respect and tolerance, which must be reinforced and reasserted, and there should be firm action against those who brazenly violate Australian laws,” Mr Rubenstein said. “There should be nothing but widespread condemnation of the contemptible savagery shown by Hamas, and of anyone who celebrates it.”
As the death toll in Gaza neared 1200 on Thursday – about the same as the number of Israelis killed in Hamas’s brutal attack on Saturday – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formed a unity government with members of the opposition. Mr Netanyahu said the arrangement cleared the way for the coming offensive on Gaza, declaring “every Hamas member is a dead man”.
As the fallout continued after Monday’s march through Sydney when protesters burnt the Israeli flag and yelled anti-Semitic chants, a broad coalition of Muslim groups voiced their anger at what they said was a “one-sided’’ response to the Israel-Hamas conflict from the Australian government. In a joint statement, they condemned the decision to light up the Sydney Opera House with the colours of the Israeli flag by asking their mosques to project the red, black and green of the Palestinian flag, or fly pro-Palestine banners.
“The people of NSW and the world witnessed the double standards in Australia when it saw the colours of the invading, colonising occupying force – Israel – shining on the symbolic public icon we know as the Sydney Opera House,’’ the statement read.
They said incitement to violence and expressions of hatred toward any people should be condemned, but the joint statement opens up a serious threat to the relationship between governments and the Muslim community, which numbers nearly one million people.
The peak Islamic body, the Australian National Imams Council, did not caution its members to stay away from public rallies but said there was no place for hateful slurs and disharmony.
It urged any protesters to display “the best Islamic morals and manners’’ while distinguishing between political Zionism, and Judaism and the Jewish people, “who deserve our kindness and respect as brothers and sisters in humanity”.
Pro-Palestinian rallies are slated for Brisbane, Perth and Canberra on Friday evening and Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide on Sunday. NSW Premier Chris Minns urged people planning to attend the Sydney rally to stay home and warned anyone who incited violence or hatred would be dealt with by the law.
Jewish groups will hold a vigil in Melbourne’s Caulfield Park on Friday afternoon for those killed and taken hostage in the weekend terrorist attack, after being warned by police their security could not be guaranteed if they held the event in the city.
After Mr Burgess’s warning on Thursday, Labor sources accused Peter Dutton of being among those seeking to sow division, after he called for anti-Israeli protesters to be deported if they were not Australian citizens. In an incendiary interview, the Opposition Leader also agreed with 2GB host Ray Hadley that some in the Labor Party “hate Israelis”.
“I think there is certainly that element to it,” Mr Dutton said. “There is also a political element to it as well because people like (cabinet ministers) Chris Bowen, Ed Husic and others will be playing to their electorates. And that I think is shameful because they are giving … encouragement to the kind of conduct that we saw at the Sydney Opera House.”
Mr Dutton later told The Australian Anthony Albanese needed to discourage further rallies like those in Sydney where protesters chanted “Gas the Jews”. “This is a time for strong – not weak – leadership from the Prime Minister and he needs to take the heat out of a difficult situation,” he said.
In the wake of the ugly protests, the Prime Minister visited a Melbourne synagogue on Wednesday night, saying anti-Semitism and “hateful prejudice” had no place in Australia.
As Israeli jets continued to pound Gaza ahead of an expected ground attack on the Palestinian enclave, Foreign Minister Penny Wong called for both sides of the conflict to protect non-combatants. “Australia’s consistent position in all contexts is to call for the protection of civilian lives and the observation of international humanitarian law,” Senator Wong said. “That law exists to protect all of us.”
Her comments came as Israel’s top diplomat in Australia said the Hamas attackers who butchered his people had committed crimes against humanity. Writing in The Australian, ambassador Amir Maimon suggests the Gazan people are also culpable, saying the killers “did not originate from the void”.
“They were raised, indoctrinated and conditioned in a milieu where a hatred for Israel is the overarching theme of life under Hamas,” Mr Maimon writes.
“When this war is over, the people of Gaza will have to choose. They will have to choose whether they continue to harbour Hamas, and if they will continue to sacrifice their brothers, sons and husbands for Hamas to squander in pursuit of its sickening, unattainable goal.”
The UN said 340,000 people were now displaced in Gaza, amid damage to civilian infrastructure, and an Israeli blockade that has cut off supplies of food, water, electricity and fuel for the densely populated enclave.
Mr Albanese attended one of Australia’s largest mosques in Lakemba in Sydney’s southwest last Friday, a visit that coincided with a national initiative for all mosques to dedicate their Friday sermons to support of the voice referendum. Muslim groups who had sought to draw a parallel between the situation in Palestine and Australia’s Indigenous people said they felt betrayed by the government.
The Imams Council’s community relations adviser Ramia Abdo Sultan, who has family trapped in Gaza, said the government's silence on the situation facing civilians there was damaging relations with Muslim Australians. “All that work that ANIC (national imams council) has put in over the past few years to build significant community trust … is slowly withering away because of this issue, the unfairness in the response,’’ Ms Sultan said.
“Can we not get a public statement of some sort, state or federal, just to acknowledge the losses inside Gaza?”
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