Reaction to Israel’s strikes on terror group Hezbollah reveal deep hypocrisy

Israel’s strikes on Hezbollah agents sparked outrage from the likes of Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi. Contrast this with the silence on disbanding Hamas and condemnation of the October 7 attacks.

Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi has refused to say whether Hamas should be disbanded. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Showing my age I know, but I remember when electronic pagers were the duck’s nuts.

The technology was sound, but the process was inefficient. You had to ring the provider, who would then relay the message. This was something of a lottery, given what was dispatched often bore little resemblance to what was dictated.

To the annoyance of many a friend and colleague, providers refused to relay messages containing profanities and abuse. Another hindrance to this free and open expression was the 120-character limit, although admittedly this sharpened one’s ability to communicate succinctly and pithily.

Which brings me to this week’s topic. In reaching out to Hezbollah in the manner it did, Israel has achieved exactly that. Getting its message through was not easy – after all, terrorists, like a lot of busy people, are time-poor and as prone to information overload as the rest of us. The decision to detonate their pagers overcame those blockers and got their full attention.

This came as a shock to the recipients, and you can imagine the consternation. “Fellow jihadis, has anyone seen Brother Sayyid,” asks one anxiously. “There he is in the sky, travelling from the river to the sea!” As for those unfortunates whose pager was located in their front trouser pocket, I do not envy them. On the bright side though they no longer have to assemble for the dreaded short-arm inspection.

This ingenious strike was a huge setback for the Iranian-backed militants who control Lebanon, meaning of course the banshee moralists were furious. The “horrific pagers attack,” wrote Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi, was “exactly the type of sickening warfare” that led to the violent pro-Palestinian protests in Melbourne this month.

At the time she wrote that, the number of resulting deaths in this operation, including that of a child, was at nine. Now contrast Faruqi’s reaction with her comments following the October 7 attacks by Hamas which resulted in the massacre of 1200 Israeli men, women and children, many of whom were subjected to the worst of barbarities before they were murdered.

Incensed by the announcement a day after this mass slaughter that Parliament House would be lit in the colours of the Israeli flag, Faruqi tweeted: “One colonial government supporting another. What a disgrace”, along with the #FreePalestine hashtag.

One colonial government supporting another. What a disgrace. #FreePalestinepic.twitter.com/36ovphvlTL

— Mehreen Faruqi (@MehreenFaruqi) October 9, 2023

She has repeatedly refused to say whether Hamas should be dismantled, insisting in July the issue had “nothing to do” with “Palestinian self-determination”. Do not hold your breath waiting for her to condemn Hezbollah, which Australia has listed as a terrorist organisation. As The Daily Telegraph reported, Faruqi spoke at the Sayeda Zainab Centre last month, the occasion being a screening of the movie ‘Palestine Under Siege’. This same mosque promotes and glorifies Hezbollah figures in its Facebook page.

Like Hamas, Hezbollah is dedicated to the eradication of Israel. Following the October 7 attacks, Hashem Safieddine a senior official of the organisation, declared that Hezbollah stood “in solidarity” with Palestinians. “Our history, our guns and our rockets are with you,” he enthused.

Palestinians take control of an Israeli Merkava battle tank after crossing the border fence with Israel from Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023. Picture: AFP

Since then it has fired over 8000 rockets into Israel. But according to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Israel has, in decimating the organisation’s ranks by remote control, “crossed all red lines”. Clearly I must be missing something.

Equally bemusing is Faruqi’s insistence that the “perpetrators” be “held to account.”

We are talking of the demise of unlawful combatants and medievalist ones at that. If you want me to sign a condolence book for this lot, Mehreen Faruqi, then allow me to choose the words. I have not been this upset since Ivan Milat snuffed it.

It is the occasion for high dudgeon hypocrisy. University of Sydney law professor and UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism Ben Saul labelled the exploding pagers “a terrifying violation of international law”.

I join other UN experts in condemning “exploding pagers” in Lebanon as terrifying violations of international law, including war crimes against civilians, and calling for de-escalation https://t.co/Dg8PxbY1rC

— Prof Ben Saul - UN SR Human Rights & Counterterror (@profbensaul) September 19, 2024

In a joint statement, he and other UN panjandrums expressed their “deepest solidarity to the victims of these attacks” and called for an investigation to “enable accountability for the crime of murder”.

But there was no pledge of solidarity for Israel in Saul’s op-ed for the Sydney Morning Herald in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks. “While condemning Hamas’ terrorism, we must address the conditions which breed violence,” he wrote. “Hamas did not rise in a vacuum”. And Israel’s attack on Hezbollah did not rise in a vacuum, prof. But for some reason you did not repeat that phrase in your joint statement.

Incidentally, did you too notice the reaction, or rather the non-reaction, of Jewish-Australians to the news that Hezbollah was reeling? No dancing joyfully in the streets, no letting off fireworks, no marching on the Sydney Opera House while chanting ‘Where’s the Muslims’. What does that tell you about who is the real warmonger in the Middle East?

To be clear, I do not mean to imply the Israelis have not broken any law in their operation against Hezbollah. It was very sneaky of them to sell dodgy pagers to unsuspecting jihadis who handed over their money in good faith. Just because they are terrorists does not mean they forego their contractual rights. Good luck taking that up with your local consumer affairs bureau, lads.

Trying to restore morale in Hezbollah will be a challenge for its leaders. Imagine not being game to turn on an electronic appliance for the rest of your life. Still, this does have benefits. It will minimise Hezbollah’s CO2 emissions and could even lead to the organisation becoming carbon-neutral one day. Who knows, this could be the one and only occasion when its members contribute to the public good, even if it is by accident.

If there is one thing this affair has taught us, it is that Israel, like all effective communicators, knows its target audience very well. It speaks to terrorists in the only language they understand.