Australia’s damning of Israel is poisonous. I say that as an ex-Labor minister

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong’s recent criticism of Israel put me in mind of the wise words of legendary Soviet Union human rights dissident Natan Sharansky, who referred to the concept of “3D antisemitism” consisting of “demonisation, delegitimisation and double standards”. These elements are in play with the repeated dark aspersions by the Australian government in equating Israel with Russia and China when it comes to the question of abiding by international law.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong: “It is not antisemitic to expect that Israel should comply with the international law that applies to all countries.”Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

In the course of a long career in the army, including deployments in Somalia, Bosnia, Timor-Leste and a year in Iraq, and while managing the Middle East, United Nations and NATO desk in strategy group as a colonel, I acquired a deep level of experience in geopolitical dynamics – and Middle East realities, in particular. I also became very familiar with the practical application of the laws of armed conflict, which led me to complete a related PhD. This was built on by my subsequent 13 years in politics, including as Labor minister for defence materiel, on the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security, and as national security adviser to Bill Shorten when he was opposition leader.

This experience leads me to assert that the true imperialists in the Middle East are Russia and Iran. It is they who have repressed the people of Syria and Lebanon and enabled unbridled aggression, terrorism and death throughout the region. In Syria, about 500,000 civilians have been killed in the course of the fighting over many years, including, since 2013, by the use of chemical weapons and barrel bombs containing sarin and chlorine gas provided by Russia, and by the deployment of sarin and chlorine gas, causing agonising deaths. Russia vetoed action to eliminate these weapons in the United Nations Security Council.

These malign actors are waging an unrelenting information war against liberal democracies, including through UN mechanisms and agencies, and we are haplessly going along with this.

Israel is fighting an existential war of self-defence against a phalanx of evil actors who have assailed it every single day since October 7 last year. The Australian government must acknowledge that we would not have been able to conduct this war any differently, as evidenced by the fact that the Labor shadow national security team, including the current foreign affairs and defence ministers, signed off on the war against Islamic State and the siege of Mosul, in particular. From October 2016 to July 2017 in Mosul, the Australian Defence Force, as part of a coalition effort, employed the same military tactics and generated the same level of casualties and damage that we have seen in Gaza.

The current war, initiated by Iran and its proxies, has without doubt produced great suffering, destruction and loss of life in Gaza, Lebanon and Israel. In evaluating this horror in terms of the laws of armed conflict, Israel’s methods have to be viewed in the context of its fight for survival. This is the “military necessity” and “direct military advantage” underpinning its operations. Israel is half the size of my former electorate of Eden Monaro. It has no strategic depth or margin for error and faces threats emanating from multiple sources and directions. To put this in perspective, in 1994, the International Court of Justice refused to rule as unlawful the use of nuclear weapons in an existential situation for a state.

I suggest we try this thought exercise in a proportional analogy for Australia, translating relative per head and geographic impact. What if we had endured 18 years of a barrage of tens of thousands of rockets, missiles and drones unleashed by enemies whose avowed aim is the total destruction of our country and the death of all our people? What if we were then invaded by a large formation of heavily armed terrorists who raped, sexually mutilated and murdered more than 3000 of our men, women and children, including the elderly and disabled (more than 1200 died in the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel), and took hostage more than 750 of our people?

What if we were forced to evacuate Queensland and Victoria and force all those people to huddle between Sydney and Wollongong while we endured daily indiscriminate and constant bombardment for a year? What do we imagine would be the public and media response to this? How do we imagine we would have been forced to respond to such a threat?

Former Labor minister Mike Kelly.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Let me be clear: I abhor war, having seen its consequences up close, and I hold every civilian casualty as unacceptable. I mourn for all civilians who have died, Palestinian, Israeli and Lebanese. The lesson to be drawn is – don’t start wars!

This war would have ended long ago if Hamas had lain down its weapons and released the hostages, and if Iran and its proxies had ceased and renounced their violence. Once over, we can concentrate on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian situation, including pressing the Netanyahu government to accelerate dismantling the settler outposts and effectively policing them. Final status resolution can happen only if there is a Palestinian government that administers all the territories, and true security can be established there.

The fact is that Israel has successfully degraded the threat from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran, thereby enabling the possibility of a better future not only for Israel but for Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians. The combined efforts of Israel and the Ukrainians have also effectively diminished the malign Putin influence in the Middle East and limited the pressure-point options for China.

Our government has openly acknowledged that Hamas cannot be part of a Palestinian government and must be removed from control of Gaza. How does it suggest this should have been done? What military expertise is it relying on to criticise the Israeli methods in the face of such a large-scale military threat and capability?

The government’s own special adviser, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, in his report on the death of Australian Zomi Frankcom and other aid workers in an Israel Defence Forces strike on a World Central Kitchen convoy, noted similarities in the targeting regimes of Australia and Israel, and he found nothing intentional in the incident, although he did find “serious procedural failures” by the IDF. He referred to the US military strike on the Medecins Sans Frontieres Kunduz Hospital in Afghanistan in 2015 to emphasise that mistakes are made in war that don’t amount to war crimes.

Meanwhile, the world has failed to help Israel return the hostages through greater pressure on Iran and Hamas. It may soon be the longest such crisis in the modern history of terrorism, surpassing the 444 days that Tehran held hostages from 1979 to 1981.

That is why it is so despicable that the Australian government has chosen to vote for the latest UN ceasefire resolution, which doesn’t make that conditional on the release of the hostages. In doing so, we have repeated our heinous behaviour at the Evian Conference in France in 1938 when, together with the other countries, Australia callously rejected Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. It was Evian that sent the signal to Hitler that the world didn’t care what he did with the Jews.

What signal have we now sent to Hamas?

Instead of its current vague and poisonous commentary, the government would do better standing up for the principles of self-defence and against the crime of aggression. It should support the efforts of Israel to survive and thereby open up the possibilities for a better future for the region. It should demonstrate a genuine concern for the hostages through active diplomacy, not the neglect it has just so shockingly demonstrated.

Mike Kelly is a strategic policy consultant, a former army officer and a former minister for defence materiel. He is co-convenor of Labor Friends of Israel. He has previously worked for Palantir, a US firm that provides support to Israel’s war against Hamas and to the UN’s World Food Program relief to Gazans.

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