The Australian Government must condemn Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza and its plans to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homelands. It is also the responsibility of the national broadcaster to hold Canberra to account, by demanding this condemnation of our ally Israel for its gross and indisputable violations of international law.
A placard often seen at rallies for Palestine presents a favourite quote from Archbishop Dennis Tutu, that, “if you remain neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”. The quote is particularly apposite to Gaza, where the situation facing the trapped and starved population has long gone from “injustice” to “inhumanity”, and as a direct result of Israel’s remorseless and merciless bombardment.
Few sane and humane people would consider that what Israel has done to the 2.3 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip constitutes a just punishment for what they are alleged to have done to Israelis during the prison break-out of 7 October 2023. Neither would they accept any of Israel’s excuses or pretexts for its massive and indiscriminate slaughter of innocent non-combatants. Initially, Israeli leaders and their spokesmen made excuses for “collateral damage” to civilians, blaming Hamas for using the population as human shields, but more recently they have denied culpability, even saying that they make every effort to avoid civilian casualties.
Neither of these pathetic lies was criticised and exposed by our “official media” — the ABC and SBS — who “remained neutral” in this situation of extreme “injustice”. In the first case, they consistently failed to condemn the blatant war crime of killing and injuring hundreds of people who were “in the way” of an alleged “terrorist” target; in the second case, they simply reported the monstrous claim without comment. Neither did these media point out that the Israeli killing machine was quite capable of — and expert at — picking off chosen and named individuals using surveillance drones and quadcopters, often targeting and killing journalists or their family members, aid workers and community leaders.
It didn’t take much for fair observers to conclude that the Israeli Government and military’s objective was actually simply to kill Palestinians in Gaza, whether Hamas militants or women and children. Both the Hamas or Islamic Jihad militants and the Israeli hostages they held created the pretext Israel needed to pursue its real agenda, which was always the ethnic cleansing or extermination of the indigenous population whose land it occupied.
Those observers might also conclude that Israel had an interest in keeping the hostages trapped in Gaza for as long as it took to make most of the Strip unliveable; it may be that Hamas has also come to this conclusion in its most recent offer to release all the hostages, thereby depriving Israel of its pretext to remain in the Strip, and so forcing Israel to keep to the ceasefire plan it has agreed to. The problem here though is that Israel is not an honest and genuine party to these negotiations, regarding commitments made through negotiators merely as recommendations it may follow or ignore.
In fact, Israel’s treatment of the current ceasefire negotiations and the longer term intent of all the other parties to them has been excessively casual and entirely self-interested, with this view of its own legitimacy as an apartheid state for Jews only going mostly unchallenged. The only powers who might have an influence on its behaviour are handicapped and intimidated, being active collaborators and participants in ‘The Israel Project’, whose ultimate goal, the expulsion of the rest of the Palestinian population from Israel, is now close to realisation.
Australia’s role in the “Israel Project”, either as ally or as collaborator, is now in the spotlight, following Donald Trump’s advertising of the Israeli plan to “clear out” all the Palestinians from Gaza. Australian Israeli Mark Regev actively promoted this “project” which lays the basis for Israel’s total dominance over Palestinian life – ethnic and cultural cleansing. It is essentially a scheme to manipulate resistant populations in the US into accepting blatant injustices against Palestinians through language and media. Despite being 15 years old, its commentary is current – for instance, suggesting that demands to end Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank amounted to supporting ethnic cleansing.
Following Trump’s shock announcement that the Palestinians would need to leave Gaza because no-one could live in such a hell-scape, almost every country in the world, and every NGO and UN body condemned the ethnic cleansing plan on legal and moral grounds – and as something that could never be acceptable in a civilised society. Shockingly and astonishingly though, Australia had nothing to say.
While The Guardian and other “liberal” media, including the ABC, have reported on the global consternation and rejection of ethnic cleansing in line with long-held principles of international law and morality, the ABC and SBS have failed in their obligation as independent and impartial news organisations to “hold power to account”. It isn’t hard to think of numerous examples of such critical reporting and questioning of government policies, and one would think that this matter would justify and elicit a barrage of questioning and criticism from the state media. That this wasn’t the case is deeply disturbing, and may effectively make the ABC an active collaborator in war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by a foreign power.
This is all the more the case as the ABC proclaims its high standards – as “our ABC”, bringing us all we need to know about the world. Building on this image has been ABC Radio National’s critical current affairs program RN Breakfast, re-launched this year with presenter Sally Sara, a longtime award-winning foreign correspondent with the ABC. But in numerous interviews with advocates for both sides of the conflict, Sara has shown herself unreasonably sympathetic to the Zionist narrative that both sides of politics evidently subscribe to.
Whether Sara is speaking for herself, or following the dictates of ABC management is unclear, but hardly relevant – the resulting promotion of the Israeli Government’s hasbara is the same. Two recent examples from Sara’s interviews on ABC RN Breakfast highlight this unacceptable advocacy for a foreign state engaged in multiple crimes against humanity.
First, following Trump’s “clear them out” recommendation for Gaza, Sara interviewed two of the most respected advocates and authorities on Palestinian rights, Francesca Albanese and Mustafa Barghouti, on the question of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Unable to win the argument against these indisputable Israeli crimes with either of her guests, Sara had the loser’s last word on Barghouti’s allegations of genocide following the end of the interview, noting that, “such allegations are just that – allegations”.
One wonders on whose orders program presenters issue a retraction and correction following their guests’ mention of the Israeli genocide, despite the global recognition of the Zionists’ most unforgiveable of crimes. SBS World News presenters also issue such “corrections”, indicating those orders come from above.
Second, and more specifically, on the question of ethnic cleansing, Sara interviewed Dr H.A. Hellyer from RUSI, just as Netanyahu was creating a media frenzy over Hamas returning the bodies of the Bibas family. The actual subject of the interview was on an initiative of Arab states to support Palestinian reconstruction in Gaza, following their complete rejection of the ethnic cleansing plan, but it seemed as though the ABC didn’t get the response it expected and apparently hoped for from Dr Hellyer.
Asked about the returning of dead bodies by Sara, Dr Hellyer cautions:
“Let’s keep in mind that the past 15 or 16 months have seen a huge amount of deaths and bodies still under the rubble, um, as well as of course this terrible situation where these innocents were killed, er, it’s unclear as to how they were killed, if they were indeed killed in a missile strike or otherwise – I don’t think anybody’s disputing that particular point.”
It might be noted that this interview took place before Israeli spokesman Daniel Haggari made outrageous and unsubstantiated claims the Bibas children were “murdered by Hamas using their bare hands” – and we wait to see how the ABC handles this latest attempt by Israel to derail the ceasefire program. In the meantime, listen to the end of the interview with Dr Hellyer, when Sara suggests that the “temporary ethnic cleansing” plan might be considered:
S.S: “Is there a sense Dr Hellyer that it will be possible to undertake the reconstruction of Gaza without forcing the removal of Palestinians?”
H.H: “I mean.. it’s not just possible, it would be necessary. If you force the removal of Palestinians you’re literally engaging in ethnic cleansing and war crimes. Um, so there’s no question about that, um, but, the possibility of it, yes it’s entirely possible – the question is whether or not we’re going to be able to see, particularly Washington DC, um, force Israel to actually accept that?”
The question for us is whether we are going to see the ABC push back against those in the government and opposition who are currently advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the occupied territories, either actively, or simply by failing to oppose it.
David Macilwain is an independent and sceptical observer with a strong science and medical background. He lives off-grid with his partner on a small farm in NE Victoria.