Escalation of national terrorism threat level misleads Australians

Government, Policy, Politics

Escalation of national terrorism threat level misleads Australians

Aug 10, 2024

The announcement by ASIO Boss Mike Burgess that the National Terrorism Threat Level would be raised from ‘possible to probable’ has received massive mainstream publicity, a spike in talkback radio angst and widespread freelance interpretation about who presents the incipient threat.

Never shy of an opportunity to name the culprit, News Ltd, led by The Australian, declared that ‘the greatest threats are likely to arise from anti-Semitic Islamist extremism’. No need to dog whistle Islamophobia, let’s just put it right out there in an editorial. (The Australian, August 6, 2024.)

Others have taken a much wider aim. Youth radicals, Greens, anti-Israel protesters and ‘Labor defector’ Senator Fatima Payman have all been named as security suspects. Presumably their outspoken views on the conduct of the war against Hamas, now a war against the Palestinian people, have linked their protests, however remotely, to ‘national terrorism’.

Former Howard government boffin and Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Peter Jennings is critical of Burgess. He believes the terrorism threat level should have been raised long ago. Notwithstanding his hawkish views, he correctly analysed the Burgess announcement on its merits. In an Australian op-ed he argued that none of the Prime Minister, the Attorney General nor Burgess himself provided the evidence to support “why the threat level was being changed, or the timing of the announcement or what would happen as a result”. He went on to nail Burgess contradicting himself and confusing his audience, initially saying that “Gaza is not the cause” – then asserting that the war in Gaza was indeed “a significant driver” of protest behaviour in Australia.

Jennings reveals that an intelligence briefing he received after the Burgess/Albanese/ Dreyfus press conference advised him of a causal endemic ‘rise in self-righteousness’ in western democracies ‘driven by social media’. Apparently the government intelligence agent then further confused the threat definition by pointing to a rise in domestic mental health problems, polarised political debates, the normalisation of violence and the prevalence of ‘provocative behaviour’ in the community.

The real issue is the responsibility that should be sheeted home to the Albanese government and the security mandarins who advise them on Gaza. They have all made the wrong call on the war. Promoting the fiction that the conflict between Israel and the people of Palestine began on October 7, the Australian government then weighed in hard on the side of the Netanyahu extremists and their backers in Washington. It was a reflex political response, not a measured assessment based on the facts of the conflict and its antecedents. Despite the ongoing self-censorship of the Australian media, evidenced by a procession of uncritical reports of the Israeli military and a refusal to show the extent of human suffering and destruction in Gaza, many ordinary Australians know the truth of the matter. They instinctively doubt the government’s one-sided explanation of the horror. They know innocent Palestinians with no connection to Hamas are being slaughtered in their thousands. They know Gaza is being bombed to rubble much like the destruction of Dresden and Tokyo in World War Two. They might not care much about the history details, but they care that women and children are being killed every day.

I have yet to meet a single Australian prepared to voice support for the violent fanaticism of the Israeli Prime Minister and his cabinet of war criminals. Most Australians will agree with Israel’s right to defend itself – but many people can also see that Netanyahu is an extremist with a self-serving political agenda. I say he is a terrorist. The exception is Opposition leader Peter Dutton who has been brazen enough to publicly align himself with Netanyahu, thereby disqualifying himself from any future role as the leader of this country. All the usual suspects mentioned above – young people, Greens, anti-Israel protesters and the noble Senator Payman, among others, have been vilified for the overwhelmingly peaceful stands they have taken in opposing the horror of Israel’s war in Gaza.

The chant ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free’ has been wilfully misrepresented as a call to inflict a repeat Holocaust on the Jewish people. It is a lie. So is the wicked conflation of legitimate opposition to the Zionist Israeli government with anti-Semitism. Paint daubed statues and picket lines outside politicians offices have been portrayed as major threats to the fabric of society undermining our much vaunted ‘social cohesion’. No doubt there have been messy actions, sometimes unnecessary rhetoric and occasionally a regrettable obstruction of people going about their ordinary business. Reasonable criticisms to make of some activists perhaps, but labelling this activity as a threat to national security is deliberate overreach. It’s more than that. It’s a gaslighting of legitimate outrage to mask the government’s critical errors of judgement.

The real culprits are the political and security leaders and the media mandarins who blame courageous Australians for the division they themselves have sown. They distorted the facts of the origins of the conflict and they gave cover to Israel and the US while innocent non-combatants were being murdered in Gaza. These people are on the wrong side of history. Perhaps it would be timely for the Albanese government to fall silent on the muddled and divisive ‘terrorism threat’ rhetoric and take time to rethink its confused position on recognition of Palestine. There is no need for a token ‘Special Islamophobia Envoy’ to be appointed. They might also pause to consider the implications of the Chinese government’s Beijing Declaration last month on Palestine. That initiative appears to be a genuine attempt to bring the Palestinian political factions together to provide a basis for formation of a national unity government. That should be seen as a good thing.

Instead of heralding a hike in the national terrorism threat level, our leaders should also quietly reflect on the bloody riots that have afflicted England this past week. The cancer of Islamophobia, inflamed by the Fleet Street tabloids and a social media tycoon who tweets that ‘civil war is inevitable’, provide a salutary lesson for those who seek to equate legitimate protest with terrorism. The lesson can be seen in the actions of anti-racism protesters who have turned out en masse to oppose far-right street thugs who have terrorised immigrants and bashed police. They are the defenders of human rights and decency in civil society. Ultimately our success in confronting the same cancer will have a significant bearing on our social harmony and our standing in the world.