Australians may smirk at the embarrassment of Donald Trump’s neophyte administration over “Signalgate”. Particularly those old enough to remember how our allies punished Canberra for past intelligence scandals and pushed us to set up ASIO.

But our government, then as now, is complicit with the US in Yemen, and it’s no laughing matter.

In March, the US vice-president, the national security adviser and their defence, state, CIA, and national intelligence colleagues shared on Signal their plans with “JG” ‒ Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the conservative Atlantic magazine ‒ to attack the Houthis. Which the US did on 15 March, when F18s struck the house of a single Houthi “terrorist target”, killing many civilians, including eight children. Drone strikes, bombs and Tomahawk missiles followed, in an onslaught the Signal group celebrated as a success.

Goldberg revealed that he was informed of plans about “weapons packages, targets and timing” shortly before the US attacks took place. Not a surprise: Goldberg is an insider with form as a war propagandist and a  former IDF prison guard , who published allegations of Saddam Hussein’s links to al-Qaeda. The possibility that he was allowed into the Trump whispering gallery and those of its predecessors is hard to disregard. But Goldberg had the story, and eventually the Atlantic published all of it.

J.D. Vance justified the disproportionate onslaught on Yemen — which continued, with the US launching  65 airstrikes in 24 hours at the end of March — claiming “Nobody knows [or cares] who the Houthis are”.  The rebels suspended their pro-Palestinian attacks during the brief “ceasefire” in Gaza. As expected, Israel’s onslaught continued, and the Houthis resumed their campaign. Trump, who claims to be interested in deals not wars (unless Israel is involved), then launched his administration’s first war. Yemen’s blockade of shipping to Israel is “terrorism”, while the American and allied response is justified as securing their geostrategic interests in the Middle East. For Trump, that includes the whole territory of Gaza.

Australian Governments designated Hezbollah in 2021, Hamas in 2022, and the Houthis (Ansar Allah) in 2024 as terrorist organisations. Australia in 2022 listed Hizab Tahrir al-Sham (founded in Syria in 2017), presumably because that then suited Washington. But HTS has now become the ruling regime in Damascus, with US support: so does it remain a terrorist, and therefore enemy, organisation for Australia? Australian terrorist listings continue indefinitely unless the AFP minister decides otherwise.

A terrorist organisation is unsurprisingly defined by Australia as one that plans, finances and carries out terrorist acts. But in the absence of an international definition of terrorism or terrorist acts, these have come to mean what our enemies do to us, not what we do to them. Under the American-invented “rules-based international order” the US lists terrorist organisations and gets other nations to do the same, whether they pose a threat or not.

Australia had a local “terrorist” scare when an explosive-filled caravan with an antisemitic note was found in Dural, NSW. Premier Chris Minns  told ABC radio on 30 January it was “a potentially mass casualty event. There’s only one way of calling this out and that is terrorism”. Prime Minister Albanese agreed with Chris Minns: “It was designed to harm people. And that’s the very definition”. In December, Albanese and Opposition Leader Dutton had already asserted their belief that the attack on the Adass Israel synagogue in Ripponlea was an act of terrorism ( ABC , The Age ). “Quite clearly”, Albanese said, “terrorism is something that is aimed at creating fear in the community”. [My italics] Because the synagogue event was designed to do that, Albanese “from his personal perspective” said it fulfilled his “definition of terrorism”. Which for him, meant harming people and creating fear in the community, nothing more.

The Australian Federal Police admitted they knew soon after the 19 January 2025 caravan discovery that the crime scene was likely staged . But the NSW Government continued to propagate it as a legitimate threat and progressed three bills through Parliament in response to antisemitic crimes. Then on 10 March, the AFP and NSW Police stated that  all of the so-called antisemitic graffiti and firebombing attacks in the greater Sydney region, from November to January, were also fabricated by unnamed “foreign sources”.

In 2005, then UN secretary-general Kofi Annan stated that a terrorist act is one “intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians and non-combatants, with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organisation to do or abstain from any act”. This adds the motive that is missing from Albanese’s definition. But the UN and the US don’t consider nations themselves as terrorist actors. In 2015, an American expert on Palestine and Israel, John V. Whitbeck, pointed out that terrorism was always made to appear motivated by “a hatred of our freedoms or some other form of blind, mindless malevolence or sick desire to kill innocent people for the sake of it”. Numerous Israelis have stated that malevolence and desire to kill Palestinians are their own motives.

Even before the Hamas “terror” outbreak on 7 October 2023, Israeli children were indoctrinated to believe that all Palestinians are terrorists. The loaded term was familiar to Uri Avnery, a former Knesset member, writing in 2014: “When Palestinians attack Israeli soldiers serving in the West Bank, it’s ’terror’ but when Jews attack innocent Palestinians, it’s ‘politically motivated crime’, ‘price-tag action’ or ‘hilltop youth violence’.” Avery believed that ignoring the serious implications of Jewish terror threatened the state of Israel itself. “It must be clearly stated: There is Jewish terror!”

Evidently, states are capable of terrorism. Doesn’t harming Palestinian civilians and making them fearful constitute state terror, committed by Israel and any other nation that contributes to its attacks on Gaza? Hamas, the elected rulers of Gaza, are listed by Australia as terrorists, and Israel always calls them terrorists to justify attacking them. Should not the IDF also be designated by Australia as a terrorist organisation? By not doing so and continuing to export weapons to Israel, is Australia complicit in state terrorism? “If Australian anti-terror laws are to be considered principled and fair, they must apply equally to all organisations that meet the criteria, including state military forces where appropriate,” Bernadette Zaydan argued in P&I.

Before Australian authorities scare people and exacerbate division and prejudice, they should be better informed about who the real terrorists are.