Pearls and Irritations

In his ongoing campaign to pad and shield criticism of Israel in the conduct of its war of gross bloodletting in Gaza, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rarely misses a beat to attack critics. It has become clear that even mere disagreement from long standing allies suggests wobbliness and tilting in the direction of antisemitism.

With the firebombing of a Melbourne synagogue in the suburb of Ripponlea on December 6, Netanyahu took the chance to give advice and, in no small way, meddle in Australian politics. “The burning of the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne is an abhorrent act of antisemitism,” he stated on the platform X. “I expect the state authorities to use their full weight to prevent such antisemitic acts in future.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was obliging, openly stating that he had “zero tolerance for antisemitism, decried the “deliberate, unlawful attack [which] goes against everything we are as Australians and everything we have worked so hard to build as a nation”. It had “risked lives and is clearly aimed at creating fear in the community.”

Netanyahu, however, was not satisfied with leaving matters at that. He went so far as to offer a theory, unevidenced and unsubstantiated. “Unfortunately, it is impossible to separate this reprehensible act from the extreme anti-Israeli position of the Labor government in Australia, including the scandalous decision to support the UN resolution calling on Israel ‘to bring an end to its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as rapidly as possible’, and preventing a former Israeli minister from entering the country.” It followed that, “Anti-Israel sentiment is antisemitism.”

A spokesman for the Israeli PM’s office larded the theme, reiterating the claim that the UN the claim that the UN vote would, with certainty, “invite more terrorism” and “more antisemitic riots” across Western campuses and city centres “including in Australia”. Australia’s position also meant that it was possibly no longer a “key ally” of the Jewish state. Curiously enough, the  finger pointing at the Albanese government was not shared by Israel’s ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon. “I don’t hold the government, the Albanese government, responsible for the rise (in antisemitism).”

The calculated nonsense from Israel’s perennially opportunistic PM, which merely serves as a means to preserve his country’s impunity, has one implication: the stated exceptionalism of a modern colonising, displacing and dispossessing power that deems its policies above international law. Defenders of international law are, in turn, treated as Jew haters.

And what of the resolution in question? On December 4, Australia joined fray in supporting the UN General Assembly resolution titled the “Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine”. It was the first time since 2001 that Australia had taken such an overt position, despite officially endorsing the two-state solution formula. In words delivered to the General Assembly James Larsen, Australia’s ambassador to the UN, reasoned that, “A two-state solution remains the only hope of breaking the endless cycle of violence, the only hope to see a secure and prosperous future for both peoples.” In doing so, Australia kept company with 156 other countries in the United Nations, including a number of Israel’s allies (Canada and the United Kingdom among them). In isolationist splendour stood the United States.

The resolution recalls the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice from July this year, noting the legal consequences arising from Israeli occupation of the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem and the illegality of Israel’s presence in that territory. Israel had “to ensure that any impediment” arising from its presence “in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the exercise of the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination is brought to an end.”

It also reaffirmed “the illegality of Israeli settlement activities and all other unilateral measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the City of Jerusalem and of the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a whole”. It also followed that Israel should comply with international law along with the findings of the ICJ advisory opinion, including ending its unlawful presence in the territory as rapidly as feasible, cease any new settlement activities and evacuate all settlers from the OPT “and to put an end to its unlawful acts”.

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, who remains scrupulously ignorant of international law, chose to accept, with much gratitude, Netanyahu’s mischievous and malicious interpretation.

Speaking to reporters at Kiama in the south of Sydney, he proposed “that Australia’s changing position in the UN “that Australia’s changing position in the UN will invite more terrorism as suggested by the Israeli Prime Minister’s office.” A vote, accepted by a vast majority at the UN in reiterating unremarkable, long held positions on international law and the poisonous nature of the illegal settlements, had somehow left Australia “less safe”. Albanese needed “to stand up for our values and he needs to do that not just here at home, but also in the United Nations and elsewhere around the world.”

Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Paterson also offered a streaky interpretation in suggesting that the Albanese government had “trashed” the “very important bilateral relationship” Australia had traditionally shared with Israel.

Dutton’s attitude, and those of his rabidly pro-Israeli charges, is not shared regarding attacks on Muslim communities. Their safety is clearly of lesser concern, their victimhood – much evidenced by the sniffy indifference shown to the fate of Palestinians – unremarkable. While members of the Jewish community complain about feeling unsafe since October 7 last year, a feeling that rapidly transmutes into a matter of singular and transcendental importance, Muslim communities in Australia have endured physical violence and abuse over the years that has been seen as all too ordinary.

In 2021, researchers from Charles Sturt University and the Universities of Sydney and Tasmania noted from a survey of 75 participating mosques conducted in 2020 that 58.2% had experienced violence between 2014 and 2019. When specific mosques were reported in the media, and opposition registered to the construction of mosques, even dramatically higher rates of victimisation were experienced. The types of violence experienced by the mosque attendees included arson, physical assault, graffiti, vandalism, verbal abuse, online abuse, hate mail and death threats. The important question to ask here remains: Who, exactly, should be feeling less safe?

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