Labor playing a dangerous double game when it comes to Israel and Gaza
.svg)
This article first appeared in The Daily Telegraph on 20 August 2024.
When Australia’s National Terrorism Threat Level was last at ‘Probable’, the dominant risk was of a home-grown terrorist attack, inspired or directed by the Islamic State movement that was then terrorising the Middle East.
At that time, Israel was a valuable source of intelligence to Australia about potential threats from the Middle East.
Israel provided information, for instance, that helped Australian authorities detect and prevent an Islamic State plot to smuggle an explosive device onto an Etihad Airways flight departing Australia in 2017.
Israel also helped Australia identify and keep track of our ‘foreign fighters’: Australians who had become radicalised and went to join the Islamic State ‘caliphate’, and then tried to inspire other Australians to support their cause.
Australia’s security cooperation with Israel, in short, helped improve our level of protection against domestic security threats. Lives were saved in Australia as a result. I know — I was Australia’s ambassador to Israel at the time.
Announcing the heightened threat level, ASIO’s Director-General Mike Burgess was clear that today’s Gaza conflict was a “significant driver”. He warned that an escalation of conflict in the Middle East would “inflict further strain” on Australia’s security situation.
The risk of the current Israel-Hamas conflict expanding into a broader regional war is now the greatest it has been since the 7 October Hamas terrorist attacks.
Iranian terrorist proxy groups in the region, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, have become bolder and more active in recent weeks in directly targeting Israel. Israel has responded in kind, with missions conducted well beyond its usual theatres of operation.
With the killing of senior Hezbollah and Hamas figures in Beirut and Tehran in the past month, Iran is now threatening severe retaliation against Israel, action that could well tip the region into a much broader conflict, involving outside powers.
One of the most valuable assets we have for dealing with such a scenario is a strong and close relationship of trust with Israel, so we can access real-time intelligence and liaise to protect and if necessary evacuate Australian citizens from the region.
With tensions rising again in the Middle East, and the security environment in Australia degrading, close intelligence cooperation with Israel is more vital than ever to protect Australia and Australian interests.
But instead the Albanese Labor government is bent on intentionally trashing Australia’s relationship with Israel.
Earlier this month we had Foreign Minister Penny Wong misrepresent the conclusions of former Defence Chief Mark Binksin’s report into the tragic death of World Central Kitchen (WCK) worker Zomi Frankcom.
Rather than provide the context and explanations that Binskin’s diligent report revealed, Wong ignored these and repeated her accusation that the strike on the WCK convoy was intentional, rather than the result of explicable factors as revealed by Binskin.
For Israel, who co-operated fully with Binskin’s investigation, it was a gratuitous and inexplicable insult.
At the same time as it consciously seeks to downgrade our relationship with Israel, the Labor Government is showing cavalier disregard for Australian security in another way.
By issuing visitor visas to large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza, processed with inordinate speed, and with very little in the way of background and security checks, the Labor government is playing loose with Australia’s national security.
When we have brought people to Australia from war zones in the past, be it Afghanistan in 2021 or Iraq and Syria in 2016, we undertook extensive screening and vetting beforehand.
The Coalition government at the time was frequently criticised for how long the process took.
But we made no apology for putting the security interests of Australians first, and taking every precaution possible to ensure we were not unwittingly issuing visas to sympathisers or members of Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or Islamic State.
This time around, the Labor government seems to be issuing visas first — frequently within 24 hours — and only asking the critical questions later.
Why is it that many visas have been issued and then subsequently cancelled?
And why are people leaving a conflict zone being issued temporary visitor visas, when most have no likelihood of returning, rather than protection visas, which involve more exhaustive and detailed security checks?
The pattern here is one of the Labor government allowing domestic political considerations to subordinate important decisions that go to national interest.
Labor’s growing hostility towards Israel is harming this valuable security relationship. Labor’s casual approach to resettling people from a conflict zone, with little in the way of the normal security checks, is risking internal security and social cohesion.
On both counts Labor, driven by elements of its electoral base, and not wanting to be politically outflanked by the Greens, is putting its domestic political interests ahead of those of the nation.
