CAMERON MILNER: Peace for Gaza? Not while Hamas holds the power and the megaphone

They say truth is the first casualty of war, and Hamas’ war on Israel is no different.

The facts of the atrocities of October 7 2023, are there for all to see, yet so many of the political class on the left are turning a wilful eye away and instead embracing a post-truth version of events.

Propaganda has always been a weapon used in wars, and it is being deployed adroitly by Hamas.

The rallies in Melbourne and Sydney on Sunday are part of a wider campaign supported by the radical left to attempt to delegitimise Israel and its Western allies.

We shouldn’t be surprised that the lead organiser of the Sydney rally is an avowed Marxist and serial protester who lives to question our democracy and attack our way of life.

After all, Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China are such bastions of personal freedoms and human rights. Both countries built on Marxist teachings with a modern-day dose of unelected oligarchy.

It was telling that the Melbourne rallies were violent and abusive to our men and women in blue and that the Sydney rally had posters comparing Netanyahu to Hitler and others glorifying Ayatollah Khomeini.

The genocidal chant of “from the river to the sea, Palestine is all you’ll see” was chanted by a cult of Israel haters on the Harbour Bridge.

We had the usual gaggle of celebrities, including Julian Assange, Bob Carr, Mehreen Faruqi and serial backbench complainant Ed Husic at the Harbour Bridge meeting as if somehow any of their actions could get the world any closer to freeing Gaza of Hamas and ending the war that has displaced so many civilians.

None of these people lifted a finger when more than 1200 people were raped, murdered, burnt alive or taken hostage. This confected outrage flows all one way and has nothing to do with solving the source of the problem for Palestinians living under the tyrannical Hamas governance.

The left, however, are very good at spinning a media message that barely hides their contempt for Jewish Australians, who have been abused, their schools vandalised, and places of worship attacked.

The worst slur is that there’s a modern-day Holocaust occurring in Gaza and the outrageous accusation that Israel is acting like Nazi Germany.

To the survivors of the actual Holocaust, this is just the most obscene misuse of the term and seeks to denigrate and re-write the actual history of industrial-scale genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany.

Penny Wong went with Mark Dreyfus earlier this year to Auschwitz and recommitted to remembering the actual history of 6 million Jews losing their lives in the actual Holocaust.

Yet we have politicians such as Husic, Carr and Faruqi standing by as comments are made that seek to draw an equivalence between that horrific crime against humanity and Gazans being denied access to aid by the Hamas militia.

Far from the claim that this was a “bridge to peace”, this was little more than a one-eyed outpouring of hate directed at Israel.

Much of this was in the same vein as the disgusting “celebrations” at the Opera House the day after the October 7 massacre of innocents.

In the midst of the worst anti-Semitism seen in Australia in decades, our Prime Minister wants to get a return phone call from the Israeli Prime Minister, no doubt so he can do more virtue signalling on Gaza.

The Israeli PM may well use a call to rightfully raise just how little is being done by Anthony Albanese to protect Jewish Australians.

Maybe Albanese could actually visit Israel and, even 21 months too late, visit the site of the October 7 Hamas atrocities rather than mouthing platitudes from the sidelines.

It’s a visit that has been made by leaders, including Josh Frydenberg and Mark Dreyfus, but flatly refused by Penny Wong who chose instead to take happy snaps with members of the Palestinian Authority.

The inconvenient truth for Albanese and those who marched on Sunday is that they have no plan to end the reign of Hamas in Gaza.

The recognition of Palestinian statehood immediately would simply further legitimise the control of the murderous terrorists in control.

The Palestinian Authority isn’t in control of Gaza and Hamas has doubled down, saying they intend to stay. That’s the truth of the matter.

The world does need to act to rescue Gazans from further suffering, but that isn’t achieved by moralising calls from Albanese or worse pronouncements on Palestinian statehood from French President Emmanuel Macron or UK PM Sir Keir Starmer.

It isn’t achieved by headline-grabbing plans for unconditional statehood for Palestine in which freedom from Hamas is nothing more than wishful thinking.

It’s easy to buy a keffiyeh at a stall and go for a walk across the Harbour Bridge while someone beside you holds a hateful placard. The much harder act is to acknowledge that Hamas has weaponised the suffering of Gazans in an attempt to stay in power.

While the world’s leaders rightly want to see more aid delivered, none of that has helped by legitimising Hamas or thinking Palestinian statehood is a quick fix.

After all Russia, Iran and North Korea are all members of the United Nations and are hardly model participants in a more peaceful world.

That Hamas, not Israel, is the aggressor is the inconvenient truth that lays at the very heart of the Gaza issue.

It’s a truth we cannot afford to ignore if we want to truly bring peace to the region, both for Gazans and Israelis.