DAVE SHARMA: Hezbollah protests evidence Labor’s soft approach to radicals is fanning flames of discord

Hezbollah got its start as a terrorist organisation in 1983 when it detonated two truck bombs at military barracks in Beirut, killing hundreds of US and French service members of a peacekeeping mission.

Hassan Nasrallah was part of Hezbollah at the time and took over its leadership in 1992.

With significant Iranian support, Nasrallah turned the terrorist group Hezbollah into one of the largest and most formidable non-state military actors anywhere in the world.

Nasrallah’s leadership has been disastrous for the people of Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s effective veto in the national parliament, which has prevented Lebanon’s constitutional power-sharing arrangements from being implemented, has left the country effectively ungoverned for the past decade.

State finances have been ruined and state institutions rendered dysfunctional. Lebanon’s living standards, once one of the highest in the Middle East, have collapsed.

More than this though, Nasrallah has turned the entirety of Lebanon into a conflict zone.

It was a cross-border raid by Hezbollah into Israel in 2006, with kidnappings and killings, that caused the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.

Hezbollah’s deliberate placement of its military and command infrastructure and weapons systems in civilian homes and neighbourhoods has put much of Lebanon’s population in harm’s way.

And when Hamas launched terrorist attacks against Israel on October 7, Nasrallah immediately joined Lebanon in the fight.

Over the past 11 months, as Israel grappled with Hamas, Hezbollah rained down more than 8800 rockets, missiles and drones on Israel’s northern frontier.

Israel’s north has been rendered uninhabitable. Schools are closed. Businesses shut. Some 60,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes for the past year.

Israel was left with little choice but to act militarily to protect its population and re-establish control over its north.

The past fortnight has seen a rapid and dramatic escalation in Israeli operations against Hezbollah.

Starting with the remote detonation of Hezbollah communication devices, it culminated on Friday with a series of devastating strikes targeted against Hezbollah’s military headquarters and leadership.

Hassan Nasrallah was among the casualties.

No one who cares seriously for Lebanon’s future or the welfare of the people of Lebanon should be mourning Nasrallah.

Like the leaders of Hamas, Nasrallah has brought nothing but misery and devastation upon his people.

And the success of Israel’s decapitation strike against Hezbollah’s leadership makes the prospects of an Israeli ground invasion, and the inevitable civilian casualties that would accompany this, less likely.

Over the weekend, we witnessed the perverse and grotesque sight of protestors in Sydney and Melbourne waving the flag of Hezbollah and holding portraits of Nasrallah aloft.

These protestors were committing a clear crime by publicly displaying the symbols of a prohibited terrorist organisation.

For too long, state and federal Labor governments have turned a blind eye to the increasingly intimidatory nature of these protests, refusing to condemn them.

They have deployed a heavy police presence — at considerable taxpayer expense — to serve as official escorts of these protests, but not to enforce the law.

Surely now Labor’s federal and state ministers must take action and demand their law enforcement authorities investigate and press charges.

In New York over the weekend, as the Middle East lurched on the precipice of a wider conflict, Foreign Minister Penny Wong gave a speech to the United Nations that was completely disconnected from international reality.

While other world leaders are focused on the conflict at hand, and whilst Hamas remains in control of Gaza, Wong thought it a sensible time to declare the urgency of Israel negotiating territorial compromises with a terrorist entity.

This is the same Labor Government that summoned Israel’s ambassador recently to expressly warn him that Australia would not support Israel in a war with Hezbollah.

It was an unfriendly and misguided act that doubtless gave some comfort and encouragement to the weekend’s protestors.

But it reflects an approach that sees this federal Labor government formulate policy on the Middle East with a solely domestic audience in mind, which is having two profoundly detrimental effects.

Labor’s continued softly-softly approach to radical domestic elements, driven by electoral concerns over the Greens and the Muslim Vote movement, is only fanning the flames of discord.

The result is high community tensions in Australia, a serious erosion of our social cohesion, and an outburst of anti-Semitism.

And internationally, Labor’s sole concern with a domestic audience has turned Australia into a curious irrelevance on one of the most pressing international security issues of the day.

Dave Sharma is a Liberal Senator for NSW