It’s a balancing act on Israel at home and abroad

Separate footage of Hamas detainees, under interrogation, detailing their crimes and the orders they were given, was released, as was the manual they were provided with on how to go about abducting people.

Journalists were, and continue to be, offered bus trips to kibbutzim such a Be’eri, where the worst atrocities took place, to see for themselves the destruction, speak to survivors, and interview members of the Jerusalem-based ZAKA International Rescue Unit, which had the task of collecting the bodies.

“15:30 – Arrival by shielded buses at Kfar Aza,” reads one notification send to the press. “Briefing with IDF Spokesperson’s Unit and local representatives.

“Space is limited! Participating is conditioned by receiving confirmation from the GPO. Bring your own protective equipment.”

Israel’s medical examiners, who are having trouble identifying many of the bodies due either to the extent of the butchery or the victim being burnt alive, have been made available for interview.

Maimon’s message this week was along the same lines. “As I stand here, it is difficult for me to recount the shocking details of this terrorist onslaught. But we cannot look away. We must face this absolute evil to understand why Israel is determined to defeat this murder machine,” he said.

“Beginning at 06:30 on Saturday morning, over 1500 armed terrorists broke into homes and gunned down whole families while they slept. Using steel wire, they bound mother to daughter, grandmother to grandson, and burned them alive. Do not look away from this evil. You must know what happened.

“They decapitated babies with knives, they raped young girls, they cut open a pregnant woman’s belly. They set fire to buildings, burning them to the ground while people were hiding inside.”

This, he said, was Israel’s equivalent to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks inside the US; yet, he argued, Israel was being treated differently.

“For me, as an Israeli, it is hard to understand why the world finds it a bit more challenging to stand behind Israel,” he said. “I don’t recall when the twin towers were attacked that the United States was questioned about their military objectives, nor about the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan.”

Not immediately anyway. But eventually, plenty were questioning America’s intention to invade Iraq, which had neither weapons of mass destruction nor anything to do with 9/11.

The US was warned by both Europe and the Arab world that invading Iraq for no good reason other than that its secular dictator was no longer of use and may turn rogue, would have dire long-term consequences.

“When it is over, if it is over, this war will have horrible consequences,” Egypt’s then-president Hosni Mubarak said a week after the war began in March 2003. “Instead of having one [Osama] bin Laden, we will have 100 bin Ladens.”

Iraq war was Hamas’ gain

One of those consequences was the rise of Hamas in the 2006 elections for the Palestinian territories. Already designated a terrorist organisation by Israel, Hamas viewed the Palestinian Authority as illegitimate due to its negotiations with the Israelis.

With the war in Iraq having morphed into a predictable disaster by inflaming the region, Hamas won 44.5 per cent of the vote, giving it 74 of the 132 seats. The lurking corollary was no more.

Maimon’s lament at the Press Club about Israel losing the PR battle was due in large part to the daily images of the carnage in Gaza caused by the Israeli reprisals as it sought to weaken Hamas’ network before its troops enter the enclave.

Moreover, very few engage in debate over the Israel-Palestine conflict with an open mind. To many, this is not some binary case of righteousness versus evil, as in the case of Ukraine defending itself against Russia.

Often, views are set in stone

Given the long and violent history of the Israeli-Arab conflict, views towards it are pre-formed, polarised and, in most cases, utterly intransigent.

Even when a hideous atrocity is perpetrated, such as that on October 7, views range from outright condemnation to a search for some moral equivalence to, as we saw outside the Sydney Opera House, celebration.

In Australia, it has been a struggle for the government to find the right language as it simultaneously negotiates its own internal dynamics.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong was criticised for failing to grasp the moral clarity of the situation when her initial reaction was to call for restraint from both sides.

From that, she shifted towards standing with Israel and its right to defend itself, saying that Hamas was doing the Palestinians harm, to, more recently, calling on Israel to cool its jets for the good of the Palestinians and its own security.

On Wednesday, she warned: “The way Israel exercises its right to defend itself matters. It matters to civilians throughout the regions, and it matters to Israel’s ongoing security.”

Hers is far from an isolated view, but Israel is not overly fussed about what Australia thinks. The relationship between the Albanese government and Benjamin Netanyahu is not close. At the time of writing, Netanyahu had yet to take a call from the prime minister, although one was planned.

Much of the government’s focus is on maintaining social cohesion at home as the prospect of an escalation increases.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, who recently held a hook-up with her Five Eyes counterparts about the domestic implications of events in Israel, was unfazed when ministers Ed Husic and Anne Aly, both Muslims, took issue with Israel’s actions in Gaza.

The view among O’Neil and her colleagues was that it would help with social cohesion for the Arab community to know it had friends in government.

It’s a balancing act, at home and abroad.