ճNewcastle Herald on June 30 reported on Australia’s proscribing of far-right extremist group Terrorgram, which has been linked to a plot to kill NSW Labor MP Tim Crakanthorp last year.
Terrorgram encourages lone-wolf attacks, and it is reassuring to know it has been identified. The essence of lone-wolf attacks is deception and surprise.
By contrast, Hamas, which the Australian government proscribed in 2001 as a terrorist organisation under the Criminal Code 1995, has never carried out a terror attack. In its more than 40 years of existence, it has exercised its legal right under international law to self-defence against military occupation.
The Zionist Israeli state, by contrast, has an extensive history, over a century, of bombing other countries and extra-judicial killings.
Former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd revealed in his that the Israeli secret service Mossad sent agents with forged Australian passports to Dubai to assassinate a Hamas official in 2010. Israel had been caught using fake Australian passports just seven years earlier and afterwards had signed a promise to Australia not to do it again.
Last year’s “exploding pagers” attacks in Lebanon and Syria killed and wounded many innocent people. If pagers could be made to explode remotely, then what else? Any devices with any form of electronic connectivity could be used.
First Nations Elder Uncle Robbie Thorpe lodged an application on June 10 with the from the list of terrorist organisations. Lawyer Daniel Taylor said he also asked the court to confirm that the application be constitutionally protected as freedom of political communication. This is because when an entity is proscribed, any support or contact with it is a criminal offence. Even talking about the entity in favourable terms can be.
that such a declaration is important because of the “chilling and suppressive effect of the law on the exercise of freedom of communication to oppose genocide”. He added their case “isn’t about protecting our own backs. It’s about the right for all to speak truthfully.”
Their argument has merit, given NSW Police’s injurious treatment of Hannah Thomas and others at a protest outside a SEC Plating factory — which manufactures parts for F-35 warplanes Israel is using to bomb Gaza. More than 50 police were sent to break up a peaceful protest.
Thorpe and Taylor argue that Israel uses the proscription of Hamas as justification of its genocide of Palestinians. Zionist leaders frequently declare all Palestinians, even minors, to be Hamas.
A survey by the Hebrew University’s aChord Center, published on June 11, showed that 64% of Zionists living in the Israeli-occupied territories believe that “there are no innocents” in Gaza.
In Britain, Mousa Abu Marzook, a founder of Hamas, has lodged a for an application to have Hamas delisted. “Despite the British state being the architect of our suffering through its collaboration with the Zionist project for over a century, I am inviting you to reverse that policy today,” he wrote, adding that the intention is to “damage the standing and credibility of Zionism as an ideology”.
“Our struggle is not against Jewish people because of their religion, but against the Zionists who occupy Palestine,” Marzook said. “It is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jewish people with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
“We acknowledge and appreciate the solidarity shown to our people and our struggle by many Jewish people around the world, including within ‘Israel’, whose stance against Zionism exposes the dangerous lie that conflates Judaism with Zionism.”
Marzook said Hamas “rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on national, religious or sectarian grounds”. “Based on our religious and moral values, we clearly stated our rejection to what the Jews were exposed to by Nazi Germany.”
He said Hamas disagrees with “the weaponisation of antisemitism” to silence those opposing apartheid, occupation and genocide.
The pro-Palestine movement in Australia must demand Labor delists Hamas, a political organisation that Palestinians founded during the first Intifada in 1987. It is a legitimate political party, which won 44.45% and most seats in the 2006 Palestinian legislative election. Israel’s genocide would have impacted Gazans’ views on Hamas, but the fact is that they have led the armed resistance to this almost two-year hot war on Gaza.
[Niko Leka is the convenor of Hunter Asylum Seeker Advocacy. He has written this in a personal capacity.]