Tragedies and mistakes do happen in war.
Simon Birmingham, April 7, 2024
There are some basic standards in public life, some lowest common denominator principles, the support of which are regarded as necessary to be a contender to political or public office. One is the protection of Australians and the pursuit for accountability of anyone who does them harm.
The Israel Defense Forces personnel who murdered Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom, along with six other aid workers, in a deliberate and repeated series of drone strikes, despite knowing full well what they were firing missiles at, fall into the latter category. Anyone pretending to political office should not merely be appalled at Frankcom’s murder but aggressive in their demands for justice and accountability for the perpetrators.
After an initially wishy-washy response, the government is slowly edging toward rejecting Israel’s attempts to explain any of the murders as just another fog-of-war-shit-happens accident, and today is appointing a special adviser with appropriate expertise to drive Australia’s role in the promised Israeli investigation.
But the Coalition is uninterested in any accountability for Frankcom’s murderers. Instead, it is happy to take Israel’s part and dismiss the need for any further action. The Coalition is taking the side of a foreign power that murdered an Australian.
Peter Dutton took this approach immediately last week, refusing to condemn the killing and insisting that the real issue was Hamas. “Where innocent people are losing their lives in the Middle East at the moment, is as a direct result of Hamas’ attacks on the 7th of October,” Dutton said. He did not mention Israel at all.
And yesterday the Coalition’s shadow foreign affairs minister repeatedly and at length did the same.
Asked over and over about the killing and Israel’s response by the ABC’s David Speers, Simon Birmingham would only offer that it was “a tragedy” — a phrase Birmingham repeated over and over, as if saying it constantly would ward off any awkward questions. Birmingham wouldn’t be drawn on Israel’s response. “Unlike Hamas, Israel does have processes and they have been stepping through those processes of investigation. They’re not complete yet … we want to see that there is clear action taken in terms of understanding how this tragedy occurred.”
What did Birmingham want from Israel? He wanted it to “look carefully at the procedural failures that occurred”. So, despite Birmingham insisting Israel was still “stepping through those processes”, he was happy to declare it a mere “procedural failure” and leave it to it.
Even Speers, the preeminent both-sides-of-both-sides political journalist, found this inadequate. “You still want more answers and more action?”
“Well,” said Birmingham, “we want to understand how procedures will change. And we shouldn’t let the context of this conflict be lost. And that context is that you have in Hamas…”
“Israel has stood aside two officers, three commanders have been reprimanded. Is that sufficient action?” asked Speers.
“There are continuing processes,” was all Birmingham could offer.
Was the murder a breach of international law? “None of these points of process and equivalence apply to Hamas, who killed an Australian, along with, of course, 1,200 other people in barbaric circumstances. They don’t have transparency. They don’t have processes…”
Should Israel take more care when it comes to the protection of civilian lives in Gaza?
“Let’s start by again noting that Israel takes more care than Hamas … That is something that often seems to get overlooked in the public debate at present, that Hamas continues to hold those hostages…”
Asked about Labor’s pending appointment of a special adviser to lead Australia’s end of the investigation, Birmingham wouldn’t even back that. And he wouldn’t admit that Israel should take greater care with civilian lives, despite repeated probing by Speers. “There was not conflict in Gaza on October 6th, Hamas instigated that…”
In other words, forget the murder of Zomi Frankcom. It’s Hamas, Hamas, Hamas — which Birmingham mentioned a dozen times. Like Dutton, at no stage was Birmingham willing to criticise Israel.
There have been some justified complaints about the media focus on Frankcom when more than 30,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered by the IDF. As always, the media loves a local angle to any international event. But the murder has served to bring home to Australians the horrific nature of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, and the remorseless killing that goes along with it.
It also brings into play that core principle of public life, that it must be about protecting Australians and holding accountable anyone who harms them.
The IDF murdered an Australian. The Coalition under Dutton has no interest in holding Israel accountable for the murder. It reflexively has taken the position of supporting a foreign power over an Australian, a foreign power guilty not merely of the murder of an Australian but of ethnic cleansing, the systematic destruction of the basic infrastructure of life in Gaza, the extensive and arbitrary killing of civilians, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war.
That’s where the Coalition now stands — with Israel against Australia, even when it murders Australians.
