Terrorism designations are politically motivated
For the first month of Israel’s current war on Lebanon, Australian media and politicians were focused not on the thousands killed or the more than a million civilians displaced, but on attacking anti-war demonstrators and denouncing anti-war activists as supporters of terrorism. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton both called for the cancellation of pro-Palestine protests scheduled for 6 and 7 October and railed against the small number of demonstrators who brought Hezbollah flags to protests against Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon.
In a doorstop interview, Albanese said about the protests, “There’s no place for mourning a terrorist leader, and we’re very concerned about some of the terrorist symbols”. Meanwhile, Labor’s home affairs minister, Tony Burke, threatened to cancel the visas of any non-citizens caught waving a Hezbollah flag, and then cancelled the visa of Khaled Beydoun, a law professor from Arizona State University. The reason for the cancellation was a 7 October speech in which Beydoun noted the rise of global solidarity with the Palestinians, saying, “Today is not fully a day of mourning. In many respects, today is also a day that marks considerable celebration, considerable progress, and in some respects, considerable privilege. The level of global literacy around what’s taking place in Palestine has exponentially risen”. Burke and the media smeared Beydoun, disingenuously asserting that he was celebrating Hamas’ 7 October attack.
Of course, there were no words of condemnation for those cheering on Israel’s murderous attacks on civilians in Lebanon, nor the intensification of genocide taking place in Gaza. The Australian political class dutifully fell in behind Israel’s propaganda machine by crapping on about Israel’s “right to defend itself” and joining in the hysteria about protesters supporting the Lebanese political group Hezbollah.
Hezbollah’s External Security Organisation has been on the Australian government’s list of “terrorist organisations” for some time. In late 2021, the listing was changed from the External Security Organisation to simply Hezbollah, meaning the entire organisation is now considered terrorist. This happened on the watch of then Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, under pressure from supporters of Israel.
This decision was based on only seven submissions to the parliamentary committee responsible, five of which were from pro-Israel organisations or individuals, including the Zionist Federation of Australia and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. One of the two individual submissions was from Emmanuele Ottolenghi from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, DC, who wrote an article last year titled “Barbarians at the Gate” in which he argued that the notion of Palestinian statehood must be destroyed. “The barbarians must be vanquished”, was his grossly racist conclusion.
Whatever criticisms leftists can make of it, Hezbollah is not a terrorist organisation. It is a mass Shia political party which holds 13 seats in the Lebanese parliament, and was founded to resist the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The party functions as a second state in the south of the country and in Dahieh, a large area of Beirut. Hezbollah runs a large social welfare apparatus and has interests in numerous businesses, especially construction companies. Its armed wing is the world’s largest non-state military apparatus, and, rather than carrying out terrorist attacks, it uses standard military and guerrilla tactics.
The Australian government’s list of “terrorist acts” Hezbollah has allegedly been responsible for illustrates this. There are nine, and none involve any confirmed casualties. Three are public threats made by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah against US and Israeli military targets in response to violations of Lebanese airspace and the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, none of which were carried through. Two involve legal cases brought against individuals in the US, and one involves the provision of support to Palestinian groups. Only one involves an actual act of violence—the firing of a missile at an Israeli tank in September 2019 that Israel says caused no deaths or injuries.
Even with highly motivated Israel supporters and the resources of Australian intelligence at their disposal, this is the best that Dutton and the Liberal government could come up with. But the fact that the listing was a politically motivated sham doesn’t make it any less effective at smearing, threatening and intimidating opponents of Israel’s atrocities. And it doesn’t prevent someone who is legitimately protesting the invasion of Lebanon—a sovereign country—and who also supports a mainstream Lebanese political party potentially being thrown into jail.
But while it might not be accurately described as terrorist, Hezbollah is nevertheless a reactionary organisation that should be opposed by progressives. It has been part of the neoliberal regime in Lebanon, which has made working-class people pay for the economic crisis the country is facing. It also helped sabotage the investigation into Beirut’s port explosion in 2018. Its military wing played a counter-revolutionary role in the Syrian revolution in alliance with the dictator Bashar al-Assad, and it helped to suppress mass democratic protests across Lebanon in 2019 and 2020. So there are plenty of reasons to oppose Hezbollah, but resistance against Israel is not one of them. Referring to the group as a terrorist organisation just plays into the narrative that Western governments have long attempted to create, in which Middle Eastern and Islamist politics poses a uniquely dangerous threat to those in the West.
Israel, on the other hand, is undeniably a terrorist state. Extreme violence toward, intimidation and massacres of civilians are Israel’s speciality. It has made no secret of its calculated atrocities and the intent behind them in Gaza over the last year. “Nothing happens by accident”, an Israeli military source told Tel Aviv-based +972 Magazine. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed ... Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
In September, Israel detonated thousands of bombs as part of its efforts to wipe out the entire leadership of Hezbollah, killing and injuring numerous civilians in the process. Israeli forces also assassinated Nasrallah and have killed the two main leaders of Hamas. Assassination of political leaders is against international law and meets the definition of terrorism. Israel’s terrorist activities have extended to manufacturing fake Australian passports to aid in assassinations of political leaders. But no Australian government officials are threatening supporters of this terrorist regime with deportation or arrest.
Quite the opposite. Those who leave Australia to fight in the Israel Defense Forces have been celebrated and mourned by Australian mainstream media. In December last year, the Australian Centre for International Justice quoted an estimate that 1,000 Australians have recently or are currently serving in the IDF. The government and opposition are not drumming up concern about these activities, nor warning those involved that they may face criminal charges when they return—which, if they are part of the genocide, they should. There is no outrage about them from the political class: no parliamentary tirades, doorstop speeches or livid articles in the mainstream press about what a threat these people are to social cohesion. Taking part in a genocide is acceptable activity to the Australian establishment. Waving a yellow flag is not.
One Sydney man wrote a piece in February for the Australian Jewish Times on the months he spent fighting for the IDF in frontline combat in Gaza, in which he claimed to have “eliminated” multiple people referred to as “threats” and “Hamas terrorists”. A photograph attached to the article pictures the man inside a child’s bedroom, kneeling among the cushions in combat gear with another Israeli soldier, both carrying guns. Not only did he kill multiple people in the course of an active genocide, but the man also provided security detail inside Gaza for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom the International Criminal Court prosecutor filed a request for an arrest warrant related to crimes against humanity. “The contrast between my recent leisure time on Bondi Beach”, he wrote, “just a few weeks prior, and the responsibility of safeguarding the Prime Minister of Israel was stark and surreal”. More thoroughly legitimate activity in the eyes of the Australian political class.
The government, opposition and mainstream media justify the threats against Hezbollah supporters on the basis that “we don’t want foreign conflicts being brought into Australia”. But it is the Australian government and its slavish support for Israel that import foreign conflicts or, more accurately, make them local conflicts. It is the Australian government’s complicity in genocide that creates the imperative for people who value human rights to raise their voices and protest.
“Not in our name!” was the rallying cry of those who marched against the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The same applies today. What is happening in Gaza and Lebanon is not a “foreign” conflict. It is an illegal military campaign enabled, funded and armed by the Western powers, including Australia. We have a duty to resist it. And so long as Hezbollah continues to be the main force fighting to repel Israel from Lebanon, people will support it and anti-war activists should defend their right to do so in defiance of racist and politically motivated anti-terror laws.
