One year since October 7: Israel’s leadership defies the odds & puts the West to shame

Renee Heath I October 2024 I Spectator Australia

Today marks one year since the largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. The horrors of October 7 will become one of modern history’s darkest moments; a grim realisation of what extreme racism and fanatical hatred can inspire.

Sadly, for many Israelis, the horror continues. One year from October 7 and there are still 100 hostages in Gaza. More than 60,000 people have been displaced from their homes by thousands of Hezbollah rockets fired indiscriminately into northern Israel. Hundreds of Houthi missiles and drones have been deployed from Yemen and Iran has fired hundreds of ballistic missiles.

The thought of one small nation surrounded by multiple terrorist armies, rogue states and fascist regimes united in their cause to annihilate the Jewish state is the making of a true David-and-Goliath battle. But perhaps the most perplexing enemy Israel is confronting is the West.

The West once supported Israel, the only democratic nation in the Middle East. Now its leaders sprout criticism and make unrealistic demands of Israel from the luxury of their Western podiums.

Consider the equivocations of our own Foreign Minister Penny Wong. Her reaction to the October 7 attack was to call for Israel’s restraint, implying a vengeful targeting of Palestinian civilians. She then called for Palestinian statehood and later urged Israel to negotiate a territorial compromise with Hamas – a nice way to reward and legitimise terrorism. Wong’s silence was deafening when Hezbollah indiscriminately launched 7,000 rockets into Israel, but she called for a ceasefire as soon as Israel responded.

The precision of Israel’s pager attack showed meticulous planning and intent to only target Hezbollah terrorists, and with great success. Yet Wong could not recognise this. Instead, she simplistically said she didn’t wish to see violence and was concerned about regional escalation. Britain and America also warned Israel against escalation. Thankfully, Israel ignored the West’s wisdom and instead took out Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

These platitudes are easy for political leaders to sprout when their citizens haven’t been raped, murdered, and taken hostage. It’s easy to lecture Israel about civilian casualties when they’re not up against an enemy embedded in hospitals, schools, and dense civilian populations. The West hasn’t acknowledged the mammoth task of neutralising the constant threat of missile strikes, drone strikes and ground attacks that would repeat the atrocities of October 7.

Ambiguity in the face of evil has not gone unnoticed, it has emboldened radicals. Under the weak leadership of the West, radical clerics preach hatred and violent demonstrations have continued on our streets for a year. Greens MPs and supporters claim ‘peace and non-violence’, but are at the centre of these protests and university encampments that fly the flag of terrorists and chant violent threats. They claim to embody tolerance but have in fact become the engine room for antisemitic hate in Australia.

All the while, the burden of the consequence is not felt by the terrorist supporters and their political sympathisers, but by the Jewish population who have largely gone into hiding as antisemitic crimes skyrocket. This is a shameful injustice.

But it gets worse. The West’s support of terrorism is not just symbolic, it is also practical – in the form of millions of dollars to the United Nations’ Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). It is my view that this agency is a recruitment ground for Hamas and global aid is its source of income.

According to Israeli security documents, 2,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza are active members of a terrorist organisation. Eighteen UNRWA school principals are believed to be combat militants and 32 UNRWA facilities host terrorist infrastructure or are located near it. Israeli hostages were held captive by UNRWA staff. Israel has released evidence of the Hamas takeover of UNRWA and stated the organisation is beyond repair.

Australia and other Western nations suspended funding while the UN investigated. Before its conclusion, Wong announced she would resume funding to UNRWA because somehow she believed ‘it was not a terrorist organisation’, and there would be safeguards ‘to protect Australian taxpayer funding’.

Since that reinstatement of funding, the UN has found that nine of its staff were likely directly involved in the October 7 massacre and has terminated their contracts – a conservative figure considering this investigation was internal.

The thought that taxes of hardworking Australians fund terrorism in the Middle East is sickening. The thought that food and essential supplies are being intercepted by Hamas before getting to desperate Palestinians is infuriating. Before we point the finger at Iran funding its anti-Israel proxy armies across the Middle East, we need to first address the West’s funding of terrorist organisations through corrupted international aid.

A year on from this war and the contrasting outcomes in the West and the Middle East paint a clear picture of how nations rise and fall on the quality of their leadership. The weak leaders of the West have given rise to social unrest, division and extremism, while the decisive leadership of Israel has seen it withstand attacks on seven fronts and begin to subdue the terrorist threat.

It has all but extinguished Hezbollah as we know it. It has rescued 100 hostages and taken out high profile terrorist leaders. There are retaliatory marches in Melbourne and Sydney, but dancing on the streets of Iran, Lebanon, and Syria as people risk their lives to celebrate the end of Nasrallah’s brutal reign.

Nobody wants war. But peace is not the absence of war, it is the fruit of justice. We don’t get peace by turning a blind eye to evil and injustice. During this war, the incredible hope of Israel is that this small standalone nation that has long been the target of multiple terror groups and rogue states, was re-established to rescue the Jewish people. Now it’s in a position to liberate the civilians of the Middle East as it displaces the complex power structures of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and dictatorial regimes across the region. It doesn’t deserve the West’s lecturing; it deserves our support for achieving what we have not.

Member for Eastern Victoria Region, Renee Heath