Only one nation has no civilians

Michael Danby is Labor MHR for Melbourne Ports

Australians reacted with anger at the news of the terrorist bombings in London on 7 July, in which 52 innocent people were killed and over 700 injured, including several Australians. But after reading 20 pages of coverage in the Age, Australian and Herald Sun, I wondered how public opinion in Britain, and Australia, would have reacted if the jihadi terrorists bombers in Britain had killed 9,500 people and wounded more than 60,000 over the past five years.

That is how many people would have been killed and injured if Britain had been subjected to the same kind of terrorist bombing campaign that Israel has endured since the launching of the “second intifada” in 2000, adjusted to allow for the fact that Britain’s population is nine times greater than Israel’s.

Many commentators have rightly lauded the stoicism of the British public in returning to the Tube and the buses immediately after the 7 July bombings. But how stoic would the British public have been in the face of 9,500 deaths? Would British economic growth, science and technology and tourism be booming, as Israel’s are? Perhaps the positive lesson is that if more terrorism comes, Israel has shown that a democratic society can survive these assaults: and not just survive, but blossom.

Like many children of European refugees who found a safe haven in Australia, I consider myself an Anglophile. This does nothing to assuage my anger at the double standards of the many Anglo-Australian journalists whose coverage of Israel fails the most elementary test of fairness.

The first Australian victim of suicide bombing was Malki Roth, but “our” ABC have never done an interview with her family – unlike the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Die Zeit, The Washington Post, National Public Radio and The Christian Science Monitor.

The former ABC correspondent Tim Palmer never went to Netanya when suicide bombers struck a Passover seder, killing 29 people.The Age and Sydney Morning Herald correspondent Ed O’Loughlin never goes to Sderot when Hamas madmen murder civilians there with their Kassam rockets, at the very time when Israel is trying to withdraw from Gaza.

Where was O’Loughlin’s report of the Netanya mall attack? It’s only a two-hour drive from the protected Anglo journalists’ haven of Abu Tor or the cozy Arabist denizens of the American Colony Hotel. How about a bit of a fair go, Ed? Jump in your car next time the jihadis strike, or better yet take an Egged bus.

The fact is that however horrific the suffering inflicted on the United States, Spain, Australia and Britain by recent terrorist bombings, proportionate to population Israel has suffered more than any other country. Since September 2000 Israel’s civilian centres have been subjected to a relentless campaign of suicide bombings on buses, outside restaurants and clubs, in streets and shopping malls. All have been aimed at “soft” targets, usually crowds of civilians in public places, and have disproportionately killed women and children.

This makes the difference in media coverage of the bombing campaign against Israel, when compared with the coverage of the London bombings, all the more striking. Even Australian commercial media persists in calling the jihadis of Hamas and Islamic Jihad “militants” rather than “terrorists.” This has no justification in fact: a militant is a person who campaigns vigorously for a political cause. Someone who seeks to blow up civilians in the street with a car-bomb is a terrorist, and in any other context would be called one.

Surely it is an affront to all Australians that faceless ABC bureaucrats insist on guidelines in their “style guide” demanding the use of “militant” rather than “terrorist” when Jewish innocents in Israel are the victims. It is time this was more starkly exposed.

The debate about Israel’s response to terrorism takes on surreal proportions when seen in the light of these figures. How would Britain, France or Germany respond to a bombing campaign in their cities which killed 9,500 civilians – particularly if the perpetrators were as well known as the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are known to everybody?

Would they cavil at eliminating the organisers of these campaigns, as Israel eliminated Sheikh Yassin and Dr Rantissi? Would they scruple at raiding whatever territories these campaigns were being launched from, finding and destroying the bomb factories, and dealing with potential bombers before they had the chance to kill? Of course not – they wouldn’t hesitate to take these steps.

Above all, would any country which was being attacked in the way that Israel has been attacked over the past five years argue against the construction of a barrier to prevent the bombers getting through to their cities? I don’t think so. Britain, like Australia, has the luxury of being an island, but if, for example, France was being attacked by suicide bombers from Belgium, might not building a barrier along the border seem like a good idea?

In fact it is an extremely good idea. The Israeli security barrier is a non-lethal defence device which has prevented hundreds of attacks and saved thousands of lives, Palestinian as well as Israeli, yet it has been unceasingly criticised in the western media.

All of those goes to show the extraordinary double standard that operates in much of the western intellectual class, particularly in the European and much of the British media they write and broadcast for. The bombers of Bali and London are condemned, since they kill people like us, and we are of course innocent. But for those who blow up civilians in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, every possible excuse is made, and every response by Israel, even a non-lethal one like the barrier, is condemned.

It is of course true that the long-term solution to Palestinian terrorism against Israel is a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, one which gives them a viable state in Gaza and most of the West Bank. That is exactly what Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton offered Yasser Arafat at Camp David in 2000. Arafat’s response was to launch the second intifada, ruining the best chance of peace in a generation.

Now Ariel Sharon is withdrawing from Gaza, and promises to withdraw from parts of the West Bank in time. And what does he get? More bombs and rockets – though thanks to the security barrier not nearly as many as before. Yet it is the “intransigent Israelis” who get criticised in The Age. On the ABC (despite a clear improvement in fairness from its current reporter Mark Willacy compared with his predecessor Tim Palmer), the “militants” of Hamas still get mild admonishments and sympathy.

Perhaps this extraordinary double standard will change now that the bombs are exploding in London rather than in Israel. Britain is now going to press the United Nations to adopt a “no excuses” definition of terrorism. If the bombings continue, and public opinion in Europe becomes as aroused as U.S. opinion has been since September 11, I imagine we will hear less criticism of security barriers and even the elimination of terrorist leaders, and more calls for firm action against terror networks in Europe. A bomb on your own doorstep does bring a new sense of perspective.

Michael Danby is Labor MHR for Melbourne Ports