Senate Chamber, Parliament House
Tuesday, 8th October 2024
At 6:29 a.m. on the 7th of October 2023, the music stopped at the Nova Festival in Re’im. 12 months ago yesterday, those festival goers, young people dancing, enjoying a weekend out, living the life that so many young Australians do at similar festivals, stopped and entered a world of horror.
They, along with some close to 1,200 innocent children, women, elderly, families were targeted and brutally murdered in Israel by the terrorist organisation Hamas. Brutally, deliberately targeted. Maimed. Raped. Tortured. Murdered.
This was a deliberate attack intended to strike at innocent people, not at military targets, not at terrorist infrastructure, but simply at those living their lives. In fact, the irony of many of the deaths, including Australian Galit Carbone, is that those most likely to have died in the regions that were attacked, particularly the kibbutzes that were attacked, were those who had most worked to try to achieve peace, to give greater support to those who ultimately took their lives and destroyed their families.
We come now, 12 months on from those times. We have in that period learnt ever more of the absolute horror. Acting Deputy President, one of the challenges of the good fortune of being an Australian is that we cannot always fully comprehend – we do not always totally understand the horrors that happen elsewhere. Our good fortune to be Australians, to get to live in this country is that for the overwhelming majority of us, we are isolated from, insulated from and protected from the horrors that exist elsewhere.
But indeed, few people, if any others around the world, truly comprehend and understand the true scale of horror, the barbaric nature of the attacks of October 7th and how they unfolded, because they were so deliberately barbaric, so rich in torture and inhumane acts that they are hard for any decent meaning person, even those encountering the greatest of suffering, to fully understand what had occurred.
It is why, together with the sheer statistics, the reality that on that day we saw more Jewish people killed than on any other single day since the Holocaust, it has resonated so significantly and so deeply for Israel, for Jewish people around the world, and for all who pause and reflect about the scale of loss and the depravity of the way in which that loss occurred.
There have been many moments in the last 24 hours, 36 hours, even here in Australia and around the world reflecting on the anniversary. Some, of course, occurred in this city, and a number of us attended those, as well as other colleagues who attended such commemorations in other places.
For those of us who left the Israeli embassy last night following a moving tribute, and I join Senator Wong in acknowledging the words of Senator O’Neill and Senator Sharma, who both spoke on behalf of the parliamentary friends of Israel at that tribute. We left with a book called Testimonies Without Boundaries, edited by Alon Penzel. It brings together some of those testimonies from October 7th.
It was quoted on the night, and indeed, it is challenging to look, to read, to absorb some of the content within this book. One is the testimony of Natan Kenig, a ZAKA volunteer. ZAKA being a disaster response volunteer organisation.
Natan said, we arrived at the kibbutz once again on Wednesday morning. This day is engraved in my memory and will remain with me forever. Several days had already passed since the attack and there was already a smell at this point. The terrible sights combined with other senses made the experience even more difficult. The most horrific situation I encountered was when we entered one of the destroyed houses in the kibbutz, after receiving a call about an extremely pungent smell from the place. We entered the house by climbing over the ruins because they were completely destroyed. Suddenly we saw a mattress and a girl tied to it. We tried to separate her from the mattress, but we couldn’t and didn’t understand why. When we looked closer, we noticed that metal wires were running inside her body. We were sure these were threads from the mattress that entered her body. Therefore, we began to clear the rubble that was around the mattress. What we saw under the rubble was unbelievable. Suddenly we realised the girl was actually tied to a man, apparently her partner on the other side of the mattress. Both were completely naked. They inserted metal wires into their bodies through their stomachs and tied them together on both sides of the mattress. Whole metal wires were inserted through the stomach, from both sides to the both of them, so they would be tied together on both sides of the mattress. It was horrifying. That coldness. You can’t contain it.
It is hard to comprehend or understand how or why anyone would behave in such a barbaric way. Acts of war are always tragic. Acts of warfare always result in terrible suffering and terrible loss of human life. But these were not acts of war. These were acts of terror to the full meaning and intent of that word; terror.
Late last year, I led a parliamentary delegation to Israel. Indeed, I visited the Kfar Aza kibbutz, amongst other sites close to Gaza. At that site, some 64 peace-loving, family-loving civilians were killed alongside 22 soldiers. It was a site of a battle that went on beyond the initial attacks on October 7th and 19 hostages were taken.
We are reminded that indeed, around 250 innocent hostages were taken and around 100 still remain held hostage, some likely dead, others still living, held in circumstances against their will. The terror for them and for their families is enduring. The hostages that have been found were held in Gaza, hidden in tunnel networks or amidst civilian infrastructure. That, of course, is a reminder that the suffering is not just of those Israelis from October 7th and those and their families who have suffered ever since. But of course, is also of those who Hamas has chosen to hide behind and amongst. The Palestinian peoples in Gaza who continue to bear the pain and suffering of the fact that the terrorists use and abuse their base within Gaza and expose those people to the ultimate suffering too.
This conflict could have ended at any point during the last 12 months, had Hamas been willing to release its hostages, to surrender its terrorist infrastructure, to allow proper peacekeeping to be undertaken. But instead, when ceasefire efforts have been made and come close, Hamas has rejected them. Hamas continues to hold the hostages, continues to set terms in relation to the release of the hostages, rather than to put the well-being of those people, and indeed of Palestinians, ahead of their own terrorist interests and instincts.
Throughout the last year, I like so many colleagues, and I’m sure people across this place have met with, stood with, hugged and consoled Jewish Australians. When speaking to the first motion passed here nearly 12 months ago, we spoke about the pain of Jewish Australians that was already evident from the escalation in antisemitism. That had been clear all too tragically, on the steps of the Sydney Opera House just shortly after the horrors of October 7th had become evident.
Tragically, in the time that has ensued, those Jewish Australians have increasingly made clear not only in their private conversations with many of us, but increasingly very publicly too, how let down they feel by the Albanese Government.
From the earliest days of this conflict, when the Albanese Government was unable to even mention antisemitism without creating a false equivalence around the circumstances to Islamophobia, we have not seen Jewish Australians undertake rallies outside mosques or target other Australians in the way, tragically, that Jewish Australians have had their faith and their wellbeing deliberately targeted.
Similarly, they feel pained and aggrieved at the ever-shifting Australian position on a two-state solution which had enjoyed decades-long bipartisanship. But now, under the Albanese Government, it is no longer to be a negotiated two-state solution and is no longer a situation where the hard but necessary questions around matters such as negotiated borders, security guarantees and rights of return should be settled – and instead is subject to some arbitrary timeline or ill-defined process under this Government.
These concerns of these Australians and others are real. And it is why that sadly, whilst we went to great lengths 12 months ago to find bipartisanship in the motion that was put through this chamber, we have not been in a position to do so on this occasion.
Madam Acting Deputy President, I move the amendments to the government motion as circulated in the chamber in my name, and these amendments do important things. Perhaps most importantly of all they reiterate that this Senate stands with Israel and affirms its inherent right to defend itself and protect its citizens. You have to ask, why does this need to be an amendment to a government motion? Because that is what we said 12 months ago.
12 months ago, this Senate said that it stood with Israel and affirmed Israel’s inherent right to defend itself. Yet now the government refuses to incorporate those words in this motion.
There are other changes that we have made and proposed to this motion, seeking to ensure that it actually does reflect the seriousness of the situation that continues to be faced. 12 months ago I spoke about the threat of Iran. I said, let us not be asking in five or ten years-time, what more could have been done to prevent Iran unleashing whatever atrocity its regime might commit, including the threat of a nuclear one. Sadly, 12 months later there is more, not less, to be concerned about.
As we have seen, Iran’s tentacles of terror spread not just from Hamas, but, of course, also with strikes against Israel by Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels striking not only against Israel, but against broader Western interests and Iran themselves entering the fray with their direct military strikes as well. Unprecedented strikes indeed.
So, Acting Deputy President, I urge the Senate to support the amendments that we have circulated. I urge the Government to reconsider, to give bipartisanship to a position that would be consistent with Australia’s long-standing values, the values that have flowed through Hawke, Howard, Keating, Rudd, Gillard. Consistent values, where we have stood as friends of Israel, stood for decency and stood above all else, against the horrors of terrorism that we reflect upon today.