Advocate’s salvo at govt
Levy outlined how Hamas is deliberately manipulating the international media.
Former Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy took aim at Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week while giving a talk in Sydney.
Addressing a joint JNF Australia and Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) lunch on Monday, Levy, who has become one of Israel’s staunchest public defenders over the last 11 months, noted that in a December joint statement with his New Zealand and Canadian counterparts, Albanese had declared, “There can be no role for Hamas in the future governance of Gaza,” but is now saying it is time for a ceasefire deal.
“The question I would ask him [is] do you think that ceasefire will be sustainable?” Levy said.
“Because in December you said a ceasefire cannot be sustainable until Hamas lays down its arms. Has something changed to convince you that it is possible to have a sustainable ceasefire with a terrorist army threatening to do October 7 again and again?
“Or is it simply political pressure that makes you want to make this war go away?”
Noting “the next attack will only be a matter of time”, Levy described the consequence of a ceasefire that leaves Hamas in power.
“Yahya Sinwar will emerge from the rubble of Gaza and declare victory and say the world saved us from the war that we started because it pressured Israel to leave us alone. So we’ll do it next time and the world will save us again. Clearly the strategy of fighting out of homes and schools and hospitals and mosques worked,” he said.
“Not only did it work, Australia has doubled its funding to UNRWA and is thinking of recognising a Palestinian state as a reward for October 7.”
Levy outlined how Hamas is deliberately manipulating the international media.
“Hamas’s strategy to survive this war is to generate enough human suffering, real and imagined, to generate pressure to desist,” he said.
“Hamas is relying on the media to amplify its lies about Israel, not to check the facts, to immediately report what they say as ‘Palestinian health officials’ … so that the world will ultimately force Israel to end this war and leave Hamas on its feet.”
He said October 7 was “the opening shot not only of Hamas’s invasion, not only of Iran’s regional war against Israel, but in many ways an attempt by the enemies of the West to reshape our world”.
“If we’re going to have a serious change, it is going to require international pressure on Iran,” he said, adding the international community must recognise that the West faces the same enemies.
“Iran is the head of the snake. The Islamic Republic has to be made to pay a price for the aggression that it is pursuing through its regional proxies.”
Levy also outlined UNRWA’s role in indoctrinating Gazans through its schools and the UNRWA employees that took part in October 7.
comments