Labor must cauterise the extremism in its ranks

Emerging from the ALP National Conference, Middle East-related points in chapter seven of the Platform deserve emphasis. The government is not bound by the Platform; Cabinet ultimately sets foreign policy, informed by classified material unavailable to delegates. Within that reality, the federal Labor government should be commended for reaffirming that Hamas must have no role in a Palestinian Authority (PA) government and must lay down arms in line with the ceasefire and the Peace Board’s two-state plan.

The joint Australia–Indonesia proposal to assist the PA in reforming its education system – removing antisemitic content and the glorification of terrorism – is likewise commendable, and the PA’s acceptance of this offer is significant. Multiple European Parliament reports have identified PA education reform as central to reducing incitement to violence and enabling peace.

Still, the conference revealed troubling tendencies within parts of the broader Labor movement. It was laudable that extreme propaganda on issues such as the utterly legally and factually false narrative of the genocide claim against Israel was rightly rejected. The deletion, however, of the government’s explicit policy stance on Hamas was inexcusable. Considering the extensive commentary indicating that deletion would be read as embracing Hamas, this should have been corrected.

Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation under Australian law and has perpetrated abhorrent crimes: the deliberate killing of civilians, sexual violence, torture and mutilation in Israel, and the killing and torture of thousands of its own people. It suppresses women, forbids free trade unions, rejects democracy and executes homosexuals. As part of Iran’s proxy network, Hamas waged a persistent war of aggression against Israel after seizing Gaza in 2007, culminating in the invasion of October 7, 2023 – an act constituting “supreme international crime” under the Rome Statute.

Its agenda, as described in its own covenant, is openly genocidal and rejects both the two-state solution and a Palestinian state, in favour of an extreme Islamist caliphate. Palestinians themselves reject Hamas, and the PA is compelling it to relinquish administrative control of Gaza. Accepting any governing role for Hamas would reward criminality, embolden terrorism, undermine international law and extinguish prospects for peace.

Equally concerning, the amendments adopt a demonstrably false narrative that Israel has failed in its obligations on relief and medical support, while ignoring Hamas’s documented obstruction of aid. The UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Palestinian Territories, Ramiz Alakbarov, has acknowledged in a statement issued on July 12 that Hamas’s actions “endangered humanitarian personnel, intimidated workers delivering lifesaving food assistance and disrupted life-saving humanitarian operations”.

Endorsing or appearing to legitimise Hamas would damage Australia’s credibility and the integrity of our stand against extremist propaganda by Iran and its proxies, and it contradicts our government’s declared policy.

The amended platform’s disproportionate focus on Israel–Palestine – at the expense of other global conflicts – reveals an obsession that is only explicable as antisemitism and serving other malign interests. Its references to the ICJ advisory opinion on West Bank policies treat a non-binding, non-contested advisory view as dispositive, which is false. Regarding the ICC, the amendments disregard the violation of the Rome Statute’s principle of complementarity (Articles 1 and 17).

The cited warrants were issued by a compromised prosecutor, Karim Khan, now sacked by the ICC Assembly of States after findings of sexual assault and harassment. It has been alleged the warrants were a ploy to distract from those allegations and were certainly pursued without the obligatory engagement with Israel’s domestic investigative mechanisms. Khan tried to claim the allegations were an attempt to prevent him pursuing Israel, a claim utterly rejected by the victim who is a Malaysian Muslim woman.

If Labor is serious about international law, we must resist the corrosion of UN institutions and the lawfare tactics embedded in disinformation campaigns by malign autocracies – Russia, Iran, China and their willing tools. French investigative journalist Nora Bussigny’s book Les Nouveaux Antisémites well documents how this coordinated effort to subvert elements within liberal democracies as a means of undermining them, manifests itself.

As seen in Europe and North America, hard-core revolutionary communists aligning with Islamist extremists are attempting to infiltrate progressive interest groups, unions, branches, and the Labor Party in Australia. This must be cauterised to keep Labor relevant to Australians’ needs and to avoid electoral consequences amid a rising One Nation threat.

Protecting Labor’s integrity requires moral clarity on terrorism, fidelity to genuine international legal principles, and vigilance against extremist entryism.

We should not sit idly by and allow the corrosion happening within the movement to compromise federal Labor and our legitimacy as a party of government.

Mike Kelly is a former ADF soldier, Labor government minister and the co-convenor of Labor Friends of Israel. A version of this op-ed appeared in The Australian.