Repression of anti-genocide forces in Australia, NZ media goes after Labour MP

The ABC has been criticised after its reporter was bullied for asking Australian opposition leader Peter Dutton why Hezbollah had been designated a terror group.

Australian opposition leader Peter Dutton at a Washington media conference in 2021. (Photo: Wikimedia/ Staff Sgt Jack Sanders/US Defence Department)

An Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reporter has found herself at the centre of a political storm after she asked Australian’s opposition leader why Hezbollah had been designated a terrorist organisation.

ABC reporter Anushri Sood directed the question to Liberal Party of Australia leader Peter Dutton at a media event on Tuesday, October 1. Dutton, visibly riled by the question, asked Sood what media organisation she was from, before repeatedly demanding she repeat the question and then berating her.

“I had presumed up until this point at least the ABC supported the government’s laws and the government has passed laws supported on a bipartisan basis -- but obviously not by the ABC it seems -- in relation to the proscribing or listing of a terrorist organisation,” Dutton said.

“Hezbollah under Australian law is a proscribed terrorist organisation. Now, if the ABC doesn’t support that it should be very clear about it, because that’s quite a departure. They organise terror attacks. If that is not clear to the ABC then I think they’re in more trouble than even I first imagined.”

Australia had previously proscribed Hezbollah’s External Security Organisation as a terrorist group under its Criminal Code in June 2003, before proscribing the entirety of the movement in December 2021.

Sood’s trade union passed a unanimous motion condemning Dutton’s bullying, as well as the ABC’s response to the incident.

“It is a journalist’s right and duty to question how policies are made on issues impacting the Australian public and wider global community,” the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) National Media Section committee motion read.

“We support our members’ rights to hold power to account by asking honest and fair questions. The ABC’s public silence on the intimidation of their journalist, a woman of colour, further perpetuates the racism an internal review issued on the same day highlighted.”

The union’s statement comes after an ABC review found racism existed within its organisation and that external groups and individuals had targeted its ethnically diverse staff. The Listen Loudly, Act Strongly report based its findings on interviews with 120 current and former ABC staff. The broadcasting said it accepted the review’s findings and recommendations ‘in principle’.

The ABC was asked by In Context whether management had told Sood her question to Dutton had been inappropriate. The broadcaster was also asked to reply to the union's claim that the ABC's response was another example of ethnically-diverse staff having to deal with ABC systemic failure to protect staff when attacked by external groups and individuals. At the time of publication, it had declined to respond.

In December last year, the ABC fired Lebanese-Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf over a repost on Twitter of a human rights report stating Israel was using hunger as a weapon of war in Gaza. Later a series of leaked Whatsapp messages revealed pro-Israel lobbyists had campaigned to get her sacked, although managing director, David Anderson, denied the campaign had any bearing on the sacking.

Others have asked how the ABC’s institutional racism affects its story framing and reportage. Former SWS news anchor Mary Kostakidis wrote on Twitter: “It’s astonishing no one is asking how this culture of racism impacts the reporting and analysis of news… Well and truly time to start interrogating that.”

The latest ABC skirmish follows repressive moves by other politicians to stifle the right to protest and express political positions amid Israel’s increasing violence and response to it by the so-called Axis of Resistance in West Asia.

At rallies in Melbourne and Sydney last weekend, some marchers carried Hezbollah flags and portraits of the group’s assassinated Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, prompting an investigation by Australian Federal Police after politicians and Zionist groups called for charges to be led.

Australia passed legislation in January banning Nazi motifs and symbols belonging to listed “terrorist organisations”. A 19-year-old woman was charged under the laws on Wednesday for allegedly carrying a Hezbollah flag during the march in Sydney. Australian federal police launched a taskforce to investigate at least nine other allegations of prohibited symbols being displayed in Victoria state.

Earlier this week Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong in a statement said that her government condemned “any indication of support for a terrorist organisation such as Hizballah”, adding that it “not only threatens national security, but fuels fear and division in our communities”.

The Australian government’s National Security Statement says “there are no known specific threats to Australia or Australian interests posed by Hizballah. However, it is possible that Australian interests could be harmed by future attacks.”

Wong’s repressive statement suggesting heterodox views challenging Western narratives and the legitimacy of its terror designations posed a threat to national security, were enthusiastically reported without pushback by the Murdoch press and other mainstream media outlets.

Hezbollah is a Shia political movement with a powerful military wing, formed following Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and now makes up part of the Lebanese government. It plays a wider social role in society, as well as acting as a regional ally of Iran as part of a Shia alliance confronting US imperialism in the region. The group has been a staunch defender of Palestinians and has continued to punish Israel militarily for its genocidal onslaught in Gaza along its southern border with Israel since October 8.

Hezbollah expert and Cardiff University lecturer, Amal Saad, said the proscription of the organisation by the US and its allies had given Israel the cover to commit war crimes against the Lebanese people and depopulate Shia areas.

“The blanket proscription of Hizbullah, including its civilian and political branches, has created a direct conflict between domestic and international law,” she said.

“By criminalising these non-military elements, it provides Israel with cover to blur the critical distinction in international law between combatants and non-combatants, enabling it to act with impunity.”

She said the criminalisation of the movement’s political and civilian institutions had paved the way for Israel to target these entities directly.

“This was showcased by Israel’s strike on Hizbullah’s Islamic Health Unit, along with separate incidents where many other paramedics and healthcare workers were killed while attempting to rescue victims of Israel's attacks,” she said.

“It was also shown by Israel’s pager attacks on Hizbullah cadres, most of whom were members of its mobilization unit (off-duty reservists and thus noncombatants), healthcare workers, and other civilians, including innocent bystanders with no formal ties to the organisation.”

On Thursday, October 3 an Israeli airstrike also destroyed the Hezbollah media office in the Mouawad area of Beirut's southern suburbs.

With an estimated 2000 Lebanese civilians killed by Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and pager terror attacks over the past two weeks, increasingly mirroring what Gazans have faced for nearly a year, media has continued to ignore Israel’s escalating violence and instead amplified voices condemning those supporting resistance groups seeking to end Israel’s genocidal actions.

Assassinated Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. (Photo: Wikimedia)

A Palestine solidarity event planned for October 7 in Sydney was also subject to a High Court hearing as police urged it to be banned over safety fears. Politicians had framed the vigil as a celebration of the Hamas attack, instead of a solemn marking of a year-long genocide of Palestinians. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the event would be “incredibly provocative” and “cause a great deal of distress”.

Moves to make public acts of support for Palestine and resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation and genocidal actions continued across The Ditch.

In New Zealand, a high-profile opposition MP was harangued by media following his Twitter repost in support of Palestinian resistance on same day Sood was bullied.

Radio New Zealand (RNZ) uncritically ran with a story based on spurious attacks by the far-right government coalition partner, the ACT Party, on Labour MP and former trade minister Damien O'Connor. O’Connor had reposted a speech by Lawrence Wilkerson on X/Twitter, where the retired US Colonel said Palestinians had a right to attack Israel on October 7.

Act spokesman Simon Court demanded O’Connor apologise or be stripped of his associate spokesperson on foreign affairs party role, calling his repost "extreme and hateful". O’Connor subsequently took the post down and said he did not condone atrocities.

RNZ quoted Act spokesperson Simon Court as saying Hamas killed over 1000 people and had “committed atrocities on a scale not seen since the Holocaust in World War II”.

It reported him claiming O’Connor was “saying things that are essentially the promotion of terrorism and a pogrom”.

Labour MP Damien O’Connor (Photo: Flickr/Herenga ā Nuku Aotearoa)

Hamas killed at least 376 security force members on October 7, while 767 civilians were also killed, according to news agency AFP. It has been acknowledged within Israeli and some Western legacy media outlets that Israel invoked its Hannibal Directive and killed possibly hundreds of those 767 civilians.

RNZ did not challenge the veracity of Court’s claims within its story. It ran with Israeli disinformation that Hamas killed “more than 1100 people and kidnapping about 250 more, according to Israeli tallies”.

The broadcaster also requested for a response from Labour leader Chris Hipkins, who said no further action was being taken after O’Connor had acknowledged it was a mistake to post Wilkerson’s remarks.

ACT is a Zionist party whose party leader David Seymour requested that Foreign Minister Winston Peters consult him on New Zealand's position on Israel before making significant decisions on it.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) national chairman John Minto said New Zealand journalism had reached “new lows of racism and complicity with genocide in the past week with the uncritical broadcast of the most blatant Israeli propaganda”.

Minto said RNZ and the country’s other national broadcaster, Television New Zealand (TVNZ), like the rest of Western media outlets, were repeating politicians’ hypocrisy in falsely framing resistance groups’ actions as the problem.

Peters condemned Iran’s attack on Israeli military and intelligence installations with up to 200 ballistic and hypersonic missiles in Wednesday, October 2 (NZT), as an unacceptable escalation, following several provocations by Israel against its neighbour. Regional war looms as Israel voices its intent to attack Iran again in response, while it continued to bomb Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, as well as the occupied West Bank this week.

“It’s unbelievable - as though attacks by Hezbollah were the problem rather than 76 years of Israeli massacres, ethnic cleansing and a brutal military occupation,” Minto said.

“It is clear to the rest of the world, if not RNZ, that Israel has been deliberately trying to provoke a wider war in the Middle East but no-one listening or watching our state broadcasters would be any the wiser. While the people of the world want Israel to stop the carnage, TVNZ and RNZ are all but egging it on.”

As well as the assassination of Nasrallah and several senior Hezbollah and Iranian military figures, Israel killed Hamas chief negotiator Ismail Haniyeh in his Tehran hotel room in July.

An Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria that killed 16 people, including eight of Iran’s top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), precipitated an earlier missile attack by Iran against Israel in April.

Meanwhile, Minto has criticised a decision by Stuff, one of the country’s largest private news outlets, not to run a paid-for full-page advertisement by the PSNA. It lists genocidal statements by Israeli leaders and contains facts about the Gaza death toll and levels of devastation.

“At this stage Stuff has given no official reason for banning the ad, aside from saying they won’t do so ‘while the ongoing conflict is developing’. It seems that for Stuff, pro-Israel sympathies are more important that Palestinian realities.”

Stuff has been contacted for comment.