Standing with Israel does not mean endorsing Israelis’ worst behaviour

“We recognise Israel’s right to defend itself, but how it does so matters,” Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong declared during her visit to the country in January.

No amount of fear for the hostages, trauma over October 7, or attachment to the Jewish homeland should stop us from sharing her conviction.

Israel is engaged in a war that, at least when it began, was justified, but that does not justify all the harm being done in the name of self-defence. Recent cases demonstrate that some Israelis have dehumanised Palestinians as Hamas has dehumanised Israelis.

Such attitudes cannot be tolerated, both because of the harm they do to Palestinian people and because of the destruction they bring to Israelis’ humanity and to the essence of Israel’s liberal democratic values.

Israel’s Finance Minister appalled the world late last week when he said it "might be just and moral" to starve Palestinians in Gaza until the hostages held by Hamas are returned. Wong was among the world leaders who condemned the statement by Religious Zionist extremist Bezalel Smotrich.

The next day four Arab women who mistakenly entered a West Bank settlement were attacked by settlers. One said a gun had been put to the head of her two-year-old child.

A week earlier, 10 reservists serving as prison guards at Sde Teiman base were arrested on charges that they had sodomised a Palestinian detainee, part of a pattern of extreme prisoner abuse at the base. The case sparked a riot by a far-right mob who stormed the facility in support of the offenders.