March 18, 2024
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Senator James Paterson is the shadow Home Affairs Minister and joins us now. James, good to have you on the program this morning. Is this just laziness or is this an ideological move in your view?
JAMES PATERSON: Good morning Stephen. Well, the Foreign Minister herself has said UNWRA is not a terrorist organisation, but frankly, I think we should have a higher bar for our aid delivery partners than they are simply not terrorist organisations. What we know is UNRWA employed terrorists, and those terrorists participated in the atrocities against the Israeli people on the 7th of October. There is video footage of an UNRWA social worker going into Israel to Kibbutz Be’eri in the south, abducting a dead Israeli in his car and taking back into Gaza. There are intercepted phone calls between UNRWA teachers who boast about going into Israel and killing Jews. There are allegations that a teacher held a hostage in his home after the 7th October attacks. And that's just the allegations about UNRWA in this context, in this era, we've actually known for years about problems with UNRWA, including that they have anti-Semitic content in the textbooks in their schools. And the problem with all of this is that they're funded entirely by taxpayers of Western governments, including the Australian government. And I don't think we should be comfortable with that.
CENATIEMPO: The argument at the time that the funding was suspended were there were other ways to get this aid into Gaza if we believe that we needed to provide aid there were other avenues, has the government just ignored this?
PATERSON: Well, in fact, the government and its supporters for restoring this funding have said there are no other ways other than UNRWA to get support into Gaza and we now know that's not true. We've had airdrops by the United States and other allies. Just over the weekend we had the first delivery by sea by the United Arab Emirates and a charity called World Central Kitchen. There are other groups operating in the area, like the World Food Bank and the Red Cross. There are many other pathways that Australia could have taken that would have reduced the risk that Australian taxpayer funds would have found their way to terrorists, and we shouldn't be comfortable with that risk. Given that Hamas is a listed terrorist organisation in its entirety, and an Australian citizen who gave money that ultimately went to Hamas could be prosecuted under the Commonwealth Criminal Code and sent to jail for doing so. So taxpayers money shouldn't be in anywhere near these organisations.
CENATIEMPO: You talk about those airdrops, the Foreign Minister has announced that Australia is going to support these airdrops by Jordan and the UAE. So we obviously know that there are other avenues the funding could have been put towards those.
PATERSON: Exactly right. And nobody doubts or questions the genuine humanitarian need in Gaza. There are many innocent people who are suffering and they need aid. But the primary obstacles to aid in Gaza are the operational challenges that everybody faces getting them in there, getting the aid into Gaza and distributing it within Gaza is a challenging thing, no matter whether you're UNRWA or anybody else. So to say that UNRWA is some simple solution, if we just give money to UNRWA, then all the poverty and starvation will be alleviated is really misleading and dangerous.
CENATIEMPO: I maintain from the very beginning of this that Israel has no choice but to, take a scorched earth policy, to Hamas themselves. But the international support for Israel seems to be waning. Does Israel have to be a little bit more measured in its response now?
PATERSON: I just got back from a trip to Israel, and they're very well aware that in the court of international public opinion, they are losing that battle. But if they have to choose between losing a public relations battle and losing a real battle, they will choose a public relations battle every day of the week. And in their view, ending this war without removing the remaining Hamas brigades, who are centred in Rafah in the south of Gaza, would be a failure because it would ultimately allow Hamas to take over Gaza again, which would be a threat both to the Israeli people but also the people of Gaza who have been held hostage themselves by Hamas. And so I understand that legitimate military objective they have.
CENATIEMPO: I guess the question is who fills that void though, because we've seen right across the Middle East, you know, the withdrawal of US troops for instance, from Afghanistan has created a void that the Taliban has gotten back into. If Hamas isn't there, there's another terrorist organisation spring up in its place.
PATERSON: Well, this is the key, Stephen. What is the plan for the day after? And we had some discussions with Israeli officials and others while we were there, and they centred really on three points. One, demilitarisation, second, deradicalisation and third, development. And Israel hopes to do that with its partners and allies in the region, including Egypt, the Emirates and maybe even Saudi Arabia, if a peace deal and a normalisation arrangement can be put in place between Israel and Saudi Arabia. They want the Gulf states and others invested in this. They think it's in the region's interest to rebuild Gaza, and they want the people of Gaza to have a future and an alternative to Hamas. And I understand they need that alternative. So those discussions are happening right now in Israel, but it probably will involve Israel providing security in Gaza, which is not their first choice. It is not their first preference. But it's not clear who else would do that.
CENATIEMPO: James, good to talk to you this morning.
PATERSON: Always, thank you.
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