had the same precision, tempo and effectiveness as the initial kinetic attack” of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and her 6 World Central Kitchen colleagues, writes Stuart McCarthy, and it channels the ADF propaganda model in Afghanistan.

An old English saying, ‘As ye sow, so shall ye reap’, has its origins in the Hebrew Book of Hosea. The King James English Bible version of this tale says that when God found the Israelites worshipping a false idol, “They sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind.” 

The Albanese government is now adrift in the whirlwind of Australia’s abject failure to hold its top generals to account for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.

Last Monday night’s deadly Israeli Defence Force attack on Australian citizen Zomi Frankcom and her six World Central Kitchen colleagues in Gaza brought the total number of aid worker deaths in that conflict to more than 200.

Having complied with IDF deconfliction procedures and while travelling along a designated humanitarian aid route, the three clearly marked WCK vehicles were struck one after the other by precision-guided missiles fired from an IDF drone named after Hermes, messenger of the gods.

Former International Criminal Court trial lawyer Regina Weiss told the ABC:

“What happened there was a war crime. Not only was it an intentional attack on civilians, but we can go further and say this was a war crime of intentionally using starvation as a method of warfare.”

The ensuing IDF three-day information operation achieved the same precision, tempo and effectiveness as the initial kinetic attack. On Tuesday, IDF sources told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the attack was launched because the unit responsible for securing the aid route “had identified an armed man on the truck and suspected that he was a terrorist.”

Senior IDF officers told the same paper later that day the killings occurred because “IDF officers on the ground do what they want.” On Wednesday, IDF Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi released a video statement saying he had “completed a preliminary debrief” on the incident, apologised to the families of the deceased WCK aid workers “from the bottom of our hearts”, and announced an investigation by “an independent body”, its findings to be shared “with full transparency”.

The IDF Joint Chiefs of Staff Fact Finding and Assessment Mechanism (FFAM) report, by an IDF reserve Major General answerable directly to Halevi, was completed on Thursday.

Wong way

Taking out the trash on Friday, IDF Headquarters completed its war crime staff response drill by briefing international governments and selected journalists on the findings of the FFAM report. Three senior officers were reprimanded, two mid-ranking officers were dismissed from their positions and condolences were again offered to all those concerned.

An “unsatisfied” Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong was left rummaging through the scraps on the Sabbath, to announce she had “signalled our intention to appoint a Special Advisor to the Australian Government” on the completed IDF FFAM investigation.

With 96 hours of blitzkrieg information warfare, the Israelis surpassed a response to Afghan war crimes allegations that took their Australian counterparts almost a decade. What most Australians are yet to appreciate, however, is that the IDF’s key messaging was taken straight from the Australian textbook. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

On 31 August 2012, Haji Raz Mohammad and Abdul Jalil were allegedly dragged from their mosque and summarily executed at Sola, Afghanistan, by members of the Australian Special Operations Task Group.

When the President of Afghanistan complained to the Australian Government days later, Defence Minister Stephen Smith announced the civilians were “confirmed as insurgents.”

As details of these and similar killings by the same alleged perpetrator emerged in the media in the years that followed, Australian Army chief Lieutenant General Angus Campbell commissioned the “independent” Afghanistan Inquiry, conducted by Army Reserve Major General Paul Brereton “at arms-length from the ADF chain of command.”

The Brereton Report found evidence of 39 murders of civilians or detainees, recommending 25 soldiers be referred for criminal investigation, with only one charge laid to this date. No evidence of criminal culpability was found above the rank of Sergeant. When the redacted report was published in 2020, now Chief of the Defence Force General Campbell said:

“To the people of Afghanistan … I sincerely and unreservedly apologise for any wrongdoing by Australian soldiers.”

The government’s refusal to initiate criminal proceedings against any senior ADF officer provided the basis for last year’s referral to the International Criminal Court.

For however long the Albanese government’s head remains stuck in the sand of command impunity from Australia’s war crimes in Afghanistan, its proverbial arse will remain exposed to the whirlwind of Israel’s impunity in Gaza. With heartfelt condolences, of course, from Tel Aviv.

 

Postscript: Binskin was VCDF (responsible for ADFIS) during Act II of the ADF command responsibility failures in Afghanistan