An Israeli government minister has said the thousands of Australians who marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to protest against the killing in Gaza were “naive” and “useful idiots” for Hamas.
Sharren Haskel, Israel’s deputy foreign affairs minister, also said during Friday’s interview on ABC radio that there was not a “real famine” in Gaza.
Global humanitarian experts and the UN have voiced deep alarm at the situation in Gaza, with the Palestinian ministry of health reporting deaths from malnutrition and starvation.
Haskel has been scathing of Australia’s pledge this week to recognise a Palestinian state. Anthony Albanese announced on Monday that Australia would recognise statehood at the UN next month.
The push followed similar moves from the UK, France and Canada and came a week after an estimated 225,000 to 300,000 people walked across the harbour bridge.
Haskel downplayed the Sydney protest in the interview.
“I truly believe that most of this crowd was the same crowd who was gathering together since 8 October [2023],” she said.
“The rest are useful idiots that are being used as tools in the hands of those who are trying to promote those radical jihadist ideas. And unfortunately, many naive people in Australia are falling for a lot of the propaganda of those terrorist organisations and those radical jihadist organisations.”
Haskel noted a poster of the Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was displayed at the front of the Harbour Bridge rally behind prominent protesters, including the former foreign affairs minister Bob Carr and Labor politicians Ed Husic and Tony Sheldon. All three disavowed the image, with Sheldon rebuffing the person holding the poster as a “single misguided individual”.
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Haskel told the ABC she was disappointed at “people marching with terrorist organisations”.
A spokesperson for Palestine Action Group, which organised the Harbour Bridge march, rejected Haskel’s claims.
“The people who attended this march are far from naive. They have cut through two years of media and state propaganda seeking to manufacture consent for this genocide,” the spokesperson told Guardian Australia.
“The images of children being deliberately starved and families under the rubble are being live streamed to our phones. The people in this country are outraged by our government’s inaction on this issue and have come out in their hundreds of thousands to demand urgent change.
“The only useful idiots here are those in the media who continue to print Israeli propaganda despite two years of being consistently lied to.”
The World Food Programme emergency director, Ross Smith, said last month that Gaza was experiencing the most severe hunger crisis the world has faced for decades, “unlike anything we have seen in this century”.
A joint statement from more than two dozen foreign ministers, including Australia’s Penny Wong, said this week that “humanitarian suffering in Gaza has reached unimaginable levels” and “famine is unfolding before our eyes”.
But Haskel downplayed the starvation concerns.
“Many of the funerals who were reported and filmed in the last few days, with many Hamas operatives leading those funerals, none of them looked like a skeleton, none of them were looking as if they’re starving. Some of them look quite well fed,” she claimed.
Haskel said she had just returned from Sudan where there was a “real humanitarian crisis” with people who looked like “skeletons”.
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“That’s how a real famine looks,” the Israeli minister said.
“I’m not saying there isn’t a humanitarian crisis, but there’s a long way to go and describe it as famine or starvation … there’s a very big difference.”
Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told ABC TV on Thursday evening that the timing of western countries backing Palestinian recognition “has been very hurtful to any prospects of negotiating some settlement in Gaza with Hamas”.
“There’s an enormous level of disappointment and some disgust.”
The UN said in June 2024 that a Palestinian state was recognised by 146 UN member states at the time – about three-quarters of its membership.
Huckabee claimed the US and Israel had not been told about Australia’s impending recognition.
Albanese spoke to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, several days before Monday’s announcement. Wong said she had told her US counterpart, Marco Rubio, shortly before it.
Senior Labor minister Mark Butler told the Channel Seven on Friday that Wong had told Rubio about the decision. Albanese told ABC radio in Melbourne: “We’re a sovereign nation … We’re also entitled to put our views, and we didn’t do it shyly.”
Albanese stood by Australia’s decision to recognise Palestine.
“Australians have been disgusted by what they see on their TV every night. They were disgusted by the terrorist actions of Hamas on 7 October – the slaughter of innocent Israelis, the taking of hostages and the ongoing holding of those hostages have outraged Australians,” the prime minister said.
“But Australians have also seen the death of tens of thousands of people [in Gaza]. When you have children starving, when you have children losing their lives, with families queueing for food and water, then that provokes, not surprisingly, a human reaction.”