A personal view of Australian and International Politics : September 2026

Tuesday, 1 September 2026

World Central Kitchen chief slams IDF soldier behind Zomi Frankcom attack.

Extract from ABC News

By Middle East correspondent Caitlin Kelly

Topic:Unrest, Conflict and War

about 10 hours ago

A woman wearing a T-shirt, cap and large hoop earrings standing in front of Palestinian children. — An IDF strike killed seven aid workers, including Australian Zomi Frankcom in 2024. (Supplied)

In short:

World Central Kitchen's chief José Andrés has hit back at an Israeli commander who defended the decision to strike a convoy that killed Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom.

He released the video after an ABC interview with Israeli colonel Nochi Mendel, who ordered the 2024 drone strike that killed Ms Frankcom and six of her colleagues in Gaza.

What's next?

The WCK chief has also renewed calls for an independent investigation into the April 2024 attack.

World Central Kitchen has hit back at an Israeli commander who defended the decision to strike a convoy that killed seven aid workers, including Australian Zomi Frankcom, saying "we will never accept the death of humanitarian workers".

In a video on X, the organisation's chief José Andrés said there was "never an excuse for killing" humanitarians.

He released the video in response to an ABC interview with Israeli colonel Nochi Mendel, who ordered the deadly drone strike on an aid convoy in Gaza that killed Ms Frankcom, along with six of her colleagues, in April 2024.

Colonel Mendel told the ABC he did not intend to harm aid workers but said, "I'm not sorry for what I did."

He said he later became aware of what he claims were links between World Central Kitchen (WCK) and Hamas, describing the organisation as not "really a neutral organisation" — allegations the WCK calls "false and outrageous".

A spokesperson for the WCK told the ABC that "this is the latest attempt to shift blame away from the IDF's own actions".

Responding to Colonel Mendel's interview, which was published last week after being conducted in October 2025, Mr Andrés refuted the commander's claims.

"He said we are not a neutral organisation. Really? Let me be very clear to him and to the whole world," he said.

"We are humanitarians."

The organisation also renewed calls for an independent investigation into the April 2024 attack.

Jose Andres. — José Andrés also renewed calls for an independent investigation into the April 2024 attack. (AP Photo: Efrem Lukatsky, File)

Colonel Mendel, the commander who ordered the attack, was sacked from his role as chief of staff for the Israeli military's Nahal infantry brigade.

However, as part of a wider release of military findings on August 19, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it would not pursue a criminal investigation or take additional measures against anyone involved in the incident.

The Frankcom family was "deeply disappointed" by the decision and called for an independent investigation.

"We want an independent investigation, with all the video on audio released in public, so the world can know the truth," Mr Andrés said, echoing Ms Frankcom's family.

"Because we continue to grieve for our friends. We will never forget them or stop fighting for them."

On April 1, 2024, the group was travelling in three armoured cars branded with the WCK logo and driving through part of the Gaza Strip that had been declared a "humanitarian fire control zone" while coordinating movements with the IDF.

An Israeli drone fired three missiles at the convoy — one at each of the cars in succession — as survivors of the initial strike attempted to move from one vehicle to another.

In findings released on August 19 this year, the IDF said it identified a gunman on a truck in the humanitarian aid convoy and believed the situation "corresponded to a scenario in which the Hamas terrorist organisation had taken control of the convoy" and claimed the convoy deviated from the approved route.

In response to the findings, WCK said the IDF had full knowledge that the team was unarmed and was aware of its movement, identities and activities in advance.

A group of people standing near a destroyed car, looking on, seen from the interior of the vehicle — Palestinians look at a vehicle where WCF employees were killed. (Reuters: Ahmed Zakot)

"They knew there was no excuse," Mr Andrés reiterated in the video.

"They knew everything about our operations in Gaza in real time. In fact, there were clear orders not to fire on our people."

At the time, the IDF said the attack was a grave mistake, arising from misidentification of the occupants of the convoy as Hamas members.

An Australian investigation into the Israeli government's response to the incident, led by retired defence chief Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin and published August 2, 2024, found the deaths had been the result of the first vehicle being misidentified due to a number of factors.

They included the presence of armed security in the vicinity, confirmation bias and a "failure within the IDF to fully disseminate and/or read the detailed movement plan approved by the convoy".

As part of the recent release on various IDF investigations into civilian deaths since October 7, the military said it did conclude there were serious failures.

It said the IDF "mistakenly believed that the vehicles contained Hamas military operatives and therefore struck the vehicles", but had stopped short of launching a criminal investigation.

Two IDF commanders — including Colonel Mendel — have already been stripped of their ranks as colonel and major.

A colonel, a major general and a brigadier general have also been reprimanded over the incident.

The ABC's Unravel podcast is investigating the incident, with a report due later this year.

Netanyahu's rhetoric on latest settler violence doesn't match action from Israeli government.

Extract from ABC News

Analysis

By Middle East correspondent Matthew Doran

Topic:Unrest, Conflict and War

2 hours ago

A screenshot from a video showing two men in hoods and masks approaching a car with sticks raised. — Two masked settlers attack a Palestinian woman and NBC News crew in the West Bank on Saturday. (Supplied: NBC News)

Over the weekend Israeli settlers once again tore through West Bank towns and villages, attacking Palestinians and even foreign media crews.

Masked settlers set upon the American network NBC on Saturday in the town of Jalud, which has spent months under siege by young men from nearby Israeli settlements and outposts.

It prompted another round of condemnation from senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.

He labelled them a "handful of rioters who are violating the law, causing a grave injustice to the law-abiding Jewish community, interfering with the [Israel Defense Forces (IDF)] in carrying out its missions, and harming Israel's standing in the world".

The rhetoric is familiar. These are a few bad eggs who are using violence to enforce their belief the West Bank is their God-given land, and, officials say, do not represent the wider settler community who share that creed.

Add to that the argument that this is bad publicity.

If the issue is indeed what officials call a small number of offenders, and quite separate from the issue that all Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories is considered illegal under international law, the situation poses an obvious question that no Israeli official seems able or willing to answer.

Why can't one of the most powerful militaries in the world stop it from happening?

The answer, as it often does, comes down to politics.

Two West Bank crackdowns, two different outcomes

In mid-August, the IDF launched a military operation to quell settler attacks in Qusra, roughly 50 kilometres north of Jerusalem and less than 5 kilometres from Jalud.

Settlers, many of whom appeared to be young men or teenagers, had besieged homes on the edge of town, cutting power and water supplies as they tried to force the residents to leave.

The ABC talks to a villager who is trapped in his West Bank home.

One of the properties was owned by a Palestinian-American businessman who demanded intervention from the US embassy. His highly publicised position likely a factor in the United States ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee branding the attackers "Israeli terrorists".

A fortnight on, and the situation persists. Despite the area being declared a military zone, settlers continue to harass and attack Palestinians.

When the operation began one person had been detained. The ABC asked the IDF and Israeli police for an update on whether more arrests had been made. The IDF said it was a police matter, and a police source told the ABC no-one had been arrested.

Compare that to the response to a deadly shooting in the village of Tell, south of Nablus, a few weeks earlier.

On a Friday in late July, some Israeli settlers were on what they described as a "hike" from a nearby settlement, without seeking the approval of the IDF, when they came into contact with a group Palestinians on the edge of the village.

The Israelis said the Palestinians attacked them, while the Palestinians said the Israelis were the aggressors.

Video from the scene shows one of the Palestinian men grabbing a settler's gun and opening fire, then later shows Israeli soldiers opening fire on the group as the melee continued.

Two settlers and four Palestinians were killed.

What followed was not only a wave of settler violence, with buildings and cars firebombed and people attacked, but a massive security crackdown by Israeli forces.

Between Friday, when the initial shooting occurred, and Sunday evening, Israeli police arrested more than 130 people, all Palestinians.

And that is just one example of the tough approach Israeli forces take against Palestinians, with arrests happening across the West Bank each and every day.

'Acts' vs 'terrorism': Politics surrounds violence

The issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank is deeply political.

All settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are considered illegal under international law, but the Israeli government denies their illegality, and even supports them.

None of the major Israeli-led parties vying for votes and attention ahead of the October 27 election want to show weakness on the issue, insisting they support communities in "Judea and Samaria", the biblical names for the region.

The language politicians use to describe settler violence is also very different to what they use to describe Palestinian violence in the West Bank, which is often quickly labelled as "terrorism".

Take, for example, the prime minister's international spokesperson Doron Spielman's description of the weekend settler violence as "acts … committed by a small group of rioters, many from broken homes".

"They do not represent the law-abiding Jewish community in Judea and Samaria; on the contrary, they cause that community a grave injustice," he said.

With Qusra in the spotlight, Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF would draft a plan to hand over security control for civilian matters in the West Bank to Israeli police.

Some in the Israeli media characterised that as an attempt to distance his ministry, and the military, from the growing mess it was faced with clearing up.

Concerns were also raised about the legality of such a move, with reporting suggesting the military would likely tell Katz that shifting security responsibility from the military to the police would require formal annexation of territory.

Commentators also insisted it played into the hands of Israel's right-wing national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has control over the police.

UN reports surge in attacks

Ben-Gvir himself is a settler and is subject to international sanctions, including from Australia, for his policies and rhetoric towards Palestinians.

Along with far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, he has frequently called to expand settlements.

Despite critics of Israel's occupation of the West Bank saying its conduct amounts to de facto annexation, a formal declaration or change in its legal status has not occurred.

US President Donald Trump, perhaps the only world leader Netanyahu listens to, has previously said he would not allow it.

This is why the response to settler violence has, thus far, been muted. The people holding the levers of power in the government to act are not interested in dealing with it.

Israeli Knesset member posts video of vandalising Martyr's Memorial in West Bank. (Zvi Sukkot via Facebook)

Analysts also say that within the IDF there is a lack of will to act against the settlers, either due to general apathy about the situation they're causing, a fear that soldiers don't have the political backing to tackle them, or the reality that more and more settlers are now in the ranks of the Israeli military itself.

The United Nations has reported a sharp rise in Palestinians attacked by Israeli settlers, from an average of one Palestinian injured every three days in 2020 to more than three per day in 2026.

Since the start of the year, 23 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,040 injured in settler attacks in the West Bank, the organisation's latest figures said.

In a 24-hour period from Friday morning to Saturday morning, activists recorded at least 13 different incidents of settler attacks ranging from using live fire against Palestinians, stealing livestock, cutting down fruit trees and setting fire to farmland.

Warnings about settler violence go unheeded

One Israeli politician, Gilad Kariv of the Democrats, labelled the prime minister's latest condemnation as "meaningless" and "nothing more than a fraudulent exercise".

"These rioters are his direct emissaries, Katz's, Smotrich's and Ben-Gvir's," Kariv said.

"This is why there have been no arrests and no indictments in recent weeks against the invaders. This is why they are granted de facto immunity by the IDF and the police.

"Netanyahu's goal is to cause an explosion in the territories ahead of the elections. Once again, a bunch of lunatics are betting on the lives of Israelis and Palestinians for the sake of political survival."

In late April, the former chief of Israeli spy agency Mossad, Tamir Pardo, toured some of the West Bank villages and towns being targeted by settlers. He told the country's Channel 13 what he saw made him "ashamed to be a Jew".

He warned it was fuelling such anger among Palestinians that it was "planting the seeds of the next October 7" attack against Israel.

Both the IDF and the domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet, Israeli media has reported, have warned the situation in the West Bank is getting out of control.

For a country that prides itself on being able to target what it claims are threats against Israel in places like Gaza and Lebanon, cleaning up what it describes as its own backyard seems much more difficult; or, more specifically, of much less interest.

Sixty years ago, 'metal boxes' threatened to take over jobs. Now AI is.

Extract from ABC News

about 1 hours ago

A black and white photograph of a man in a white laboratory coat sitting at a metal computer — Four Corners journalist Jim Downes described early versions of the computer as "metal boxes". (ABC: Four Corners)

In March 1968, in a rich, British accent typical of Australian news reporters of the time, Four Corners journalist Jim Downes asked the country: "When this circuit learns your job, what are you going to do?"

By "circuit", Mr Downes was referring to the computer — a technological innovation at once revered and feared by a 1960s Australian society already living through massive social, political and cultural change.

Mr Downes, a brilliant wordsmith, described computers as "metal boxes of salmon-pink, beige or deep blue, trimmed in stainless steel or aluminium", which "promise or threaten the mind with what the industrial revolution did to the muscles".

"Computers fracture time into billions of a second — nanoseconds — the time taken for a calculation," he explained, over slightly grainy black-and-white video of men dressed in white lab coats working in rooms filled with bulky machinery and flashing buttons.

"The human operator is one bottle-neck, another is translation of the machine's work into language we can understand.

"To a computer, a man is a number, a pattern of holes in a punch card, a recorded symbol on magnetic tape or disk."

A black and white close up image of a large keyboard-style computer from 168 — In 1968, there were fewer than 600 computers in Australia. (ABC: Four Corners)

The Four Corners report, unearthed from the ABC's vast digitised archive, aired at a tipping point in the computer's rapid evolution in Australia.

There were fewer than 600 computers in the country at the time, but already the machines had advanced from huge contraptions built in universities, to, as Mr Downes put it, "new models, many times smaller, many times cheaper, and a thousand times more efficient".

"The disciples of the computer can see the prospect that a man's rise to the top may depend on his ability to commune with a machine, to turn computer power to personal power, and not the meek, but the systems analyst shall inherit the earth," he stated.

"With near religious fervour, some promote their machines as the cure for the world's ills, economic liberator of the impoverished, even bringer of international peace.

"But they don't say how."

White text on a black computer screen showing words and code in the 1960s — In 1968, then University of Adelaide professor John Ovenstone said the rise of the computer would ultimately benefit humanity. (ABC: Four Corners)

Almost six decades later, a similar conversation is being had about the computer's protégé, artificial intelligence.

Inquiries — at both a state and federal level — are underway, new laws have been introduced, and unions keep a watchful gaze, as the AI horse bolts through Australian workplaces and homes, influencing the way people think, learn and go about their everyday lives.

"The use of artificial intelligence is an exciting opportunity to advance the cause of humanity," South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas said last month, when announcing a royal commission into the technology.

"It is also true that, unchecked, artificial intelligence does represent a material risk to the way our society operates and a risk to the future of work if not thought through carefully."

Disrupting the workforce

Months before Four Corners aired its report, South Australian high school students started to learn how to use computers.

The lessons were an experiment orchestrated by University of Adelaide professor John Ovenstone, a leading computer scientist of his time.

Asked by Mr Downes why he felt it necessary to teach teenagers computing, Mr Ovenstone replied: "If we don't educate our people so that they can use computers properly, our standards of living will have to drop".

"We're faced with a situation and there's no way out of it."

A black and white image of a classroom full of young students sitting at old wooden desks in the 1960s — South Australian school students started to learn how to use computers in the late 1960s. (ABC: Four Corners)

While Mr Ovenstone considered the rise of the computer as an inevitability that would ultimately benefit humanity, others interviewed by Four Corners in 1968 were more cautious.

Computing lecturer Frank Linton-Simpkins predicted computers could wipe out entire professions.

"Most clerk officers are practically unskilled labourers who can read and write and this is about it," he (rather bluntly) said.

"Their jobs are in danger and they have about five years to run at the most."

Council of Salaried and Professional Associations Victorian secretary John Sanders was equally concerned about workforce disruption.

"In certain overseas countries and the United States for instance, it's been formulated that possibly by the year 1980, only 10 per cent of the present workforce would be required to maintain the output of goods and services for the community," he said.

"But, in a developing country like Australia, this is much further ahead I would say."

Leading computer scientist Trevor Pearcey offered (arguably) the most accurate prediction.

"Although some people will become redundant, I feel pretty certain that there will always be new things they can do, even if it means a certain amount of re-training," he said.

"I think the real future lies not so much in the application of computers to automation of industry, but of computers being applied to what are currently semi-intelligent functions of the human brain."

A grey haired man in black glasses smiles at the camera. He wears a patterned marron and white shirt. — Professor Toby Walsh says the impact AI might take longer than predicted. (ABC News: Greg Bigelow)

'The conversation seems to be repeating itself'

Watching the Four Corners report in the present day, University of New South Wales AI Institute chief scientist Toby Walsh was struck by how similar the debate was to today's discussion on artificial intelligence.

"Strangely enough, what they [the people interviewed by Four Corners] were saying seems very topical for today as much as it was back then," Professor Walsh said.

"The conversation seems to be repeating itself."

Public anxiety about AI and employment has reached a crescendo in recent times.

Earlier this year, thousands of Australian tech workers were laid off in cuts linked to the technology.

But a first-of-its-kind report from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations found Australia's job market remains strong, despite some early signs of weakening around jobs predicted to be most affected by AI, such as telemarketers.

Asked what Australians could learn from past debates on how new technologies could impact the workforce, Professor Walsh replied: "I think the heartening news is that it often takes longer for a technology to have the impact it can because it has to deal with human institutions".

"Many of the changes that they were talking about in that Four Corners piece back in 1968 took a bit longer to happen than I think the experts were predicting back then," he said.

"I suspect the same will be true this time, in that we might have technologies like artificial intelligence that could be quickly used and quickly replacing people, but it will actually take longer than we expect."

Professor Justin Zobel, computer scientist, looks at the camera smiling. He wears glasses and a black jacket — Professor Justin Zobel says a really sudden change could be tremendously disruptive. (ABC News: Nathan O’Brien )

University of Melbourne computer science Justin Zobel said there was "no doubt" that the way in which people work would change with the rise of AI, but there was also "no line of sight of what the new possibilities are".

"There were very serious reports three years ago now, characterising how a whole range of professions were going to be washed away or diminished by use of AI and how quickly that was going to happen," Professor Zobel said.

"That report has largely has not borne out, but this sense, I think for the first time, that difficult knowledge work could be done by a machine, has really set out the kinds of things that might change."

Professor Zobel said the "big lesson" to be taken from earlier debates was an understanding of the speed at which technology could result in workplace changes.

"The internet really took a long time to arrive — we connected in 1989 and broadband didn't become widespread until the late-2000s, nearly 20 years later," he said.

"But a really sudden change could be tremendously disruptive."

In 2026, the time could be overdue for Australia to consider, as a national question, when AI learns your job, what are you going to do?