Why recognising Palestine is a dangerous snub to the US

Labor is tilting Australia’s foreign policy towards the EU and away from the US even as our need for a strong American alliance is greatest, warns James Morrow.

Whatever their views on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Australians should be deeply worried over reports that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is on the verge of recognising a Palestinian state.

Not because the weight of a country of 27 million people 10,000 miles away from the war will make much difference in bringing about peace.

But rather because he is tilting Australia’s foreign policy towards the EU (where the mood is very much to recognise a Palestinian state) and away from the US (where the Trump administration remains firmly on the side of Israel).

At a moment when the AUKUS subs deal looks increasingly up in the air and as the Pacific shapes up as a flashpoint for future conflict, this is dangerous business.

Unwittingly Labor is also doing exactly what Xi Jinping has been hoping for – which is to say, pulling Australia farther away from Washington.

And don’t think this behaviour is not being noticed in Washington.

Xi Jinping will be thrilled by this new direction in Australian foreign policy. Picture: Huang Jingwen/Xinhua via AP

Yet should a hot war break out in the Pacific it is only the US, not the EU, that could come to Australia’s assistance and block a Chinese blockade.

Albanese may give lip service to the American alliance, but it’s clear his heart is not really in it.

Anthony Albanese could be putting the AUKUS subs deal in further jeopardy.

Take his recent John Curtin Oration, which not only sought to credit the wartime prime minister with forging Australia’s alliance with the US (though it was Robert Menzies who signed the ANZUS treaty), but also misrepresented Curtin’s relations with Washington during World War II?

There is almost surely a subconscious component to this.

Trump or no Trump, Labor and the entire cultural left has always felt more of an affinity with sophisticated, cultured Europe than with brash, gun-toting, Jesus-loving America.

Yet to paraphrase the old saw “facts don’t care about feelings”, maps and geography don’t care that this Labor government still suffers from the old cultural cringe that sees it aping pro-Palestine Europe instead of sticking with the US and the only functional democracy in the Middle East.

Originally published as Why recognising Palestine is a dangerous snub to the US