James Morrow: Hamas attacks reveal a West that has lost the will to win

Instead of showing unity, in democracies such as Australia, domestic politics have been fractured by Hamas attacks, writes James Morrow.

At this stage, when, or whether, Israel gets on with the messy business of uprooting Hamas from the Gaza Strip is almost beyond the point.

For Australia and the world, the bloody terrorist rampage conducted in the name of Palestinian “resistance” has already done its job, revealing the cracks in a fractured West and changing the entire narrative of the Middle East.

Hamas, and its ultimate paymasters in Iran, now feel they have the upper hand.

And why shouldn’t they?

The past fortnight has seen nothing but headlines across the West demanding that Israel hold fire and not go too far, with each passing day giving Hamas time not only to dig in and re-arm but also tacit permission to do it again.

This after 1400 innocents were butchered in the most appalling ways and 200 more captured to be used as human shields.

A rally for a free Palestine on the forecourt of The Sydney Opera House in Sydney following the recent outbreak of war between Israel and Palestine. Picture: NCA NewsWire

Yet instead of unity, in democracies such as Australia, domestic politics have been fractured by the attacks.

Anthony Albanese, who as a junior-burger MP helped found Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, is now being wedged by old ALP types on the one hand who still stand with Israel and his historically ignorant green-left flank which thinks Israel is an evil settler colony that causes nothing but trouble.

Thus we see the likes of Foreign Minister Penny Wong issuing statements this week calling for humanitarian assistance to protect “innocent Palestinian civilians” in Gaza while not also mentioning the hostages Hamas holds as shields.

Quite something for the woman who recently was feted for her role getting Cheng Lei out of China.

And if politics is really just downstream from culture, one does not have to look hard to see how fractured Western societies are now.

Whether it is the spectre of Jews being told by NSW Police to avoid the Opera House when it was lit up in the colours of Israel or being detained by cops for holding an Israeli flag too close to Palestine-supporting thugs, the attack has laid bare cleavages we in Australia have for years pretended did not exist. It’s the same story across the great democracies.

Western leaders who would have 22 years ago presided over unified shows of strength and grief over 9/11 now preside over societies where support for Israel, or even the West, is not a given.

Mark Spiro was arrested “for his own safety” for holding an Israeli flag near a pro-Palestine rally that moved from Sydney Town Hall to the Opera House. Picture: Adam Yip

Against this backdrop both Hamas and Iran feel they can act with impunity. After all, who’s going to stop them?

Here some history is in order.

Last decade, Barack Obama tried to rebalance Washington’s dealings in the Middle East away from its historic ally Israel to Iran, where the US is still the “Great Satan”.

This went so far as a deal that enabled the mullahs to have their own nuclear program — a peaceful one, of course.

In office Joe Biden and his handlers, many holdovers from Team Obama, picked up the thread, allowing Iran to sell more oil on the world market to raise cash and access billions of dollars in overseas bank accounts that had been blocked since the 1979 revolution.

US President Barack Obama, standing with Vice President Joe Biden, delivers remarks on in the East Room of the White House in Washington after an Iran nuclear deal was reached. Picture: AFP

Instead of a united front against the most unimaginable barbarism (captives burnt alive, babies beheaded, women and girls raped), Iran now looks at the West and sees demonstrators chanting for the elimination of Israel.

Yet the US is playing a double game, standing by Israel yet reining it in on the one hand while also not doing anything real to stop Iran either, not even impose sanctions.

In this sense, the violence we have seen has really been apocalyptic: Not just in the modern sense of end of the world horror but in its original Ancient Greek sense, which meant “a revelation” of something.

What has been revealed is ugly, namely a West that would rather blame the victim than attack the perpetrator, in the hope that they won’t be next.

We must hope there are no more such apocalypses in the offing. In either sense of the word.