James Campbell: Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has become Israel’s implacable enemy

It’s hard to pinpoint when disappointment at Penny Wong’s attitude to the Jewish state turned into the belief she is its implacable enemy, but a tipping point could be her overreaction to Zomi Frankcom’s killing.

You have to hand it to the Foreign Affairs Minister.

In the current climate it really takes some effort to make relations between Australia’s Jewish community and the government worse.

By ‘current climate’ of course I mean the explosion in the public expressions of Jew hatred which culminated in the torching of the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne.

Looking at a list of the shit that has gone down in Australia in the past 14 months is to be reminded how easily evil can become normalised if authorities sit on their hands.

The inside of the firebombed Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea. Picture: Brendan Kearns

The synagogue has vowed to rebuild. Picture: Ian Currie

The ballooning number of anti-Semitic ‘incidents’ has been played down – if not exactly excused – as some kind organic spontaneous response to the alleged Israeli outrages in Gaza.

It should go without saying that’s bullshit but unfortunately events move on so quickly it’s necessary to reiterate that the nastiness got started within hours of Hamas killing 1200 Israelis.

Highlights of that first week include Sheik Ibrahim Dadoun telling a Lakemba crowd “I’m smiling and I’m happy ... I’m elated, it’s a day of courage” and protesters burning the Israeli flag during a commemoration for massacre victims at the Sydney Opera House.

Also in Sydney, that month a Jewish man was attacked and repeatedly punched and kicked by a group of men who called him a “Jew dog” while in Perth, youths attacked a Jewish boy calling him a “dirty Jew”.

A month later, a Jewish person in Melbourne was attacked and called “dirty rotten Jew c---,” a crowd of anti-Israel activists congregated outside a synagogue and an anti-Israeli convoy went on a drive-through of Jewish areas in Sydney while the families of Israeli hostages visiting Australia were accosted by protesters at their Melbourne hotel and forced to take refuge in a police station.

In January, more than a dozen men shouted “F--k the Jews” at several Jews in Melbourne, spitting at them and throwing shoes.

Then there was the doxxing of the WhatsApp group, the vandalisation of the electorate office of Jewish MP Josh Burns and the occupation of a Jewish professor’s office at Melbourne University.

The slogan “Zionism is Fascism” was sprayed on the electoral office of Australian federal Labor Party MP Josh Burns. Picture: William West

Along the way there have been threats to bomb and gas Jews, Jewish homes and public buildings vandalised, graffiti attacks urging Australians to “Kill the Jews” and so on and on.

If you want to get a sense of the scale of this filth look at the ECAJ Report on Anti-Jewish Incidents in Australia 2024.

To read it is to understand it’s no surprise things have reached the car-burning and shule-bombing stage.

Which brings me back to Penny Wong and her speech last week in which she managed to insult Israel in a talk named in honour of Bob Hawke, who was a passionate Zionist.

It shouldn’t need explaining that lumping Israel in with China and Russia as states that need to abide by international law was not just offensive, it was also dangerous.

Maybe that is why the transcript on her website includes that bit but it was omitted from the copy sent to journalists.

For more than two years now, senior members of the Jewish community have been trying to understand what motivates Wong.

Senior members of the Jewish community have been trying to understand what motivates Penny Wong. Picture: Martin Ollman

Is she a simple-minded Left-wing ideologue who is unreachable or is she someone who can be brought to understand the complexities of the region in which the Jewish state dwells?

In retrospect it’s amazing it took so long for them to reach a fixed conclusion about her.

The first sign things were going pear-shaped came five months after the government was elected, when Wong announced she was reversing a Morrison government decision to recognise Jerusalem as its capital.

The change had been flagged before Labor was elected, but Israel was furious it was unveiled in the middle of their elections.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when disappointment at Wong’s attitude to the Jewish state turned into the belief she is its implacable enemy.

But if there was a tipping point it was probably her over-the-top and hypocritical reaction to the killing of Zomi Frankcom in April.

The targeting of her aid convoy was a terrible mistake which was acknowledged almost immediately by the Israelis who within days had dismissed the officers responsible.

There was no need for us to appoint a ‘special adviser’ to investigate the Israeli response to the killings nor was there any need to repeatedly refer to the deaths as an “outrage” and “outrageous”.

It was hypocritical because when it comes to investigating alleged war crimes we don’t exactly move like greased lighting.

The slow but relentless reversing of Australia’s long-held positions in votes at the UN has simply confirmed the leadership of Australia’s Jewish community’s belief she is their implacable enemy.

“When we walk in the room I think she just sees us as the apologists of genocide – it’s as simple as that,” is how one influential member of the community describes her view about the Foreign Affairs Minister.

That’s really quite an achievement.