Payman’s exit tells a different story

Few would have predicted that nine months after the October Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, an Australian Labor Party senator would break decades of caucus solidarity and cross the floor of parliament to vote with the crossbench. Nor could anyone have predicted that local uprisings in Syria beginning in March 2011 would eventually see several hundred Australian men and women travel to that country and Iraq to support a group committed to attacking Australia, and that dozens more would help facilitate or conduct attacks in Australia itself.

By contrast, equally significant and tragic world events, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the civil war in Sudan that has raged for the past 18 months, have made barely a ripple in Australian society. Claims of genocide being carried out in Gaza are routinely raised in parliament and in street protests, while Greens leader Adam Bandt has accused the Israeli military of engineering a famine.

Illustration by Simon Letch

Yet in Sudan, separated from Gaza by less than half the distance that separates Perth from Sydney, a conflict that is unfolding at the same time – with far more devastating humanitarian consequences for the civilian population when not only deaths but displacements, malnutrition and disease are taken into account – has had no impact on either Australian society or Australian politics.

Of course, some of the reasons are readily apparent. The Russia-Ukraine conflict is largely binary and therefore easily understood. It also pits the liberal democratic order against totalitarian Russia and its partners. Australia has been robust in its support for Ukraine with weapons, training and logistics to help its military fight the Russians. And Australia has never enjoyed a particularly close relationship with Russia.

An uneasy stand-off at Melbourne University between a Jewish community rally and students protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza.Credit: Sherryn Groch

In the case of Sudan, it has been and remains a complex and unstable environment in which Australia has little expertise and little interest. And Australia has a very small domestic constituency concerned about Africa or African lives. Where Gaza dominates the nightly news, Sudan is an afterthought, if it features at all.

The Hamas attack and subsequent Israeli response is an issue that has divided segments of Australian society and placed politicians in a difficult position. Part of this is because of the complexity of the issue. Australia has entirely different relations with the main protagonists – it enjoys a good relationship with the state of Israel, while Hamas is a listed terrorist group.

At the same time, the government advocates for a two-state solution to the issue of Palestine, while it condemns the building of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. On a personal level, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese helped establish the Friends of Palestine parliamentary group a quarter of a century ago.

Despite this, on Thursday afternoon, Senator Fatima Payman quit the Labor Party to sit as an independent, condemning “our government’s indifference to the greatest injustice of our times” with Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

The Middle East has long had a way of imposing itself on Australian politics in a way that belies its remoteness from us. Whether that is through our dispatch of troops there in World Wars I and II or more recently in Iraq as part of our perceived alliance requirements, because of the economic opportunities it presents, or increasingly through immigration, we have long shared a history with the region.

But events in the Middle East can reveal fault lines in our society and energise identity politics at the expense of debate about what is in the national interest. A group calling itself The Muslim Vote, which has declared it will target Labor-held seats in response to its support for Israel, is the latest and most public manifestation of this trend. Given Australia’s experience with sectarian-based politics last century, and the damage that identity politics has done in the Middle East, this is unlikely to be a good thing. (Payman said she was not affiliated with the group.)

The same year that Albanese began the Friends of Palestine group, the noted historian Bernard Lewis published his book Multiple Identities of the Middle East. In it, he explains the Middle East’s penchant for conflict through the multiplicity of identities that exist in the region and the way that this has influenced people’s views of, and reaction to, particular issues. As a historian, he was, of course, focused on the past, and of the lived experience of the groups about whom he wrote.

But the way in which the war in Gaza has mobilised segments of the population in Australia – and what it might say about the future of identity politics – is concerning. There are just over 100,000 Jewish Australians and many fewer people with Palestinian heritage.

Claim and counter-claim of antisemitism and Islamophobia in Australia have routinely been deployed to discredit one side or the other. At the same time, many of those camping out in university protests or marching on the streets or defacing politicians’ offices or war memorials, or merely wearing keffiyehs, are neither Palestinian nor Muslim, and relatively few would have been to, or would ever want to go to, Gaza.

Events in the Middle East have for many years have had an impact on Australian security in ways that belie its geographic separation from this country. But the region’s ability to impose itself on Australian politics has taken a new direction.

The launching of a Muslim political grouping and the resignation of a Muslim ALP senator from the party has brought the problems bedevilling the Middle East directly into domestic Australian politics. But those seeking to use grievance politics as a way of garnering political influence should also appreciate the degree to which identity politics is the root cause of many of the Middle East’s problems.

Dr Rodger Shanahan is a Middle East analyst. As an army officer, his operational experience included Lebanon, Syria and Afghanistan. He is the author of Islamic State in Australia.