Hamas draws weak responses
As another symptom of the West’s feeble irresolution over Hamas’s atrocities that Alexander Downer wrote about on Monday, it would be hard to overlook continuation of the taxpayer-funded $250,000 Australian Research Council grant for the Sydney University academic who called Hamas’s mass rape and sexual violence on October 7 “fake news” and a media-created “hoax”. Likewise the minute’s silence observed by members of the federal council of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the journalists’ union, to express solidarity with “Palestinian media workers” in Gaza while making no mention of Israeli civilians or journalists killed on or after October 7.
Sociology professor Sujatha Fernandes was “disciplined” by university authorities, but that has not stopped continuation of a four-year grant, which expires in December, for research on “worker consciousness” in global cities and the “problems posed by migrant labour exploitation”. It also enables her to “mentor early career scholars”.
No less “incredibly disappointing”, as NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president David Ossip said, is the MEAA’s action. Such cases underline the timeliness of Mr Downer’s contention that “the Middle East is turning out to be a major test for Western civilisation, and so far it hasn’t been doing well”. Joe Biden, he noted, condemned the Hamas killing of six hostages, then criticised the Israeli government for not negotiating a hostages-for-peace deal with Hamas. Anthony Albanese expressed his sorrow on social media. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra board’s sacking of Sophie Galaise as managing director after it overturned the unanimous decision of her executive team to sideline pianist Jayson Gillham following his onstage anti-Israel comments is also a sign of encroaching, subtle anti-Semitism.
After the murders of the six hostages and countless terrorist crimes, prevailing attitudes to Hamas, as Mr Downer argued, reflect weak leadership in the West. Instead of simple, clear moral positions and a strong sense of the preservation of Western civilisation, political leaders are increasingly just responding to the ephemeral vagaries of public opinion and media-driven narratives. In doing so, they are playing into the hands of the terrorists and their Iranian masters.