PM lets down Hawke tradition

In abandoning Israel at the UN and in the International Criminal Court, the Albanese government has abandoned a great Labor tradition of supporting the always-embattled state’s right to exist.

This is all the more outrageous for Anthony Albanese, appearing to calibrate his comments to suit his talking points of the day. And it is alarming in that it occurs as Israel’s defensive war against the terror armies of Hezbollah and Hamas appears close to success, with the latter reportedly close to agreeing to free Israelis it holds hostage.

That the government is looking to placate Israel’s enemies is in line with its moral ambiguity, at best, over Israel’s right to defend itself. The past two weeks have shown the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Penny Wong to be sailing still under the false flag they hoisted in October 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1200 men, women and children.

The government denounces terrorists but did not condemn the ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Israel’s Prime Minister and former defence minister, along with a Hamas warlord. At the UN, Australian votes that support the Palestinian Authority have been welcomed as steps in the “right direction” by Palestinian representatives here. The message this sends to anti-Semites in Australia, who use opposition to Israel as an excuse to terrorise Jews, is clear. As the proverb puts it: “By their friends shall you know them”.

This is not a new challenge for Labor prime ministers. It is one that Bob Hawke met but Gough Whitlam, at best, ducked. As Henry Ergas and Alex McDermott write in Inquirer, Hawke embraced Israel as an Australian-style exercise in nation-building.

But while Whitlam talked the talk of Israel’s right to exist, he walked the path of befriending its enemies – including the utterly odious dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. The roots of the present nonsense that Israel is a colonising state and the terrorists and tyrants who want to destroy it are freedom-fighters dates from Whitlam’s era. It culminated this week in a speech by Senator Wong in which she referenced Israel alongside Russia and China, invaders and occupiers of other countries and oppressors of their own citizens.

Doubtless Mr Albanese’s new and strong statements condemning anti-Semitism are heartfelt. But too often in the past year he has appeared intent on appeasing voters and people in his own party who despise Israel as a Jewish state.

Defending Labor-held seats in Sydney and Melbourne at risk of protest votes over Gaza is embedded in the Prime Minister’s political DNA. But the nation is now paying the price for his impossible attempt to keep all in the Labor tent happy – escalating attacks on Jewish Australians by anti-Semites who mistake ministerial remarks and UN votes as sanctions for their crimes.

Mr Albanese should have started defending Israel loud and long from the day Hamas terrorists invaded, and he should have made it clear that while criticisms of the Israeli government are legitimate, attacks against Israelis and Jews in general are not.

We are seeing the result of his failure. This is not the first time the Prime Minister has put political advantage first. Throughout his second year in office, Mr Albanese was a fierce advocate for the Indigenous voice to parliament, but since its referendum defeat his mentions of practical solutions to the desperate plight of remote Indigenous people are much rarer. This is not the behaviour of a worthy successor to Hawke, and it shows.