Wong makes a mess on Israel

The only question about why Israel’s Foreign Minister has taken Penny Wong to task is what took Gideon Sa’ar so long. As this newspaper pointed out on Wednesday, “the consistent tone and trajectory” of the Albanese government’s criticism of Israel is now impossible to miss.

The phone discussion between Mr Sa’ar and Anthony Albanese’s Foreign Minister is reported to have been “a sharp verbal clash”, although not in the class of the conversations around Israel’s decision to close its embassy in Dublin over Ireland’s “demonisation of the Jewish state”. To which Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris responded: “I utterly reject the assertion that Ireland is anti-Israel. Ireland is pro-peace, pro-human rights and pro-international law.” Ireland, however, has backed South African allegations that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza.

Senator Wong sounded like the Irish Prime Minister last week. When she supported her call for Israel to comply with international law in a lecture, she was referring to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, which has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant. She said she expected Israel to respect international law, just as China and Russia should.

The comparisons are odious. Mr Netanyahu leads a democracy, governed by the rule of law, that is fighting a defensive war of national security. The leaders of Russia and China rule by fear at home and aggression – in the case of Ukraine, invasion – abroad. That Mr Sa’ar takes exception to Senator Wong’s declared view is hardly surprising. Neither will the Israelis have missed the response by Palestinian representatives here that Australian votes at the UN that support the Palestinian Authority are in the “right direction”.

Media friends of Senator Wong suggest she is standing for Australian foreign policy principles in a UN vote for a two-state solution. Such suggestions are too cute by half, ignoring the context of Senator Wong’s carefully constructed comments and their potential to appease enemies of Israel in the Labor Party and in electorates the government fears it could lose to protest votes over Gaza. Senator Wong’s words inevitably add to Israeli assumptions that the federal and certainly the Victorian governments were too slow to tackle anti-Semitic thuggery. The Prime Minister’s tin-eared delay in responding to the arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan’s tardy response to protecting Jews from intimidation on the streets see to that. They both contrast, badly, to NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns, who stepped up and stands firm against anti-Semitism.

From an Israeli perspective there are ample reasons to fear that the Australian government’s support for Israel is eroding into ambivalence. That criticism of Israel’s government is not the same as anti-Semitism is a point easily missed by the government of a nation at war and Jewish Australians who feel unsafe in their homes and, if students and staff, on university campuses.

This in itself is enough for Mr Albanese to instruct Senator Wong to couch criticism of the Netanyahu government in the context of loud statements of support for Israel’s right to live at peace behind secure borders. While the Foreign Minister must always act in the best interests of Australia, those interests are served by standing in solidarity with democracies against tyrants and their terrorists.

As to Ireland, in 1948 HV Evatt, foreign minister in the Chifley Labor government, had a founding role in creating Israel. In 1945 Irish prime minister Eamon de Valera went to the German embassy to express condolences on Adolf Hitler’s death. De Valera was no anti-Semite and there are excuses that he was doing the diplomatic thing as the political leader of a neutral nation. But there are times when people of goodwill know what is right. The Irish prime minister got it wrong that time and now Mr Harris has got it wrong again. So has Senator Wong.