You can tell a lot about a person by the things they don’t say. Silence often condemns more frequently and powerfully than words.
Anyone (as we’ve seen in the past 18 months) can grab a sign, chuck on a scarf and walk through the streets as part of a baying, screeching mob.
That takes no courage and there’s no cost. It’s performative protesting for social brownie points. Fools leading fools.
A person’s silence often lays bare where they are complicit.
There has been (again) notable silence as Gazans began to rise up last week against Hamas, the murderous thugs who can end this conflict today simply by freeing the hostages they continue to hold captive.
The same killers Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong seem to think will magically and voluntarily vanish.
Which brings me to the story of Odai al-Rubai.
Rubai was 22. This week, the horror of his torture and execution seeped out of Gaza like the blood that flowed from his broken body after it was thrown from a rooftop to a street below.
In a breathtaking act of courage, Rubai was one of a handful of young men to publicly denounce Hamas from within Gaza.
It was a brazen act, a desperate act. One that none of the thin-skinned, keffiyeh-wearing Australian slacktivists would have the stones to do. Protesting is oh so easy when there’s no cost.
For Rubai the cost ultimately was his life, which makes his death sound swift and painless. It wasn’t.
This week his family spoke to US-based media organisation The Free Press.
As with so much of what I have forced myself to read during the past 18 months, the detail of what happened to this young man rips something of your belief in humanity.
Rubai was tortured, beaten, fingers broken, head smashed with what’s believed to have been a rifle butt. Stabbed more than 170 times with a screwdriver. Finally, his poor mutilated body was thrown from a rooftop. Pinned to it, a note that said: this is the price for all who criticise Hamas.
Now to all the Aussie Hamasniks in academe, the arts and beyond. All the “River to the sea” mob. All the people who tried to argue that October 7, 2023, was an act of resistance. Where is your voice for Rubai? You’ve been silent at his killing, just as you were silent when the world was told Kfir and Ariel Bibas, aged just 10 months and four years, respectively, had been murdered with their captors’ bare hands. Where is your voice now? I guess you have nothing to say when you can’t blame Israel.
Except someone did. Blame Israel, that is. None other than Adam Bandt, leader of the vile, toxic, Australia-hating Greens party.
During the past 18 months, more than a few people have said words to the effect of “why should we care about a foreign conflict like the one taking place in Gaza?”.
Bandt, blaming Israel for the fact Hamas tortured a young Palestinian man, killed him and threw his body off a building, not only holds an unhinged view but is exactly why we should care because Anthony Albanese has finally admitted he’d willingly form government with the Greens to hang on to power.
We should care because this is a terrifying glimpse into their thinking, their moral compass, their values and, concurrently, just how desperate this Prime Minister is to hang on to power.
We shouldn’t be surprised; they are increasingly one and the same party. Albanese should have rebuked the Greens leader, not moved over and made room in bed for him.
If leadership is about putting purpose over preference (and anyone who has truly been in a position of leadership knows that it is) then Albanese should have said no. No, I will not debase this country and further risk its future by sharing power with the Greens.
But Albanese and Labor know only one thing: whatever it takes.
A reminder that nobody wanted this war except Hamas and its Iranian overlords. It was 10 years in the planning, remember? Operation Al Aqsa Flood was not activated in a fit of revolutionary zeal. It was part of the ultimate game for these madmen, the establishment of a caliphate across the Middle East, the central tenet of which is the eradication of Israel and every Jew from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It’s not a secret, it’s a statement. It’s not a policy, it’s an intrinsic, hard-wired part of Hamas’s identity.
This is the side the Australian Greens have chosen. This is the side the ALP under Albanese and Penny Wong have chosen. This is a clear indication of their values set, their moral compass and the side they continue to choose.
This is why you must care about this conflict, Australia. This is why this conflict, and the way in which our government has responded to it, matters. This is why it is critical to examine the position of each party, what they have said and what they have done.
There are real, critical implications for our social fabric, our Judeo-Christian values and our broader way of life. Who we are and what we stand for; Australian values.
If there’s one thing Labor and the Greens – Albanese, Wong and Bandt – have proven beyond doubt it is that they are incapable of bringing unity. They can only divide and ruin.
From the Prime Minister’s appalling politicisation of the voice to parliament (don’t worry, he said, it wasn’t his loss, remember?) to Wong’s refusal to visit the site of the Nova massacre during a trip to Israel shortly after the war, preferring instead to hang out in the West Bank.
You can tell a lot about a person by their silence, but you can tell so much more about them by the company they choose to keep. Wong, Albanese and Bandt have shown Australian voters the company they prefer to keep time and time again. And it’s terrifying.
This election will be decided on many things, the crippling cost-of-living crisis being chief among them, as it should be. But it also will be decided, I believe, on matters that many have been too afraid to talk about for fear of reprisal.
On critical intangibles such as Australian values. Like ridding our education systems of nonsense political agendas introduced by stealth. On matters such as the clear and disturbing fracturing of our social fabric following October 7. I never imagined that terrible day and the ensuing war would have revealed such an ugly underbelly within Australian society, half a world away. I never imagined such large sections of the allegedly tolerant and educated political left would be so happy to sleepwalk off a cliff just to protect their political ideology. I don’t understand it. Not sure I want to keep trying.
Meanwhile, Rubai paid with his life for standing up to a brutal, demonic killing machine that the Australian Greens have spent the past 18 months refusing to condemn, and Albanese is OK with moving from casual dating to marriage with the Greens.
Careful where you cast your vote, Australia. Careful.
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