For the last week I have devoted much of my time to trying to fill a large knowledge gap concerning developments in the Middle East. The fault is mine alone and one that arose through not paying attention to what was happening in Gaza.
I had thought, wrongly as it turned out, that I had at least a basic understanding of the conflict and Hamas’s objectives. It was only a few days ago that my ignorance became apparent to me, when I learned that Australia had backed a General Assembly resolution calling for the Security Council to admit Palestine as a member state.
Boy was I surprised. Less than a week after the October 7 attacks, Foreign Minister Penny Wong told journalists that Hamas’s atrocities had “pushed that prospect of peace further away and lessened the chance of the aspirations of the Palestinian peoples to be realised”. She reiterated the same message later that month, telling the Jewish Community Council of South Australia that “the two-state solution is further out of reach”.
But remarkable events have since occurred, all of which escaped my attention and that of many others, to change that. I can only conclude the members of Hamas experienced a mass epiphany. They have now decided it is morally problematic to kidnap, rape, and slaughter Jews. No doubt they have laid down their arms and now embrace their Israeli neighbours. In fact this renouncing of intifada now sees the former terrorists tending to their olive trees, composing poetry, and breeding racing pigeons. Did I get that right?
Forgive my facetiousness, but that last bit is more believable compared to Wong’s justification for Australia’s voting as it did. “This is a clear rejection of the goals and methods of Hamas,” she declared with a straight face.
Indeed, minister. You would have us believe its leaders immediately held crisis meetings following your announcement. The only conceivable way the Albanese government’s ‘strategy’ could amount to a thwarting of Hamas would be if it members suffered a giggle fit upon learning of Wong’s claim.
Ditto for Wong’s insistence that this decision was “not about whether Australia recognises Palestine”. That was disingenuous. At its federal conference in 2021, the ALP elevated to its national platform a resolution of 2018 which called on the next Labor government “to recognise Palestine as a state”. Who successfully moved this amendment? Why, none other than Wong herself.
It is not just the public who have been duped. Among those who at the time played down the significance of Wong’s amendment was Jewish-Australian and Labor MP Josh Burns. Labor’s policy “has not changed at all,” he told Australian Jewish News the day after it was passed. “We remain supporters of a two-state solution and we remain strong and unwavering friends of the State of Israel.”
It was a disillusioned Burns who emerged last week, realising he had been played like a fiddle by his own party.
“Anti-Semitism is on the rise in Australia and the decision [to back the UN resolution] will make Jewish Australians feel more isolated as they remain gravely concerned for the hostages in Gaza,” he wrote in an Instagram post. Noting that Wong had said only last month in her speech to the ANU National Security College that “any future Palestinian state cannot be in a position to threaten Israel’s security and will need a reformed Palestinian Authority,” Burns’s language was restrained but he was clearly seething.
“In my opinion, these conditions have not been met yet,” he said. In other words, pants on fire, Penny Wong.
And not just Wong. Responding to questions last month following the Foreign Minister’s ANU speech, Anthony Albanese resorted to a familiar phrase that, thanks entirely to the incumbent, is a colloquialism for prime ministerial mendacity. “Nothing has changed in our position,” he said. Stage three tax cuts, anyone?
Both Albanese and Wong frequently condemn Hamas in their speeches, yet neither can explain how it can be supplanted to realise a two-state solution that would ensure Israel’s right to exist. Their amateurish foray makes for a black comedy, as evidenced by Albanese’s interview on Nine’s Today Show last month. When presenter Karl Stefanovic put to him that Hamas and a Palestinian state were inseparable, Albanese would not have it.
“That’s not right,” he said. “And we need to make sure that Hamas has no role.”
Over to you, Prime Minister. I am sure Israelis would love to hear your plans for removing Hamas and delivering the ‘justice’ for Palestinians that you continually demand. On that note, I take it you are aware that a poll conducted in March by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research revealed that nearly three-quarters of Gaza residents believe Hamas’s actions of October 7 were justified?
Labor’s decision has nothing to do with ensuring peace in the Middle East and everything to do with appeasing the burgeoning number of anti-Semitists in the party’s ranks. Wong can contain that faction - at least for now - with a nod and wink to defacto Australian recognition of a Palestinian state. Publicly, she can hide behind the technicality that the government has not extended formal recognition.
“We will do that when we think the time is right,” she said last week.
At least we can be confident of her word in that respect. As for what Wong and her colleagues consider in deciding that, you can be assured they will take their lead from voters in Western Sydney, as well as those in inner-city Labor seats that the Greens will contest in the next election.
Lastly, there remains the question of what message this sends to Jewish-Australians.
To summarise, this decision was made less than a year after the biggest single pogrom of Jews since the Holocaust. Our university campuses are hives of anti-Semitism. Islamists are emboldened by the knowledge they can air their despicable views without the authorities holding them to account. And in the latest development, Labor senator Fatima Payman ended her anti-Israel tirade yesterday with the ‘From the river to the sea’ declaration, which as we know is a slogan that calls for the destruction of the Jewish State.
Nothing to worry about, really. As Albanese said at Jewish vigil in St Kilda, Melbourne, in October: “We stand with Israel. We always will”.
Who could doubt him?
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