As world mourns murder of Israel’s kidnapped Bibas babies, our government remains silent

Countries from Argentina to the US responded in solidarity to the deaths of Israel’s little Bibas boys. Here in Australia? Not a word in response from Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong to this heinous act.

Mourners raise a cutout of Shiri Bibas and her son Kfir, as people gather to pay their respects at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv on February 26. Picture: AFP

There was a notable silence in the Australian body politic across the past week.

This silence speaks to many things. Best-case scenario, it spoke of an inability to find words, but in saying this I think I’m being overly generous. I think it spoke to shame. To indifference. To a desire to divert attention to other things.

What I’m referring to is the silence from Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese; from the Greens. From unions for Palestine (the list is exhaustive, I’m sure you follow me) after the confirmation of how kidnapped Jewish babies Kfir and Ariel Bibas were murdered. Forensic examination by some of the world’s most advanced in their field confirmed that Kfir, who was just nine months old, and his toddler big brother, Ariel, were killed by hand. They were strangled, then their little bodies pummelled with what was most likely rocks and bricks to make it look as if they died in an airstrike.

What kind of evil exists for a person, with their bare hands, to choke the life out of an infant? To strangle a toddler, a baby still but old enough to understand what is happening to him? Old enough to understand terror, to scream for his mother until there is no breath left in his tiny body?

The world was aghast, consumed with horror. Countries from Argentina to Germany, from France to the US, responded in solidarity. The Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate, all lit up in orange as a tribute to the two slain red-headed babies and their murdered mother, kidnapped from their homes and murdered by monsters. Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, is talking about changing the name of Palestine St to Bibas St.

Here in Australia? Silence. Not a word in response from the Prime Minister and Wong to this heinous act. Not so much as a sail on the Sydney Opera House lit up in orange to honour those murdered little boys.

For my sins, and to confirm this, I trawled through the official websites of the prime minister and foreign minister. You can see for yourself if you like. The websites contain not only official media releases but also every transcript of interviews and doorstops conducted: Search term: Bibas. Response? “No results found. Please try another term.”

So easy to tell Israel to exercise caution as mother Shiri Bibas and her sons Kfir and Ariel were being dragged away to their unspeakable death by Gazans. So easy to lecture and chide and talk about Israeli aggression. So silent when it counts. So complicit in that silence.

A child killed in the crossfire of a war zone is a tragedy. Two babies taken from their parents and murdered in cold blood, using bare hands, that is a manifestation of hell itself. Murders committed in the name of pursuing “sovereignty” – the same Palestinian sovereignty that Wong has all but fallen over herself to cheer for.

Penny Wong attends a meeting in Johannesburg in South Africa last week, a curtain-raiser to the G20 summit in November. Picture: Emmanuel Croset / AFP

Respectfully, you’ve been very quiet this past week, Senator Wong. As have you, Prime Minister. Perhaps you’re hoping that voters forget that the ones cheering “From the river to the sea”, calling this war justifiable resistance, who also have been complicit in their silence, are your people. They are your constituents. Your unionists. Your voters. They are your luvvies in the arts sector and in tertiary education.

Perhaps naively I had expected more. Some kind of gesture or acknowledgment because this wasn’t just a crime in a war zone far from Australia, this was evil so blatant, unapologetic and so defiant it demands a response from those who still purport to believe in Judeo-Christan values and the rule of law.

What have we become? In the maddening silence, these words traversed my heart over and over. More a cry in the wilderness than a question. What have we become?

The lack of response gives a terrifying insight into the value of the Albanese government.

Labor is known for its slogan: Whatever it takes. Now we’re all seeing what this looks like in action. These are not Australian values.

For what it’s worth, when the Prime Minister was elected, I was on record as saying that if he were able to lead well, with strength and conviction, then Australia would prosper. These were sincere words.

The Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes regional council building in France is illuminated in orange in tribute to the Bibas family. Picture: Olivier Chassignole / AFP

Photos of the victims are seen in front of the illuminated Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, with the inscription 'Never forget'. Picture: John MacDougall / AFP

Who would not want that, I asked. Not as someone who seeks a political career. There are few things I desire less. No, I said it as someone like you. Someone who has had a job since the age of 14. Pays (arguably, too much) tax. Has run a company in the real economy for 22 years. Has a mortgage. Bypasses certain things at the supermarket frequently these days because who can afford $7 for a punnet of raspberries? Don’t get me started on eggs …

We will vote soon. April, the word on the street is. Whatever the date, it’s not expected that parliament will sit again, which of course means Jim Chalmers won’t have to open the books for us before Albanese Labor asks for the keys to the farm for another three years.

I have a deep conviction that this will be a sliding-doors election.

Remember that 1998 movie where a young Gwyneth Paltrow, with an appalling British accent, alternates between two storylines on the two different paths her life may have taken depending on whether she catches her train?

This is us, Australia. Elections have real consequences. This one will be a moment of truth the likes of which we haven’t faced for many years.

Broader issues of national security, cost of living, a housing and immigration crisis – others can talk about those.

I want to talk about the attack on Australian values and identity being fuelled by people who hate both but oddly like living here. By people who have sought and in many cases have succeeded in bringing foreign conflicts to Australian streets while Albanese, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and the rest of the “whatever it takes” gang look the other way.

The Prime Minister wants us to believe that things have been tough but are going to get better. He’s talking about the tangibles.

I don’t believe him, but what I want to talk about are the intangibles. The values that make us who we are. It’s not just that the Albanese government has abandoned our values but it has allowed others to trash them freely and without consequence.

It now has been revealed that Wong, Albanese’s closest confidante, spent her last visit to the UN dancing with the demons who seek to destroy Western democracies including our own.

Wong broke bread with governments that are among the world’s worst for human rights abuse. She preferred the company of Iranian officials, a country that prohibits women from showing their hair, singing or dancing. From having jobs without the permission of their husbands.

She didn’t meet any Israeli officials. Heaven forbid she might be exposed to information that might force a policy rethink.

Wong spent her time at the UN pressing for a timeline for Palestinian statehood. Statehood for people who would choke two babies to death to get it.

You become the company you keep. When this government shows us where its values lie, we’d better believe it.