Before that it was the British who wrested control of the territory from the Ottoman Turks during World War I. The Turks ruled the region from 1516 until 1918 (save a brief interlude from 1831 to 1840 when Egypt had a go); the Turks had taken the territory from the Mameluks. History is so inconvenient, no? But I digress.
Abu Toameh is an award-winning Arab Muslim journalist and political analyst who for three decades has covered the region for a range of international news outlets.
He is a globally acknowledged expert and highly sought-after Arab voice on all matters to do with the conflict in the Middle East, historic and current.
He started his career writing for a Palestine Liberation Organisation newspaper while studying for his degree at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Israelis are world leaders at most things, but boy are they terrible at apartheid.
You may be wondering why I’m introducing you to Abu Toameh in this conversation and why what he says, and the calibre of people who seek him out, is important to Australians as we go to vote in the 2025 federal election. Fair question.
Adam Bandt, that’s why.
I thought of Abu Toameh as I was reading that the leader of the vile, anti-Australian, anti-Semitic Greens Party (remember Greens MP Jenny Leong and her Jewish tentacles speech?) had written to leaders of the Muslim Votes Matter campaign back in March.
In this letter, Bandt spelt out what he would demand of the federal government in the event of a Labor minority. A Labor minority that can happen only if Anthony Albanese chooses to wed himself formally to the worst party in Australian political history. Albanese has denied that he will, but who in their right mind would trust that? The Prime Minister speaks out of both sides of his mouth.
Bandt can write to whoever he wants about whatever he wants. He can lobby and he can seek to influence, as he clearly does here. That’s the beauty of a still free-ish Australia.
It’s not what he did, it’s what he said; not the form but the substance. It’s the fact Bandt was playing hero in his own version of He Who Would Be King based on dangerous, uninformed views that support bloodthirsty terrorists and their supporters in Australia and that would be laughed out of any room in which a serious discussion on the region were held. Bandt said that in the first six months of government he would demand immediate recognition of a Palestinian state. He would block all exports to Israel. He would sanction Israeli officials. The list is long, wrapped in hubris and reflects the maturity and geopolitical knowledge of a first-year university student, wrapped in the same level of ideological fervour.
Notably, Bandt didn’t raise the Greens’ views on gender fluidity, same-sex marriage and biological males having access to female spaces. I would be curious to know how that conversation would go.
It would surprise no one that neither did Bandt mention a plan for hostage release. There are 50 still languishing, only 25 believed to be alive.
Similarly, it would surprise nobody that Bandt was attempting to hold us all to ransom before the election had even taken place.
If it weren’t so serious it would be laughable because the Greens are not serious people. Arguably, they are not intelligent people. Their views on the Middle East are conceived in hatred and nurtured in the incubator of ideological blindness.
Which brings me back to Abu Toameh who, as I mentioned, is a leading global voice on the Middle East and of course the war in Gaza. To labour the point, he was born in the disputed territories and is an Arab Israeli Muslim.
I had the privilege of meeting Abu Toameh in December 2024 immediately after my visit to the Gaza envelope and the sites of the October 7 massacres. I do not believe Bandt and his parliamentary colleagues have bothered to go and educate themselves. I suspect they got the keffiyehs in which they drape themselves online from Ali Baba.
You can see for yourselves if you care to review his public profile that Abu Toameh has recently briefed everyone from a senior UN delegation to various members of parliaments from around the world, speaking on the status quo and possible solutions.
None of those solutions involved rewarding terrorists with statehood. None of them involve demonising Israel. There is nuance and there is complexity, not Trotskyite fantasy.
As I read the content of Bandt’s letter, I couldn’t help contrast it with what journalists such as Abu Toameh write, from decades of experience and living on the ground in the region.
In a piece in March for nonpartisan international policy think tank the Gatestone Institute, Abu Toameh addressed the issue of ceasefires.
“Hamas is not known for honouring ceasefire agreements … On July 26, 2014, Hamas announced a 24-hour humanitarian ceasefire at 14.00 (2pm). Hamas violated its own ceasefire a short time later.”
Abu Toameh spells out the truth that Bandt, the Greens, Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong fail to acknowledge: “While Hamas was talking, for 10 years before October 7, 2023, about its desire to reach a long-term truce, it was busy preparing for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. It is plainly uninformed to believe that Hamas would ever lay down its weapons and agree to end its jihad (holy war) against Israel.”
Plainly uninformed. Never have two small words described so many federal MPs so accurately.
Abu Toameh is one voice but there are many others who know the future for peace in the region does not lie with demonising Israel. I wanted to introduce him to this conversation to demonstrate just how disconnected the Greens are from the reality on the ground, just how rooted in hatred their policy is and how dangerous it is that there may be a minority government in which Bandt and his awful mob of miscreants are the tail wagging Australia’s political dog.
One of only three federal MPs with the courage to stand up to them this election is Victorian MP Josh Burns, who refused to direct any preferences to the Greens and is running an open ticket.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, the most senior Jewish member of parliament, inexplicably chose to reward Bandt and his party. I will never understand that decision. It defies belief, but I suppose speaks volumes to the only thing that motivates the Australian Labor Party: power. Whatever it takes; that’s what they say. That’s what they boast.
And this is just one issue on which Australia cannot afford to be held to ransom. We could talk about housing, about energy, about numerous policy areas in which a Greens agenda would drive Australia to a very bad place indeed.
It was American journalist and political satirist PJ O’Rourke who said if we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
Think carefully about where you place your vote this weekend, Australia. Think carefully.
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Khaled Abu Toameh was born in the town of Tulkarem in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) in 1963 when the area was still under Jordanian occupation. It’s a time in history that most of the global political left, especially in Australia, like to forget existed. You know, when Jordan was the occupier and had been since 1948.