The deaths of Galit Carbone and Zomi Frankcom are without doubt genuine tragedies.
Carbone was an innocent civilian slaughtered in her own house at the Be’eri Kibbutz in southern Israel on the day Hamas murdered, raped and burnt women and children as it smashed a long-lasting ceasefire.
Frankcom died as an aid worker entering into a war zone six months old where Hamas has operated from homes, schools and hospitals and from under the offices of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
Though both lost their lives and were Australian citizens, the Albanese government’s reaction tells us where Albanese Labor really stands on Israel. The escalation of the government’s language towards Israel is deeply disturbing.
Defence Minister Richard Marles is complicit as Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s handmaiden in her pious and poisonous letter to Israel. Tony Burke turns a blind eye to regular hate speeches in his own electorate. Though I can’t agree with Ed Husic’s sweeping “systemic” generalisation about Israel, I at least understand his views are based on being a devout and practising Muslim.
So many in the Labor Left and, regrettably, the Right have been waiting for this moment to arrive. The cynical move to weaponise the death of Frankcom makes this even more sickening. Israel, like any nation in the same circumstances, has an absolute right to respond to the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7 last year and any ongoing domestic security threat from Gaza.
Anthony Albanese has buckled and looks weak and directionless as Wong unleashes a hateful barrage of words against Israel.
We’ve known Wong to be accused of bullying, but we are now seeing what she really thinks of Israel and by extension the Jewish community in Australia.
Wong is seeking to make the death of one Australian disproportionately more important than the other, using Frankcom to condemn Israel and describe events as “catastrophic”. She’s requiring an Australian-led intervention and investigation when she didn’t even have the human decency to visit the kibbutz where Carbone died on October 7.
Wong prioritised stilted selfies with a Palestinian official over visiting a site where an Australian was murdered and Hamas massacred Israelis.
She has all but accused Israel of a war crime and announced a process where she has already published its conclusion, by using intolerant language and calling for an Australian to intervene in a sovereign and legal investigation of another democratic nation.
Wong’s hyperbole will be welcomed by anti-Semites globally, Hamas in Gaza and the imams in western Sydney who preach jihad without sanction.
On Tuesday night, Wong announced without any shame that amid the Gaza conflict – after Hamas funded and delivered an attack that killed more than 1200 innocent people and still holds more than 100 hostage – that Australia would reward them with supporting Palestinian statehood.
The truth is the Palestinian Authority – in so far as it has any – has totally lost control of Gaza to a terrorist organisation that attacks Israelis and subjugates Palestinians in Gaza while its leadership lives the high life in Qatar.
A two-state solution might well be appropriate in times of genuine peace; Israeli and Palestinian leaders won a Nobel prize for such endeavours when Wong was still running around as a factional hack in South Australia. Suggesting this is a path now to immediate peace is all about rewarding Hamas and showing it that breaking a ceasefire and engaging in a terrorist attack will result in a weak Australian government rewarding such horrendous behaviour.
Labor stands at a crossroads with the nation’s Jewish community and the rest of Australia that believes in democracy and the rule of law.
For those on the Left it may be worth noting that Israel, alone in the Middle East, is not only a democracy but also a pluralist society that embraces LGBTQI+ communities, unlike its Islamist neighbours, including the Palestinians.
It may be worth noting the guidance from former Labor PM Bob Hawke, who said “if the bell tolls for Israel, it won’t just toll for Israel, it will toll for all mankind”.
Equally, it’s worth noting former Socialist Left premier of Victoria Daniel Andrews who, shortly after being elected in 2014, described Israel as “a home for a culture as old as civilisation … for the survivors of mankind’s worst crime … a great, precarious, social and economic experiment willed by a brave people”.
The Prime Minister needs to be doing better, a lot better, on Israel. He’ll face a test at the Victorian ALP conference next month where the Left faction will seek to hide its anti-Semitism in being pro-Palestinian, as so many members of the British Labour Party did under now disgraced former leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Labor needs to stand up for pluralist democracies such as Israel, which have every right to self-defence. Albanese needs to stand up like Hawke and Andrews, and embrace and protect our Jewish community from the homegrown attacks for political convenience.
