Surely about now Sussan Ley must have a tinge of regret about taking on the job of opposition leader, notwithstanding the circa-$440,000 pay packet that also comes with a shot at ignominy.
The immediate reason is that Ley, a one-time co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, must fall into line with a Liberal Party policy which has remained steadfastly pro-Israel, even in the face of the most recent horrors to emerge from the Gaza Strip. Singing for your supper? Oh boy. There was a moment not so long ago when Ley sported a rebellious streak, not just by injecting an extra “s” to her name but by expressing a degree of empathy with the cause of Palestinians. She was forced to sort that out quick smart under pressure from the Sky gang when she contested the leadership in May.
Hunger pain
The past few days have brought a new test of Ley’s convictions, such as they may be, as well as the wisdom of her party’s approach. The evidence of widespread starvation in Gaza — including, shockingly and most graphically, children and babies — has become a tipping point for national leaders. Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong added her name to a statement signed by 29 other countries calling for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accused Israel of breaching international law. France will recognise a Palestinian state in September.
Back in the Liberal bunker, nothing has changed. Opposition spokeswoman on foreign affairs Michaelia Cash and Tasmanian Senator Jonathon Duniam condemned the government. Ley was less strident but nevertheless put the onus to act not on Israel but firmly on Hamas:
“The first and most important thing to say about this issue is that there are still hostages in Gaza. There are still hostages hidden in tunnels, and a way to end the situation is for those hostages to be released by the terrorists Hamas, who control so much of the activity there.”
Reality bites
How long can this remain a tenable position for the Liberals who are now out of step even with New Zealand’s right-wing government led by Christopher Luxon? How does it square with Ley’s determination that the party should reflect the views of mainstream Australia? And do they really want to stay in line with US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, the bug-eyed evangelical Christian who called the 30-nation ceasefire statement “disgusting”?
The issue shapes as a test for the Liberal Party to react intelligently to a changing reality in the Middle East. On one level the question of a ceasefire is devilishly difficult because it is mired in the dynamics of a decades-long conflict, governed by acts of symbolism unfathomable to outsiders. But on another level, the task is as simple as saying “Enough is enough — just stop”, which is where most European countries (and Japan) are now at.
The Liberals’ position that the remaining Israeli hostages must be released as the first step to a ceasefire mirrors the stated position of the Netanyahu government. But is buying into Netanyahu’s logic the best way to support Israel? This is where it gets very messy.
October 7 carnage
Hamas struck an almighty blow against the state of Israel with the attacks of October 7, 2023. It killed 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 200. In just one day a relatively small group of Islamists with limited resources succeeded in dismantling Israel’s reputation as the invincible power of the region, an image it has built over decades and which had a deterrent effect against those who would wish to destroy it.
Over the intervening 20 months, the Netanyahu government has done whatever it takes to re-establish its dominance — actual and perceived. One by one it has taken out the heads of Hezbollah and Hamas. It has attacked Iran’s nuclear capacity and killed key scientists. Its intelligence capability has demonstrated to its enemies that no-one is safe anywhere, including a Hamas leader inside an Iranian National Guard guesthouse in Tehran.
Israel has reduced Gaza to rubble, allegedly in a quest to hunt down every last Hamas operative. The task is impossible because Hamas is an expression of Palestinian resistance, albeit through a fundamentalist Islamic ideology which is alien to many Gazans. And as the law of nature has it, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Yet for all this, Hamas still holds Israeli hostages. Dead or alive they remain symbols of Israeli weakness. For Hamas, they are evidence of the day it brought the oppressors to their knees and created bargaining chips for Palestinian prisoners. It was a feat greater than anything achieved by Arab nations or any other resistance group, Hezbollah included.
Winners/losers
These symbols which define victory and defeat make perfect sense in the world of the combatants and might justify their actions to themselves. That’s the logic and language peculiar to the Middle East. But the war has now moved way beyond what the world can stomach.
It may well be that Israel fell into a Hamas trap by attacking Gaza so savagely that it would destroy any goodwill due from October 7. If that is so, Hamas has allowed the killing of Gazans to continue, rather than hand over the hostages, in order to achieve its goal. For its part, Israel has kept going, to the point of fracturing its relations with the world and diaspora Jews to stop Hamas declaring a victory.
By insisting that Hamas must take the first step the Liberal Party has drunk the Netanyahu Kool-Aid, rather than act rationally in Israel’s interests. But that’s what happens when you side mindlessly with the US and the conservative ranters of Australian media.
It’s madness. Pure and simple.
David Hardaker is a former ABC Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem. He also lived and worked in Egypt and the Gulf states for close to a decade.
It is way beyond the point that people pick sides… not Israel or Hamas but humanity over bastardry. Piss-weak Albo is edging towards his humanity but his glacial pace comes at the cost of more innocent lives. Time to side with France and recognise a Palestinian state, and sort out the bullshit politics once people stop dying.
Israel is beyond caring what anyone (including the US) thinks of their action in Gaza/West Bank. They have (their) outrage and (their) God on their side.
The Government’s reserve at lack of clarity and definitive steps to an early 2-state solution is a bit rich given their de-crying of the Greens and the Coalition over those groups opposition to Labor’s own aspirational and sometimes fuzzy policies.
The US is the only actor that can force (for it will take force) Israel to accept a 2-state solution. If Trump really wants his Nobel Peace Prize, he need to grow a set and act decisively.
Or is Jewish money in the US too powerful?
What an appalling cross road for us to arrive at.
The veneer of humanity and decency is disappointingly wafer thin.
Gday Gloria and Ian, so true and even David Hardaker posits Hamas hand over the hostages and Hamas allows the continued killings.
Rubbish, the killings will continue with returned hostages or not and Hamas was created by Netanyahu as a wedge against Fatah/PLO a secular organisation.
Netanyahu is reaping his crop sown more than 20 years ago.
Also Ashkenazis such as Netanyahu are not Semitic they are European his father adopted the name, originally Mileikowsky. Palestinian are Semites though.
Like many, any sympathy I may have had for Israel after the Hamas attack has long disappeared.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the end game for Israel is a complete destruction and depopulation of Gaza so that it can be replaced by more Israeli settlements.
Pity help the poor Palestinians.
The Western world has long refused – still does – to admit that, but that has been the goal from the start. Both Herzl and Jabotinsky called the project of establishing Israel a colonial enterprise and admitted that ethnic cleansing will be part of it. Ben-Gurion also admitted the need to ethnically cleanse Palestinians if an exclusively Jewish state, or even just majority Jewish state is the goal. After all – how do you do that on a land that is inhabited by other people who have been there for centuries if not millenia without killing to displacing these people?
I suppose that you may have missed Trump’s plan for Gaza?
This is the vision espoused by the ultra right wing settlers with their resolute justification “God gave us this land”!
And so, our Labor party is still welded to Dr Evatt’s support for the creation of Israel in 1947.
Willing to be part of the silent horrified witnesses rather than take a principled stance.
Confirming the irrelevance of the LNP today.
To my shame I once voted for these cretins. No more but it’s also becoming increasingly difficult to support Labor under its current leadership.
Moi aussi 100%
I made that regrettable mistake once also many years ago. never again.
Was that when Howard got his complete majority?
It certainly brought the conservative intelligentsia, a situation they needed to consider abhorrent.
I think the description of Hamas as an “expression of Palestinian resistance” is insightful and aids understanding of the deep well of resistance in the Gazan population, and Israel’s implacable harshness to this population as a whole. Taken together with the currently increasing annexation of the Occupied Territories by Israeli settlers, it seems likely that there is now more to gain by recognising Palestinian statehood than by soft-pedalling as been the case so far.
Given that the polls had the LNP ahead 6 months before the election and it was one good campaign and one bad (coupled with an always unelectable Dutton), we will need the LNP to keep up the internal and policy ructions to avoid people looking at what Albanese really stands for. I think he borders on being a con artist. Talks big on 2030 and then approves 4 billion tonnes of emissions within weeks of the election (so based on that forget 20230. Transparency, they are a joke on this issue….
It struck me the other day that Albanese may turn out to be for the ALP what Howard was for the [former-]Liberals.
Who expects the present day “old jelly back” to stand up for anything let alone the Palestinians?
Almighty blow? Doesn’t really stack up. How is Israel weakened? Seems the complete otherwise.
Israel has never said that they would end the genocide if Hamas gave up all the hostages. Israel will not be stopped by mere words. The Israeli objective from 8th October is to completely empty Gaza from all Palestinins . The leaders of Israel have said this and are doing it. A 2 state solution is a farce, there are 750,000 illegal settlers on Palestinin land. These could only be removed by military force, which I very much doubt will happen. Advocating for a 2 state solution is a cover for doing nothing. Israel in its present state does not deserve to excistl Zionism is a sickness
100%. Tis.
And we need to take the label of terrorist from the Palestinians. It would be much more appropriate to apply it to the Zionists, who since the UN resolution establishing the state of Israel have determined to take all the land, and to oppress any Palestinians who don’t get out of their way. The UN have been culpable because they have allowed Israel to continue without sanction.
We should remember that Netanyahu initially encouraged Hamas with finance from dubious sources in an attempt to divide the Palestinian support. When Hamas was elected on 25th Jan 2006, things changed dramatically. Israel began a blockade to stymie any chance of a government of Hamas. On the 27 July 2007 the Prime Minister of Great Brittian David Cameron nominated Gaza as the world’s largest open-air prison. In Jan 2025 PM Starmer echoed similar sentiments as Cameron. So, Hamas are the evil terrorists of the region, with people forgetting that prior to 1948 there was a terrorist group in the region called the Irgun, that is when the problems started.
So Ley has more in common with Albanese than they both probably like to admit: the closer to power the less committed to human rights, justice, international law, ethics and just your plain common decency they are. In this, their position seems to be in alignment with much of Australian business, academic and cultural institutions, and media, those present not excluded, sadly…
The Zionists are trying to use the Hamas attack to pursue their real aim – to restore the ancient land of Israel “from the river to the sea”. They want to push the inhabitants of Gaza (and the West Bank) off their land. They believe that because the land was occupied by Jews 2,000 years ago that they have an inalienable, God-given right to occupy it now.
I am not sure that many of the Ashkenasi Jews are descended from those living in the area 2000 years ago, but from those living in Europe – I tried reading about the genetics of people in that area – can be very confusing – the Sephardic Jews more likely. But the Palestinians definitely are.
Whoever remains holding out for a “Two State Solution” must have long ago known that they are simply grasping at a straw because there is nothing left to grasp. Israel is, and always has been, intent on annexing all of the land on which a Palestinian state may, conceivably, exist. For years, Israeli leaders – or some of them – have sometimes paid lip service through clenched teeth to the notion of a Palestinian state. But no more; they now think that the time has come and that they are on a home run. Remember, way back in 1947, the Zionists, having arrived in numbers from Europe under British colonial administration, wanted the whole of Mandate Palestine and the Palestinians, who had watched the influx in dismay, opposed them having any of it. The newly-formed United Nations, muddling towards the fateful ‘Partition” compromise, heard the Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann, feigning magnanimous compromise, say:”We realise we cannot have the whole of Palestine. God made a promise; Palestine to the Jews. It is up to the Almighty to keep his promise in His own time” That has been the Israeli national project since then and it seems that they have now decided that the time for the Almighty to keep His promise is now. So, unless the annexation is resisted by force (by whom?) it will proceed to a bloody denouement and there will be no Palestinian State. We can vote for a virtual state, no harm in that in the absence of anything better.
Anyone who ever believed in a ‘merciful god’ should be now disavowed.
Religion has been the greatest blight on humanity since the first tin god.
Thank you Harry Lime for the truest comment possible on this whole situation. Religion always seems to qualify people for their idea of entitlement, leading to the bastardry and misery we see in Gaza right now.
Shameful but telling that the LNP use this horrendous issue to differentiate themselves, seemingly for the sake of it rather than for any justifiable good reason.
Israel was created as a result of the holocaust. Israel is creating a holocaust in Gaza. Who stands up for the Palestinians? Cannot believe we a standing by and watching.
Words have no effect whilst ever Netanyahu has the backing of the USA. It could all be over tomorrow if the USA ceased to supply arms to Israel. How about the UN and every nation with a voice start calling out the USA – sanction Trump. LNP would just love that one!
Damned right, Harry!
In terms of Gaza I really can’t tell the difference btw what Putin is doing in Ukraine. Deliberately bombing civilians, hospitals, schools, museums orphanages etc waging an unrestrained war on civilian targets. Whilst in Gaza/Westbank Netanyahu, supported by the globally acknowledged “stable genius” Trump, does exactly what Putin does with the deliberate and deliciously cruel addition of starvation. All of which is being done by the oft quoted “most moral army in the world.”
Who’d have thought that a nation built from the wreckage and chaos of genocide would embrace such a strategy. Mind you it’s the 3D IDF ethos of war against its enemies. Action must be:
1. Disproportionate
2. Displacement of population
3. Destruction of infrastructure and cultural heritage
The IDF is achieving this in spades! Mind you, as happened in Afghanistan and elsewhere, all that does is energise the “enemy” and they will win long term.
Poor Susan is trapped by ideology and is so “gun shy” by being deposed by the right wing conservatives that she effectively has bent to their agenda and turned her back on the Gazans. Obviously this runs somewhat counter to her “battler” story and her strong personal courage battling adversity etc.
With old slippery Angus, of Jamland and Watergate fame, who is strongly anti renewables power loitering in the background it’s a vexed situation for her. Whilst Gillard had to deal with Abbott from a mysogny perspective, Old Susan has got to deal with a razor majority on her leadership and is reliant on a predominantly male parliamentary party and associated parties which form the current opposition and cross bench.
All things considered she’s got her hands full and exemplifies the folly of the old Chinese saying/curse.
“May you live in interesting times.”
“We must outgrow faith to survive” Carl Sagan. Look it up on youtube
“If there was an election in Palestine tomorrow, 90 percent of the people in Gaza would support Hamas.
Afterall this party was formed because of the injustices that the Palestinian people have been subjected to since 1948.
It is time that the Coalition fronted up to the truth and stopped going on with their ignorant curtailing banter. By releasing the last remaining hostages would Netanayu stop the genocide.
No, this is just an opportunity to implement the plan of erasing Palestine.”
Since the 19th century, the lesson has been clear:
Appeasing Zionists is not a way to end conflict.
I am concerned about the lobby group(s) which have been recently identified in attacking opinions questioning israeli government tactics in Gaza.
These lobby groups are now comming up with ideas like introducing USA Primaries elections in Australia. It seems that they want to go beyond just influencing our political leaders.
Now they want to place in the party top spot candidates that they really want.