Pennywise: Wong’s moral relativism is off the scale

Peter O'Brien I 5 October 2024 I Spectator Australia

‘Wong’s Palestine Deadline’ grandly announced the headline in the Australian.? That sounds like a global ground-breaking development. A line in the sand, perhaps? Wong, of course, is our Foreign Minister.

A foreign minister has a formidable arsenal of diplomatic weapons at his or her disposal. Suppose, for example, a fighter jet from another country deploys chaff in front of one of our maritime patrol aircraft in international waters. The foreign minister could summon that country’s ambassador for a dressing-down. Or when confronted by an essentially anti-Semitic resolution at the UN he or she could vote against it. Or he or she could choose to withdraw funding to a putative aid organisation that is alleged to be assisting a terrorist group.

And then there is the powerful last resort option – the MOAB of diplomatic strategies, if you like. The foreign minister can ‘call for’ things. Our Foreign Minister is trigger-happy to resort to this option. Hardly a week goes by without her ‘calling for’ a Palestinian state or a ceasefire in Gaza or Lebanon. And the best part about ‘calling for’ things is that you only have to specify an outcome. You don’t need to worry about how it might be achieved or at what cost. But it does show you really mean business.

In commerce there is a concept called ‘the cost of doing business’. It refers to impositions that you would rather not have imposed upon you but there is little you can do about. For example, in certain countries paying bribes to government officials is regarded as part of the ‘cost of doing business’. A similar concept applies in geopolitics but only to one country. It is termed the ‘cost of being Israel’. Thus, when our increasingly disingenuous Foreign Minister calls for ‘both sides to de-escalate’, knowing full well that Hezbollah and Hamas have no intention of doing so, what she is saying is that Israel must defend itself only to the extent that things can quickly return to the pre-7 October status quo. In other words, business as usual, where Israel is expected to endure constant threat and denigration, and frequent attack, respond ‘proportionately’ and then retire to prepare for the next fixture in some kind of dystopian and deadly parody of a sporting competition They have been doing this for 75 years. Would we accept such a precarious existence for even ten?

Wong quotes the figures of dead in Gaza and Lebanon as if they override every other consideration. Setting aside the fact that the numbers widely accepted are almost certainly exaggerated, I wonder if she’s heard of the civil war in Syria, which has claimed the lives of over 600,000 people, including an estimated 300,000 civilians, since 2011.? Muslims killing Muslims, even on this scale, is little more than regrettable apparently. But that Israel should take the lives of any more than, say, 1,200 Palestinians – that would have been a proportional response and probably only barely tolerable to our intrepid Foreign Minister – is absolutely beyond the pale.

Wong pays lip service to the fact that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organisations. But she never mentions the fact that they started this war.

The moral equivalence is off the scale.

She says that Israel must abide by the rules of war. Memo to Wong, the rules of war do not dictate that civilians must not be killed. Merely that belligerent states must make every effort to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties. Israel has set the standard in this respect, even to the extent of sending warning to civilians of impending attacks, wherever possible. Warnings which must inevitably come to the notice of the enemy, and which must also inevitably increase the risk to Israeli soldiers.

Ms Wong says Lebanon must not become the next Gaza, without ever mentioning the name Najib Makati. Who’s he?, I hear you ask. Well, he’s been the Prime Minister of Lebanon since 2021. Does he bear any responsibility for these events? Has Wong ever called upon him to expel Hezbollah?? Or if that’s not possible, to insist that Hezbollah withdraw its forces behind the Litani River as required by Security Council Resolution 1701. That resolution, from 2006, also required Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, which it has done, although Lebanon has accused it of frequently violating Lebanese airspace. But in 2018, the Israeli Defense Forces uncovered miles of secret Hezbollah tunnels into Israel from southern Lebanon. Recently retrenched Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (may he discover there are no virgins), in 2019, said, ‘Part of our plan in the next war is to enter into Galilee, a part of our plan we are capable of, God willing. The important thing is that we have this capability and we have had it for years’.

Wong frequently quotes UN resolutions imposing some restriction on Israel.

Does anyone remember the last time she ‘called on’ Najib Makati to enforce Resolution 1701 within his own borders? Has she called on Makati to even denounce the actions of Hezbollah? I thought not. That’s just the cost of being Israel.

And incidentally, Lebanon has a standing army of 80,000. If the majority of Lebanese people really despise Hezbollah, as we are told, then what better opportunity could they have to rid themselves of this pestilence than by deploying that army in concert with the IDF?

According to some experts, Hamas now has two firm allies, Qatar and Turkey. Both give Hamas public and financial assistance estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Qatar has transferred more than $1.8 billion to Hamas. Shashank Joshi, senior research fellow at the Royal Services Institute, says that, ‘Qatar also hosts Hamas’s political bureau which includes Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.’ His Excellency Mr Ali Saad M.H. Al-Hajr is Qatar’s Ambassador to Australia. Has Wong ever called him in to explain Qatar’s support for a terrorist organisation intent on destroying one of our oldest allies? Has she ever called on Qatar to disassociate itself from Hamas? I thought not.

As a senior cabinet minister whose portfolio encompasses the issue of national security, Wong cannot escape a share of the opprobrium which should rightly attend the farcical appointment of Labor’s special envoy to combat Islamophobia. This envoy, Aftab Malik, is quoted as saying, ‘Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are not mutually exclusive: where there is one, you most likely will find the other lurking’. ‘Lurking’ being the operative word. In Australia, Islamophobia is lurking so effectively it is pretty well indiscernible.

As Labor leader in the Senate, Wong also shares the blame for the Senate disgracefully rejecting the proposed judicial inquiry into ant-Semitism in Australian universities.

Penny Wong now firmly joins Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen on the podium of ineptitude and duplicity, having displaced the hapless Andrew Giles. Who gets gold, silver and bronze is still up for grabs.

Author: Peter O'Brien