“Words are wind,” goes a saying in George R R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books. The meaning of the adage is simple: talk means nothing, only actions do.
Anthony Albanese’s words are wind in the worst possible sense of the word.
Anthony Albanese has been accused of “gaslighting the Australian Jewish community” ahead of two United Nations votes involving Israel.
It’s all very well for Albanese to mouth empty platitudes and fight back crocodile tears. His actions – or lack of them – tell the real story.
For a year, Albanese has been all but silent as a rising tide of increasingly violent anti-Semitism has spread like a dark stain through Australian streets. A mob chants ‘Gas the Jews!’ at the Sydney Opera House? Silence. The Greens and his own junior senator bellow the genocidal Hamas slogan in parliament? Nothing. A violent mob surrounds a synagogue on the eve of Kristallnacht? Zip. Nada. Nix. A terror attack on a Melbourne synagogue? The PM disappears for drinkies with Labor donors and tennis at Perth’s most exclusive club.
So spare us the empty posturing.
Anthony Albanese has issued an emotional plea for national unity to end the “evil” of anti-Semitism after a fresh hate crime in Sydney, as he defended his government against claims its hard-line stance on Israel had encouraged attacks on Australian Jews.
We might take his apparent epiphany more seriously, if his words weren’t being simultaneously contradicted by his government’s actions.
Australia is tipped to back two UN resolutions on Thursday calling for an immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the reversal of Israel’s decision to ban the main UN aid agency operating in the war-torn Palestinian territory.
The vote in favour of the UNRWA – which both Australia and NZ still send taxpayers’ money to – comes just days are new revelations of its deep ties to Hamas and its complicity in spreading anti-Semitic hate literature.
Dossiers released by UN Watch and IMPACT-se name over a dozen high-ranking UNRWA principals, deputies, directors or deputy directors of training centers who held membership in either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Nine of them actively participated in October 7.
The material also shows that UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini and former UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl secretly met leaders of the Jihadi Islamic Movement, the Islamic Ansar League, and Hamas, including senior Hamas member Ali Baraka. Baraka is wanted by the USA on terrorism, murder conspiracy and sanctions-evasion charges, relating to October 7.
Transcripts show Krahenbuhl telling the assembled terrorists, ‘we are united, and no one can separate us’.
This is what Anthony Albanese’s government is openly supporting.
The votes follow Australia’s support for a series of pro-Palestine resolutions, including motions backing Palestinian statehood and recognising the permanent sovereignty of Palestinians over the occupied territories’ resources.
Words are wind.
If Albanese was really serious about tackling anti-Semitism, he’d be putting the blatantly anti-Semitic Greens last on Labor’s preferences. But he needs the Greens’ preferences as desperately as he does the Muslim vote in western Sydney if he’s to have even a hope of clinging to government.
The Prime Minister also faces a Jewish backlash after he sidestepped questions on whether Labor would preference anti-Semitic Greens candidates at the upcoming federal election […]
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president David Ossip joined [NSW Premier Chris Minns] at a Wednesday press conference but could not, however, bring himself to stand alongside Mr Albanese at the Sydney Jewish Museum.
Mr Ossip, one of the state’s most senior Jewish leaders, said: “I have only the greatest of respect for the office of Prime Minister and appreciate the donation to the museum, but I couldn’t bring myself to go and hear (Mr Albanese) talk about anti-Semitism while his government plots further policy moves against Israel and he fails to rein in his foreign minister who continues to use incendiary, demonising and provocative rhetoric that endangers the Jewish community.”
Another meaningful action Albanese could take would be to sack his foreign minister, the obsessively anti-Israel Penny Wong. But Wong is a fellow left faction member, like Albanese.
Albanese’s words are just so much smelly, noisy wind and poisoning the atmosphere of Australian society.
