Wong is wrong, writes MICHAEL GREEN, embarrassing Australia and diminishing herself.
In Senator Penny Wong’s speech to the ANU National Security College “Securing our Future”, on 9 April 2024, after acknowledging very important persons, Wong moves on to the now obligatory Indigenous pieties and insults to our intelligence, exemplified by:
Australia has been connected to the world for thousands of years: First Nations people were this land’s first diplomats and traders.
Right there, you know you’re dealing with an ideologue, certainly not someone from any realist school of history, diplomacy, or commerce. Then there are climate change pieties and assorted other stuff.
But let’s get to Gaza. What school of fantastical, utopian diplomacy and policy does Wong come from? She has no answers, none at all, just wishful thinking, platitudes, and the expectation that everyone will play nice, despite all evidence to the contrary.
We need to build the pathway out of the endless cycle of violence.
Surely, but how, when one party Hamas, backed by Iran, wants nothing less than violent Jihad until Israel ceases to exist? That’s what is meant by the chant: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.
We need to build the pathway to a peace that is enduring, and just.
Adds nothing but the idealistic aspiration “enduring and just”.
Because the simple truth is that a secure and prosperous future for both Israelis and Palestinians will only come with a two-state solution. Recognition of each other’s right to exist. A Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel.
And the responding simple truth is that the Palestinian leaders have never accepted that; they have opposed Israel from the start; they have waged war against it over and over; they have staged rocket and terrorist attacks by the hundreds, thousands, for decades; they have rejected every two-state offer that has been made; they continue to call for and fight for the destruction of Israel. They simply do not accept Israel’s right to exist!
There is no role for Hamas in a future Palestinian state.
How is that going to be achieved, Wong? By eliminating it from Gaza with military force? By asking it to play nice? Wong has no answers to the substantive issues.
It has long been understood that any future Palestinian state cannot be in a position to threaten Israel’s security and will need a reformed Palestinian Authority.
But the people who don’t “understand” this are the Palestinians and other Islamists who seek the destruction of Israel, and have consistently done so from almost every territory they’ve controlled, such as Gaza and Southern Lebanon. And how is the Palestinian Authority to be reformed? Who is going to do that? It seems like Wong puts herself, or perhaps the vague “international community” in the position of a god, or some 21st century imperialist, able to wave a wand in the Middle East and transform circumstances by command.
Penny ‘farthing’ Wong
And here is the core delusion:
This is why we are urging all parties to return to the table, and why we are engaging to support all efforts to advance a political process, including discussions between regional leaders.
Who is at that negotiating table on behalf of the Palestinians? Who? Wong rejects Hamas, who were elected in Gaza by the Palestinians twenty-odd years ago, but who Wong now rejects as a terrorist organisation unsuitable to have any future role. Wong implicitly rejects the current Palestinian Authority because she says it needs to be reformed. Who else? Hezbollah? Iran? It seems Wong wants a negotiating table where she gets to pick who sits around the table and everyone just agrees that it would be wonderful if everyone could all just work and play nicely and get along and see that would be better for everyone. Sure, but that is a fairy tale, not a foreign policy.
Wong then goes on to make similarly utopian remarks about our own region:
The Albanese Government is meeting the challenges Australia faces in our region and the world, with unprecedented coordination and ambition in our statecraft.
Because this is the only way to advance Australia’s interests in shaping a region that is peaceful, stable and prosperous. A region free of hegemony. A region in balance. Where countries, large and small, have the freedom to decide our own futures. Where we operate by the same rules, and we have space to agree and to disagree.
No wonder they Albanese Labor is dithering on defence!
Wong’s speech is so unhinged form any kind of strategic reality that it will be read by the international foreign policy establishments not as a serious statement of Australia’s strategic and foreign policy, but as one aimed at a domestic audience of Australian environmentalists, Islamists, and Sinophiles.
Nevertheless, in the palatial suites of Hamas leaders in Qatar it will be celebrated. As it will be too in Beijing.
Absolutely embarrassing that this is our Australian government.
Dr Michael Green has a PhD in Systems Engineering
Is Michael Green – with his ‘Wong is Wrong‘ recalling Arthur Calwell’s ‘Two Wongs don’t make a White‘?
The inhabitants of Palestine made it clear that they didn’t want a Jewish homeland foisted on to them by the international community. They resisted, and lost. 1948.
‘Might is right’?
Nope … Israel should abandon its Zionist character, should join a Confederation of Palestine … and the ‘left-bank’ settlements should be abandoned by the Israeli ‘settlers’.
Give Peace a Chance!