A new low even for the Greens
Many causes the Greens claim to support – such as women's and LGBTQI+ rights – are celebrated and promoted in Israel, but non-existent in Hamas's theocratic totalitarian terrorist state
Decent people from across the political spectrum have rightly condemned, without reservation, the evil atrocities that were committed by the terrorist group Hamas on Saturday, October 7.
In the darkest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, more Jews were killed in a single day than on any day since.
And they were killed for the same reason – simply because they were Jews. Hamas terrorists hunted from house to house in the very same way with an intent to spare no one. Worse, the crimes of these depraved monsters were also more akin to ISIS in their brutality. The images that we have all seen have left scars that will never heal, while nearly 200 kidnapped Israeli civilians, including frightened young children and the elderly, remain captive in Gaza as hostages.
There is no whataboutism, no bothsiderism, no moral equivalence to be found here.
And yet the Australian Greens have outdone themselves in their refusal to simply condemn Hamas’s circus of horrors.
In a show of unity in federal Parliament on Monday, MPs of all political persuasions rightly condemned Hamas’s barbarism and supported Israel’s right to defend itself. The four Greens MPs were alone in opposing the motion after their leader Adam Bandt shamefully tried to move an amendment condemning Israeli war crimes and stating “for there to be peace there must be an end to the State of Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories”.
Questions must also be asked of the three independent MPs – Kylea Tink, Sophie Scamps and Andrew Wilkie – who supported Bandt’s amendment, though they at least subsequently voted for the original motion.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Before the victims’ blood was even dry from the Hamas attack last week, Bandt on X condemned “horrific attacks on civilians” without mentioning Israel or Hamas, but made sure to “condemn the occupation” in equal measure.
His colleagues’ social media posts were no better.
Responding to Parliament House in Canberra being lit up in blue and white, Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi tweeted, “One colonial government supporting another. What a disgrace. #FreePalestine.”
NSW Greens MP Jenny Leong called a statement from Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles in which he said “the unprovoked attacks from militant Hamas on Israel are abhorrent”, “disgraceful”.
“It is also appalling that tonight the Opera House will be lit up in support of Israel – what about all of the Palestinian lives lost since occupation?” she said.
Leong also shared a tweet drawing moral equivalence between the Israeli hostages in Gaza and terror suspects that are held in Israeli administrative detention.
Greens in the NSW Upper House last week refused to support a motion condemning Hamas’s attack, denouncing the killing of civilians and recognising Israel’s right to defend itself. Two Greens councillors in Woollahra left the chamber when a vote was taken in solidarity with Israel.
The official NSW Greens X account has been promoting anti-Israel rallies, including last Monday’s which degenerated into a mob chanting “gas the Jews” at the Sydney Opera House.
All of this frankly proves what we already knew. The Greens are not a friend of the Australian Jewish community. They have proven this time and time again with continued condemnation of Israel, slanders of “colonialism” and “apartheid”, calls for boycotts of the Jewish state and their refusal to accept the realities of the antisemitism Jewish students face on campus. The Greens not only reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism but arrogantly purport to know better and to lecture us about what Jew-hatred is. Shame on them.
But their response to these latest Hamas atrocities represents a new low even for them.
The folly of this extremist political party dressed up in progressive clothing is further exposed by the fact that many causes the Greens claim to support – such as women’s and LGBTQI+ rights – are celebrated and promoted in Israel, but are non-existent in Hamas’s theocratic totalitarian terrorist state. The very terrorist state whose Jew-hating propaganda the Greens are amplifying and spreading.
Debates about the complexity of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict are one thing. But if you refuse to unreservedly condemn the evil slaughter of 1300 people – children murdered in front of their parents’ eyes, burned alive, babies beheaded, women raped, entire families wiped out, purely because they were Jews – then you do not deserve to be part of the debate.
Simply put, the Greens are an absolute disgrace. No self-respecting Jewish Australian should ever vote for them again.
Gareth Narunsky is national editor of The AJN.
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