Australia caught in UN circus of empty recognition

Last week, with the two-year anniversary of Hamas’s heinous October 7 massacre looming, countries were popping up left, right and centre at the UN General Assembly to criticise Israel and to declare they “recognise” a Palestinian state.

It was as if words alone could conjure functioning borders, accountable governance or a roadmap to peace. They all continued to insist that doing so somehow isolates Hamas, even as Hamas official Ghazi Hamad – he, of Palestinian recognition is “the fruits of October 7” fame – declared an update, “You know what is the benefit of October 7 now? If you look to the General Assembly yesterday … all of them, they condemned Israel.”

That’s the second confirmation for Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong, that they will no doubt also ignore, that they are in fact playing directly into Hamas’s hands.

Meanwhile, Hamas still clings to power in Gaza and holds innocent hostages, the hopelessly corrupt Palestinian Authority struggles to maintain control in the West Bank, and Palestinians continue to make it clear they don’t want their own state so much as they simply want the sole Jewish state to vanish.

New Zealand, for its part – along with cooler heads including Singapore, Germany, Italy and Japan – resisted the feel-good but utterly counterproductive move. There’s nothing that so embarrasses us as being shown up by the Kiwis, but that’s exactly what’s happened.