Reckless Gaza statement, amid silence on Druze slaughter

In Syria’s Sweida province, almost a thousand Druze have been killed in a brutal week of violence.

The local Druze community has suffered mass atrocities at the hands of government forces, including the reported execution of 182 civilians, many shot in the head at close range.

260 civilians have been killed as tanks shell residential areas and regime troops breach villages under false pretences. Survivors have described filmed killings and psychological terror.

The Australian Labor government – fresh from putting off the urgent action to implement the antisemitism plan that its own envoy has recommended, but we digress – has responded by ignoring the plight of the Druze altogether and condemning Israel.

First, in an interview while visiting the democratic and human-rights-upholding luminary that is China, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the democratic State of Israel’s actions in Gaza “completely indefensible”.

But that was just the entree. This week, Foreign Minister Penny Wong added her signature to a contradictory joint statement with other deluded nations calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.

That it was welcomed almost immediately by Hamas – the genocidal death cult that raped, murdered and abducted its way through southern Israel on October 7, 2023 – sparking the ongoing war – and would love to do so again, tells you much of what you need to know.

Yes, the statement has a throwaway line about the hostages, saying it calls for “their immediate and unconditional release”. But the very next line says “a negotiated ceasefire offers the best hope of bringing them home”. So which is it?

And by the way, a negotiated ceasefire is exactly what the United States is trying to broker, and what Hamas is continuing to reject. But no mention of that.

Senator Wong and her fellow foreign ministers have also swallowed whole Hamas propaganda that blames Israel alone for the tragic deaths that have occurred at aid sites in Gaza.

And in condemning the aid model that Israel backs and Hamas rejects, they also display absolutely zero understanding of how the terror group has been hijacking aid for the past 21 months as part of its bid to maintain control of the territory.

This joint statement is worse than undergraduate; it’s downright reckless.

And it has already had an adverse effect. It cannot be a coincidence that Hamas has now issued new demands in the ceasefire negotiations, shifting its previous positions on certain issues. The result: a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages is now further away.

Author, advocate and former Israeli MK Einat Wilf told The AJN recently that “there is feeling good and there is doing good, and they are not the same”. So while both Gazans and Israelis continue to suffer, Senator Wong and the statement’s other signatories can at least feel good.