ScoMo: Australia failed the test
"Australia should be supporting Israel, as opposed to opposing Israel, as they shamefully did in the United Nations," said Scott Morrison.
Former prime minister Scott Morrison has described Australia’s voting in favour of a UN General Assembly calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza as shameful.
Morrison, along with his former UK counterpart Boris Johnson, addressed a UIA major donors lunch in Sydney last Thursday, following a trip to Israel last month in which they toured Gaza border towns that bore the brunt of Hamas’s heinous October 7 rampage.
Referencing the bipartisan motion that passed the Australian Parliament immediately after the attacks, Morrison recalled saying in Parliament at the time, “It is good that we passed this motion and we do so together, united as a Parliament.”
But, he said, “The test of Australia’s support for Israel was not on that day.
“The test for Australia’s support of Israel would come in the weeks and the months ahead when it got hard, when those who were standing with Israel would become fewer,” he said. “And sadly, Australia has failed that test, ultimately.
“Australia should be supporting Israel, as opposed to opposing Israel, as they shamefully did in the United Nations.”
Taking aim at the UN and Israel critics generally, Morrison said October 7 “has been completely dropped from the vernacular of the global debate”.
“And October 7 must be burned into the consciousness of our country and the world population just as the Jewish community globally has fought every single day since the liberation after the Second World War, to make sure that we’ll never forget what occurred during the Holocaust,” he said.
“October 7 similarly needs to be repeated over and over and over again. So it is never forgotten, is never cast aside.”
He said walking through Kfar Aza, “it was impossible to comprehend the inhumanity”.
“This was cold, calculated planned atrocity at a scale that I still can’t get my head around. The same type of planning, the same time of deliberate evil that Jews suffered during the Holocaust,” he said.
Morrison added that he is “deeply troubled” by what has been happening in Australia since October 7.
“I’m deeply troubled about how my Jewish friends have felt isolated and abandoned,” he said.
“And so when Boris and I went to Israel, we went to say you’re not alone. We went to say we will always remember and we will always stand with you.”
Johnson noted that while in Israel, “every step of the way” he and Morrison “agreed so passionately” about the meaning of what they saw and the “vital importance” of using their platforms to explain it to people “who I think are totally misunderstanding it”.
“Since October 7 it’s as though a fog has come down in the minds of millions of otherwise sensible people … normally rational, decent human beings can no longer see which way is up, [it’s] as though they have lost all moral compass,” he said.
“There is a difference between a terrorist attacking civilians and a soldier trying to stop another such terrorist atrocity. And there’s a difference between a pluralist democracy with a tradition of free speech and adherence to equalities and human rights, and a nihilistic theocratic death cult.
“So what’s gone wrong with the world that so many people are now apparently oblivious to that distinction? What is it about Israel that brings this moral fog into the brain?
“I think we all know the answer. And this emotion is antisemitism,” he said. “And it’s the latest mutation of an ancient virus that has been lurking beneath the floorboards of our civilisation for millennia.”
He said the emergence of antisemitism into the mainstream “proves in my mind one thing absolutely beyond doubt, that the Jewish people must have a homeland where they can be free from persecution”.
“Now more than ever, Israel must exist to succeed, must thrive and must be able to protect and defend itself.”
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