A pattern of appeasement, not moral clarity, has shaped the Albanese Government’s response to Gaza, Israel and the politics of antisemitism at home, writes Paul Begley.

WHEN A LEADER elected to the highest office operates according to a belief that pleasing his enemies is a sure-fire way to preserve his political capital, he gets what he deserves when his enemies turn on him for doing what they asked for.

Winston Churchill warned against that approach by characterising an appeaser as one who feeds a crocodile in the hope it will eat him last, forgetting that its appetite is insatiable.

As the nation watched Murdoch’s News Corp leading a legacy media pile-on demanding an antisemitism royal commission in the wake of the Bondi shooting last month, it became increasingly clear that the single objective of the campaign was to wound the Albanese Government. True to form, Albanese appeared increasingly likely to accede to their demands and, by doing so, validate their hype and reveal once again his characteristic lack of spine.

Since 7 October 2023, Prime Minister Albanese has bent over backwards to avoid stating the obvious because his powerful enemies in Australia, America and Israel did not on any account want the Australian Government to officially acknowledge the unfolding of a terrible reality in Gaza that could be seen in plain sight.

Four things followed from the events of October 2023.

The first was that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu failed to explain how, following intelligence warnings from Egypt and Israel’s own state-of-the-art intelligence forces, the Hamas atrocities of 7 October were able to occur at the Supernova music festival on his watch. Members of the Israeli military who were on duty on 6 and 7 October have reported high degrees of unpreparedness and that ‘many Israeli troops there were unarmed and official protocols had soldiers standing back when under attack, instead of advancing’.

Not surprisingly, Netanyahu steadfastly has refused to conduct an inquiry into the 7 October atrocity, despite widespread demands within Israel that he do so.

The second relates to well-substantiated information from the Israeli news outlet Haaretz and other sources that the response to the Hamas attack involved the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) killing Israeli nationals caught up in the Supernova event by way of a Hannibal Directive to prevent Hamas from taking Israeli soldiers captive.

The third involves Netanyahu’s response to the 7 October atrocity, which has involved the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians for more than two years using the principle of collective punishment. The response has resulted in the International Criminal Court declaring Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders war criminals and has called for their arrest.

The fourth involves Israeli supporters internationally using their influence to pressure governments and key cultural institutions to characterise any criticism of the political state of Israel as a criticism of the Jewish religion. That characterisation was and is being made under the generic banner of “antisemitism”, with the apparent intention of creating confusion among the general population and anxiety among Jewish citizens who are constantly told they are unsafe.

In Australia, our centres of learning and culture have been pressured into punishing any writer, academic, artist or public commentator who says anything that could be construed as a criticism of Israel:

• Antoinette Lattouf was fired by ABC Australia for privately repeating the verifiable fact that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war;
• classical pianist Jayson Gillham was dropped by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for his observation of the fact that Israel was killing Palestinian journalists;
• many writers withdrew from the 2025 Bendigo Writers Festival when sponsor La Trobe University demanded that participants sign a code of conduct that prevented them making reference to Israel or Palestine; and
• a distinguished cardiologist, Professor Peter MacDonald, was stood down by St Vincent’s Hospital and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Centre for asking a question in his private capacity that expressed skepticism about Iran, rather than Mossad, being the perpetrator of two “antisemitic” arson attacks in Australia.

These are a few of many attempts to silence speech in Australia over the past two years if it risked criticism of the state of Israel.

And now, in real time, more than 50 writers scheduled to appear at the 2026 Adelaide Writers Festival in March have withdrawn following the cancellation of the Australian-Palestinian author Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s invitation to speak.

Since Netanyahu declared his intention to exact collective punishment on the citizens of Gaza, the Albanese Government has been desperate to avoid open criticism of Israel. Instead of questioning the Israeli response on grounds of illegality and disproportionality, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Albanese have timidly reiterated Israel’s “right to defend itself”, a “right” explicitly denied to an occupying power.

The same Labor Party leaders have also resorted to serial platitudes about a “rules-based order” and impotent calls for Israel to show “restraint”.  Australia’s Israeli Ambassador has at no stage been called on to show cause why he shouldn’t be sent home and Australia still supplies weapons parts to Israel.

While the Government keeps talking coyly out of both sides of its mouth, the L-NP Opposition and its cheerleaders in the legacy media have demanded nothing less than full-throated support for Netanyahu’s Israel on the grounds of an existential contest between good and evil, with the deity manifestly on the side of Israel and implacably opposed to anything that smacks of Islam.

Against those black and white assertions of high-minded righteousness, the Albanese Government has been accused of a lack of “moral clarity”, with right-wing partisans accusing him personally of “pussyfooting”.

Against that backdrop, Albanese has unfailingly validated their assessment. The Prime Minister has been overly keen to swiftly characterise suspect arson attacks and other incidents as “antisemitic” despite police investigations revealing them in time to be false flags. That includes the arson attack on a Ripponlea synagogue in December 2024, now revealed to have been organised by unknown principals employing street criminals using encrypted communications to create an impression of rampant antisemitism.  

Under pressure to prove to his enemies that he took antisemitism more seriously than they claimed he was doing, the PM hastily appointed Jillian Segal as a special antisemitism envoy with great fanfare on 9 July 2024, and discreetly appointed Aftab Malik as Islamophobia envoy three months later on 30 September.

The absence of due diligence in making the Segal appointment became apparent when it was revealed that the envoy was connected to the far-right political group, Advance.

Segal delivered her report to Albanese on 10 July 2025. Its 13 recommendations called for sweeping action to be taken against any Australian learning or cultural institution that permitted criticism of Israel, and proposed that she be the sole arbiter of making judgments about such eventualities and the punishments that would follow from them. Punishments could involve mandatory dismissal and charges laid against any offender, in addition to loss of funding for the institution.

The envoy’s priorities on what amounts to antisemitic behaviour were on display during November 2025 when a group of openly antisemitic neo-Nazis staged a public demonstration outside the NSW Parliament. The demonstration was blatantly a Jew-hating exercise that displayed a prominent sign demanding that the Jewish lobby be abolished, but made no explicit reference to the state of Israel. Segal took no proactive step to comment on or publicly condemn the neo-Nazi event by way of a statement or a press conference.

In the aftermath of two gunmen opening fire on a Jewish Hanukkah gathering on Bondi Beach last month, which killed 15 people, the pro-Israeli forces in politics and the legacy media began making claims that Albanese had done nothing that would have prevented the Bondi shooting. Opposition Leader Sussan Ley demanded that the Segal recommendations be implemented, that a suite of anti-terrorism laws be enacted and that Albanese recall Parliament before Christmas to enact them.

Former LNP politician Josh Frydenberg made an impassioned speech suggesting the urgency of the situation has prompted him to consider a return to politics.

MP Andrew Hastie immediately used the occasion to call on the Albanese Government to exercise better judgment on immigration entry, neglecting to note that the deceased, older gunman gained entry to Australia during the Howard years, was given licenses for guns during the Abbott years and his son was investigated over ISIS links during the Morrison years. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) apparently saw no red flags following what turned out to be the gunmen’s trips to the Philippines, an ISIS training location.

That did not stop Scott Morrison from writing an opinion piece in Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, blaming the Labor Party for its ‘indulgence of Islamic and left-wing extremists (that) set the stage for the massacre at Bondi Beach’. The Australian newspaper and the Murdoch tabloids at home laid the blame squarely on Albanese, which gave the cue for reporting in the wider legacy media.

When Albanese predicably capitulated to legacy media demands by agreeing to hold a royal commission, instead of exercising his power as Prime Minister by announcing a commissioner and terms of reference, he consulted with his enemies on who and what they would accept as part of a decision they were always going to report as a humiliating backflip. In the event, he announced via Letters Patent terms of reference that alluded neither to Islamophobia nor Israel, ensuring that the Zionist lobby was to some extent placated.

Barely heard in the noise were reports from independent media sources, such as this observation from Ronni Salt in The Shot:

‘The two gunmen, one an unemployed labourer, his father, an alleged shop worker, did not march for peace, they did not learn their hatred on the grounds of universities, nor did they create their unhinged mindsets in the art galleries or cultural institutions of Australia. But ever the divider, Segal failed to allow those highly obvious facts to deter her.’

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/gaza-to-bondi-how-appeasement-shaped-albaneses-response-to-antisemitism,20555

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.