Opinion
The world is at the most critical crossroads, with the weakest Western leadership, since 1938. At least Chamberlain and Daladier had the poor excuse of desperately doing anything, giving Hitler everything, in order to avoid war.
Joe Biden and Antiono Guterres, and closer to home, Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong, have no such excuses. Nor do the media and the left. Just as in 1938, the weak, craven elites of the West have handed Iran exactly what it wanted.
It doesn’t matter that Iran spent likely hundreds of millions to inflict almost no damage, and no casualties, on Israel. What matters is that Iran tested the mettle of Israel’s supposed allies — and won no small psychological victory. The US, Britain and Jordan may have joined in shooting down some of the barrage — but the elites in the West pivoted to Iran’s side with almost indecent haste.
It took barely a few hours for the key question on CNN, BBC and similar platforms to change from outrage at Iran’s attack to demands that Israel exercise restraint.
The BBC was asking its interlocutors: What can regional nations do to stop Israel from escalating the situation? Attack Israel militarily, and Israel is immediately attacked politically.
Most leading Western nations’ leaders not only condemned Iran but, initially at least, expressed complete solidarity with Israel.
But not Australia. The Albanese government mouthed platitudes condemning the attack, but notably refused to say it stood with Israel. This just days, remember, after hinting it would unilaterally recognise a Palestinian state, overturning decades of bipartisan Australian policy.
US President Joe Biden, notwithstanding his differences with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, offered “iron-clad” support for Israeli security.
But Biden also tried to tell the Israelis they had already had a military victory by shooting down the incoming missiles. Therefore, so the logic seems to go, there would be no need for Israel to make a military response to Iran.
This is frankly ludicrous. Israel was directly attacked by a nation that is not only the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, but avowedly genocidal in intent: for years, Iran has made it national policy to “wipe Israel off the map”.
Finally, Israel was directly attacked by a nation that, thanks to the Obama and Biden administrations, is on the brink of developing nuclear weapons.
Israel has received a solid 12 hours of political and moral support from Western leaders. But, as with the Albanese government, it looks like very shaky support […]
As a result of Biden’s poor Iran policy, Tehran is much stronger today than it was under Trump […]
Iran’s deterrence of the US seems to be working, while US deterrence of Iran is not.
The Australian
All we can do is thank Providence that Albanese and Penny Wong are largely irrelevant to the wider conflict.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s speech last week flagging the possible recognition of a Palestinian state had more than a whiff of student politics.
It also included the sound of dog-whistling, with a coded message of support to voters of Middle Eastern background in Labor seats in Sydney and Melbourne […]
But what a message Wong sent in a week that marked six months since the massacre of 1200 Israeli civilians on October 7. Four-time ALP election-winning prime minister Bob Hawke, a hero to generations of Israelis, must have been turning in his grave as Wong declared recognition – even without the support of Israel – could pave the road to peace.
In case it escaped Wong’s attention, “Palestinians” have violently rejected a two-state solution for nearly a century.
Wong also seems to forget many of the Palestinians who have her ear in this country – think Nasser Mashni of the Palestine Advocacy Network – do not support the existence of the Jewish State. Wong and many Australian journalists seem unaware of the long history of pogroms against Jews in the Middle East.
Mashni claimed in a march marking six months since the October 7 that those with genocidal intent are Israeli Zionists. Like many on the left here, he claims – against all the facts – that Israel is committed to Palestinian genocide, even though Hamas specifically denies the right of Israel to exist, did perpetrate a genocidal massacre of Jewish civilians, and has promised more of the same.
The Australian
The fundamental stupidity of Chamberlain and Daladier was to imagine that Hitler could ever be dissuaded from war. The bedrock stupidity of Albanese and Wong is to imagine that “Palestinians” have any interest in peacefully co-existing with Jews. Even more astonishingly idiotic was Wong’s wittering that a Palestinian state would have to exclude Hamas from any role in government.
How, exactly, does this prattling idiot imagine that that’s supposed to happen, given the “Palestinian” love affair with the genocidal butchers and rapists of Hamas? More pertinently, why, then, is she rewarding Hamas for its appalling crimes?
Condemning and isolating our only real friend and ally in the Middle East will leave in place the people who perpetrated the Oct. 7 massacre and their sponsors. If this is the way we fight modern wars, our enemies will have freedom to commit acts of bestial savagery on us, knowing that our own scruples will give them an insuperable advantage.
The Wall Street Journal
And in demanding that a democratic country conduct war to standards that have never been met by any belligerent in history — and could never be met — we will be signalling the ultimate surrender of our own democracy too.
And, once again, our feckless elites will have sleep-walked us into the dark valley.