ONE of the placards in evidence at the rally against genocide in Sydney last Sunday declared something along the lines of: ‘There’s only one Albanese I respect: Francesca.’

The acknowledgement of the Italian le­­g­al expert serving admirably as the UN’s spe­­cial rapporteur on the Israeli-occupied territories for more than three years, who is excluded from those territories and sanctioned by the US for daring to speak truth to power, contrasts with opinions about Au­­s­­tralian Prime Minister Anthony Alba­n­ese (no relation) who has consciously been as mealy-mouthed in his response to the genocide in Gaza as any other Western leader.

Hardly anyone is impressed by his tiff with his Israeli counterpart after the rabidly anti-humanitarian Benjamin Netan­yahu accused the Australian PM of promoting antisemitism by holding out the pros­­pect of recognising a Palestinian state, after the government in Canberra sensibly denied a visa to Simcha Rothman, one of the many fascist members of the Knesset under Netanyahu.

Australia has also held out the hollow prospect of recognising a Palestinian state when the UN General Assembly convenes next month, alongside a small bunch of European states such as France and Britain. If it comes, recognition will be little more than an acknowledgement of their impotence on the global stage.

Canberra just might be focused on placating Israel.

Yesterday, Australia decided to expel the Iranian ambassador, accusing his country of propelling antisemitic attacks in Australia. Whether or not the charge is credible, Canberra just might be focused on placating Israel. Even initially, Anthony Albanese was pathetically mild in his response to Netanyahu’s undiplomatic tirade, and the wretched Israeli leader isn’t exactly wrong in calling out his Australian counterpart as “weak”. Albanese’s weakness, though, revolves around the reluctance of his government to acknowledge Israel’s genocide, despite the sharp shift in public opinion since October 2023.

Francesca, barred from the Zionist terror zone and sanctioned by the US, saw the light from the get-go. Her Australian namesake, like most Western politicians, hedges his bets. He won’t dare go as far as France, which summoned the US ambassador for a potential dressing-down at the foreign ministry after Charles Kushner — Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law — complained about antisemitism, alleging it had been reinforced by the imminent recognition of a Palestinian state.

These are purely US/ Israel bullying tactics, and they may yet prevent the Western nations that have pledged to recognise a Palestinian state at the UN next month from actually doing so, given that they have mostly hedged their bets by conditioning their token gesture on Hamas’s exit from Gaza and/ or disarmament, so that all its ca­­dres can remorselessly be slaughtered. Never mind that, even according to Israeli statistics, fewer than 20 per cent of its victims have been Hamas or Islamic Jihad affiliates.

The meaningless Palestinian Authority, which serves merely as a handmaiden of the Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank, and neighbouring Arab states have also focused mainly on Hamas as an obstacle. Palestinians justifiably see the donkeys that have facilitated their movements from one death zone to another as more reliable allies than the Arab leadership. The rest of the Muslim world, beginning with Egypt and Jordan, has proved as useless as the European states did during the Nazi-led Judeocide.

They remain not just equally useless but, in most cases, complicit even as the ‘never again’ slogan from 80 years ago is being violated by an ally that brooks no criticism — and, when inevitably faced with calls for restraint, screams ‘antisemitism!’ des­p­ite having struggled long and hard to associate an ancient religion, more than 3,000 years old, with a fas­cistic politic ideology that stretches back for around 140 years.

Many of the supposed revelations that have recently been emerging about deadly Israeli actions and intentions ought to have been obvious ages ago. Targeting children? Tick. Targeting journalists — five of whom were slaughtered in an attack on a hospital on Monday, bringing the total closer to 200 — also gets a tick. How dare they try to chr­onicle the nitty-gritty of a genocide? If the truth can set you free, then it must not be told.

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu love to wallow in the murk of untruth. The likes of Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz, Keir Starmer and Anthony Albanese aren’t far behind. It’s far too late for recognition of a Palestinian state by a small bunch of Israel’s collaborators to meaningfully shift the dial. Had this kind of courtesy been shown to South Africa 40 years ago, we would still be living with apartheid. And we are, in another country and a different century, where sanctions apply to the critics rather than the perpetrators of genocide.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2025