Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s trip to the Middle East is the latest demonstration of the Albanese government’s vacillating foreign policy but why should anyone be surprised?

Sunday marked 100 days since Hamas invaded Israel and slaughtered 1200 Israelis and others, mostly civilians, and took over 240 hostages, so why is Foreign Minister Wong only visiting now?

Senator Wong says she stands with the Israeli hostages, but it is obvious that the Labor government also stands with the Palestinians.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has refused to even denounce the outrageous case being brought to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by South Africa that accuses Israel of committing genocide in its legitimate attempt to destroy Hamas, and demanding judges order a ceasefire.

As Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School has written, ‘It is the Hamas charter that calls for genocide against the Jews of Israel, and it is South Africa that is harbouring Hamas terrorists and defending its murders and rapes. It should be Hamas that is on trial for attempted genocide and South Africa that is on trial for complicity with Hamas.’

But saying so was too much for Albanese who claimed that he couldn’t comment on a case while it was being considered by the court even though he defended Ukraine on multiple occasions, as recently as last September, when it was subjected to a similar trumped-up charge by Russia.

As if to make absolutely clear that Labor didn’t favour Israel, Wong travelled to Jordan first and took the opportunity while there to announce that she would give $21 million in aid to Gaza which will, undoubtedly, be used by Hamas to continue to wage its genocidal war on Israel.

At the press conference in Jordan the most Wong would say of the case being brought against Israel was, ‘Our support for the ICJ and respect for its independence does not mean we accept the premise of South Africa’s case.’’

Wong likes to chide Israel about the importance of respecting international humanitarian law but how can she reconcile her government’s financial support for Gaza which is ruled by a terrorist organisation that is actively violating international humanitarian law by holding Israeli and foreign civilians hostage, using Gaza civilians as human shields, and firing missiles at civilian populations in Israel?

Wong has also refused to go to the scene of the October 7 pogroms or to watch the footage of Hamas and Gazan citizens committing war crimes and atrocities. Why? Does it make it too difficult for her to then offer tea and sympathy to Hamas supporters?

Wong feigns support for Israeli hostages and their families but in the interests of shoring up Muslim votes in his electorate, Labor’s Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Tony Burke, said he was very proud of his local council for flying the Palestinian flag just weeks after Hamas had committed the largest single massacre of Jews since the second world war.

Burke also told a vocal crowd of pro-Palestinian supporters that ‘the history of the region did not begin on the 7th of October’, implying that the history made the war crimes committed by Hamas somehow understandable and implied that Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza would understandably be described by many as ‘genocide’.

Industry Minister Ed Husic has described Israel’s attempts to disarm Hamas as ‘disproportionate’ and he and Early Childhood Minister Anne Aly said innocent Palestinians were being subjected to collective punishment. Husic called on Israel to find a ‘much more strategic and precise way to hold Hamas to account’.

While Wong muddles through the Middle East trying to appease everyone, Australia is hardly the only government walking all sides of the street.

The US is funding both Iran and Israel but even more bizarre is the fact that the US and Israel accept Qatar as an honest broker. This makes no sense.

Qatar is the world’s leading financier of Wahabbist terror. The Emir of Qatar claims to be the descendant of Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, the founder of the extreme Islamist 18th-century Wahabbi movement that inspired Osama Bin Laden.

Qatar’s Minister for Interior Affairs, Abdullah bin Khalid Aal Thani, financed Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11.

For two decades, Qatar has backed every Islamic terrorist organisation in the Middle East including Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

Yet despite all this, the US has extended the lease on its airforce base in Qatar for another ten years and Israel continues to allow Qatar to handle all humanitarian aid to Gaza, which guarantees that it goes directly to Hamas which Qatar funds.

What can possibly explain this bizarre state of affairs? Could it be corruption?

Just over a year ago, the European parliament stripped a Greek Member of the European Parliament (MEP) of her position after accusations surfaced that she had accepted bribes from Qatar.

US Senator for the Democratic Party Bob Menendez also faces allegations that he accepted bribes from Qatar.

Qatar has also bought up America’s Ivy League universities. A report released last December by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) noted that ‘Qatar contributes more funds to universities in the United States than any other country in the world, and raw donation totals omit critical, concerning details about the nature of Qatar’s academic funding’.

A former Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim said in February 2022 that Qatar paid journalists in many countries and that most Arab countries were also doing this.

In 2019 Reuters reported on documents showing that Qatar interfered in the affairs of multiple other countries through the gift of grants and through payments to politicians and other influential people including, for example, Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s former president who took the accusation of Israel committing genocide to the ICJ and is calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and a two-state solution to the Israel/Hamas conflict.

According to the Middle East Media and Research Institute some documents relate to Israeli public figures including three from 2012 that mention an alleged $15 million grant to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and an alleged $5 million grant to Avigdor Lieberman (for the Likud-Beiteinu bloc) for an election campaign and two letters from 2018 mention an alleged $50 million grant to Netanyahu for the same purpose.

No doubt when the conflict in Gaza ends Netanyahu will be subjected to intense scrutiny to understand how Qatar and Iran were allowed to fund Hamas to develop the capacity to wage its genocidal attack.

What is certain is that so long as Qatar plays a pivotal role in world affairs, its billionaire Islamists will threaten global security and prosperity.