ACT Senator David Pocock wrote about Australia’s response to the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza recently. The next day, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong reinstated $6 million in funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Staff at UNRWA had allegedly assisted Hamas in their brutal attacks on unsuspecting and innocent Israeli civilians. In response, the Australian government ‘paused’ funding to UNRWA. UNRWA’s response was to sack those allegedly involved, and after a period of seven weeks, the Australian government has decided to reinstate the funding.

Australians should be rightly sceptical about providing funding to UNRWA. It is highly unlikely that an organisation that had allegedly been hijacked by terrorists could have reformed itself sufficiently in such a short time. It only took seven weeks for UNRWA to redeem itself, an amazing turnaround that defies all historical instances of international institutions that have lost their way.

Instead of providing cash, many people responding to Senator Pocock’s article suggest that we should only send medical supplies. At least medical supplies are less useful in conducting terrorist activities.

The problem is that while reinstating UNRWA’s funding might make some members of Parliament and their supporters feel better for a time, it is too easy to forget that Israeli hostages, assuming they are still alive, are allegedly being held by Hamas.

It is unclear to what extent Hamas has been able to control the narrative, but it seems that elements of the Australian government have been pressured by Woke tropes that have informed our position on Gaza.

A most recent manifestation of Woke tropes relating to Gaza saw the Vietnam War Memorial on ANZAC Parade in Canberra vandalised with pro-Gaza statements. One statement read ‘Eyes on Gaza’, another read ‘The Colony will fall’.

The RSL condemned the vandalism. I was livid.

In a letter to the editor of a major newspaper, I wrote:

If it was not for those who served in the Australian military and the thousands of Americans who died defending Australia the freedoms the perpetrators abuse would not exist.

If they think Australia’s responses to the Malayan Emergency, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War were wrong then go and live in North Korea and enjoy the paradise they must imagine exists there.

One commentator on LinkedIn suggested that I was conflating issues. Another wrote:

While I don’t condone this behaviour, I do wish every Australian would get as equally outraged when Aboriginal sites and ecosystems of significant meaning and purpose are destroyed and/or disrespected.

But the next day, the Captain Cook Memorial beside Lake Burley Griffen received the same treatment, with the same anti-colonial slogan painted in red. Talk about conflating issues.

Sentiment about the situation in Gaza has been captured by the same Woke tropes that are wheeled out when any identity politics issue affects Australia.

Let’s be clear. Israel was attacked by an organisation that is a proscribed terrorist organisation in Australia. The people of Gaza elected this organisation to lead them. The 2006 election was the last election conducted for the Palestinian Authority. The subsequent absence of democracy in Gaza has followed the West’s apathy towards antidemocratic practices.

It is not the responsibility of Australian taxpayers to continue to provide cash that has allegedly been used to support an organisation that allegedly assisted in the attacks of October 7 last year.

Australians have a right to question the legitimacy of the UNRWA. Australians also have a right to question the legitimacy of our government providing funding to an organisation that allegedly has links to a proscribed terrorist organisation.

And after those questions, one is left to ask the same question that is being asked in the UK, are some of our politicians pandering to a voting base whose activism desecrates war memorials and national monuments?

In his article, Pocock wrote:

Australia’s response to the devastating violence in Gaza has been deeply distressing for many in our community from all walks of life. As a country, we need to be able to call out the appalling attacks by Hamas on 7 October, push for the release of hostages, and also condemn the horrific loss of life in Gaza. And we must play our part in providing aid and assistance.

But why must that assistance be in funds and not in medical supplies?

This same attitude that permeates the left is what we saw during the failed Voice to Parliament campaign.

Instead of getting the policy right, the left tried to bring in shame culture to force individuals to comply. Shame culture is not part of Australian culture, and thankfully, it failed.

But we are seeing the same shame culture approach to the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza. Instead of developing policy that will receive bipartisan support, the left are trying to shame everyone into their way of thinking. Of course, their way is not thinking, it is compliance.

Senator Pocock wrote that the ‘crisis in Gaza is a diplomatic test for Australia’.

While support for Gaza has become the new virtue declaration, feelings are irrelevant to Australia’s national security interests. But if we are to discuss feelings, Pocock and Senator Wong ought to be focusing on how the majority of Australians feel about their hard-earned taxes being used to make the left feel better.

The human suffering is horrible. The situation in Gaza is horrible. The loss of human life is a tragedy that could have been avoided if a proscribed terrorist organisation had not slaughtered innocent civilians. And the tragedy could probably end now if the hostages were returned.

But we built this country by hard work, by standing up to aggressors, and by defending our liberal democratic rights, and at times with our lives.

If we wish to feel bad about something, we ought to be more worried about how we will feel if our money is used by a proscribed terrorist organisation to attack liberal democracy itself (allegedly) again.

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