On the 7th of October last year, the terrorist group Hamas committed the most foul attack upon Jewish people since the Holocaust. Within days, that atrocity was celebrated all over the world, including in Australia, by people claiming to be supporters of Palestine. Polls have shown that the majority of Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank supported Hamas’s deeds. Hamas, which is still the nominal government in Gaza, has vowed to repeat the actions of 7 October as often as is necessary to achieve their aim of the elimination of Israel.

Israel is in the middle of defending itself against this future. Australia has now voted in favour of granting the non-existent nation of ‘Palestine’ UN membership. What, in God’s name, could have convinced the Albanese government that this is the right time to muddy the waters on this vexed question and signal that our support for Israel’s right to exist is less than 100 per cent? To signal to Hamas that they are winning the propaganda war? To signal to Hamas, hang in there, we’ve got your back? I will venture a guess on that question later.

Australia’s Ambassador to the UN says this is in furtherance of the elusive goal of a two-state solution. If one were looking for a classical analogy to the two-state solution, the Holy Grail comes to mind. But this would be the Monty Python version.

So, in order to boost the chance of a two-state solution, our government has supported granting full UN membership to a non-existent state – an entity that does not possess the pre-requisites for nation status – that, in its current governance, repudiates the two-state solution.

We now have the absurd situation that, within the UN, only nine countries oppose the inclusion of Palestine. Yet at the same time, 30 countries do not recognise Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East.

Moreover, Taiwan, a vibrant and prosperous democracy, is not even afforded observer status at the United Nations, whereas the dysfunctional ethnic rabble that calls itself Palestine now has all the rights and privileges just short of voting rights.

Our Foreign Minister Penny Wong is quoted saying the resolution was only the ‘extension of some modest additional rights’ for Palestine to participate in UN forums. ‘I want to be extremely clear again that this vote is not about whether Australia recognises Palestine,’ Senator Wong said. ‘We will do that when we think the time is right.’

Wong also claimed this resolution was only an expression of the aspiration that Palestine should be a full member.

The UN resolution in question is ES10/24. It appears to have two elements, the overarching one being membership of the UN for Palestine. From the UN website:

‘Granting Palestinian membership requires a recommendation from the Security Council. At the same time, the Assembly determines that the State of Palestine is qualified for such status and recommends that the Security Council “reconsider the matter favourably”.’ In other words, this was a vote for full UN membership. This was not just an ‘aspiration’, as Wong claimed.

Certainly, Australian recognition of Palestine as a nation state is a separate question to UN membership. But if I were the people of Israel, and their Australian supporters, I would not be comforted by the assurance that Palestine would only be recognised by Australia when a clearly partisan Penny Wong ‘thinks the time is right’.

A country suitable for inclusion as a full member of the UN should be one which we are prepared to recognise. In voting for this part of the resolution – the State of Palestine is qualified for such status – Wong has, effectively, signalled that, as far as she is concerned, that ‘right time’ has come.

Also from the UN website:

‘Here are some of the changes in status that Palestine will have a right to later this year: To be seated among Member States in alphabetical order,

Make statements on behalf of a group,

Submit proposals and amendments and introduce them,

Co-sponsor proposals and amendments, including on behalf of a group,

Propose items to be included in the provisional agenda of the regular or special, sessions and the right to request the inclusion of supplementary or additional items in the agenda of regular or special sessions,

The right of members of the delegation of the State of Palestine to be elected as officers in the plenary and the Main Committees of the General Assembly,

Full and effective participation in UN conferences and international conferences and meetings convened under the auspices of the General Assembly or, as appropriate, of other UN organs.’

That doesn’t sound at all modest to me. Short of full voting rights, what is lacking? The key to the executive washroom?

In practical and humanitarian terms, this resolution achieves nothing. It is virtue signalling on a global scale. But it is a major propaganda victory for Hamas. The point will not be lost on Hamas that the US now stands virtually alone in opposing UN membership for Palestine, that it has been abandoned on this issue by its closest allies, in either voting for the resolution or abstaining. Hamas must conclude from this that its tactics are working. I imagine the point will not be lost on the USA either. This vacillation is not the message we should be sending to a possibly incoming Trump administration.

That said, however, the US does not escape scot-free. Its decision to withhold weapons and ammunition will also be seen by Hamas as a sign that 35,000 (claimed) deaths gets results. This gutless decision is buttressed by the claims, by Secretary of State Blinken and many others, that Hamas cannot be defeated militarily, and therefore the civilian deaths occasioned by an incursion into Rafah would not be justified.

If that is true, where does it leave their vaunted two-state solution? Hamas cannot be defeated at the ballot box, it cannot be starved financially (unless we first starve Iran financially), and despite the appalling atrocities of 7 October it is winning hearts and minds across the western world. Now apparently it can’t be defeated militarily. Looks like we’re stuck with Hamas for the foreseeable future. We – all of us – had better hope Blinken is wrong and Netanyahu is right.

This cynical vote by Wong also undercuts the government’s, admittedly limp-wristed, effort to rein in the mindless antisemitism that is infecting our streets and university campuses, and poisoning our social cohesion.

I don’t believe in the two-state solution.  Not that it shouldn’t happen. Just that it won’t. Not in any meaningful sense. Let’s assume some Arab grouping, including representatives from Palestine, agreed to a two-state proposal. What guarantee do we have that it would hold? That the players would not just abandon any undertakings ‘when the time is right’ to resume hostilities on some pretext or other? And what would the UN do about that? Revoke Palestine’s membership? I think not.

This decision – the abandonment of long-standing bipartisan policy – made, apparently, by Albanese himself, is driven by left-wing ideology and the demographics of western Sydney, exacerbated by uncontrolled immigration. Albanese, Wong and federal Labor all stand condemned.

Is there anything this government can’t stuff up?