Pity the poor left-wing politician trying to wade through the Middle East moral swamp he or she now finds themself stuck in. It was all so much easier, of course, when you could simply whack on a keffiyeh and wander around Martin Place babbling into a megaphone about ‘Freeing Palestine Now’, and condemning  ‘Israeli tanks and bombs’, as the illustrious young Labor MP Anthony Albanese did back in October 2000.

Once upon a time, all the good lefty had to remember was that white America plus wealthy Israel equals oppressive colonialists so therefore bad, bad, bad. Ethnic-looking Muslims of whatever hue or whatever extreme beliefs equals oppressed minorities so therefore good, good, good. Thus, to be a virtuous lefty merely required signalling your disapproval of the current American administration, especially the Republican ones, whilst repeatedly hinting at your own personal revulsion at all things Israeli by, for example, avoiding the Parliamentary Friends of Israel group or anything with the word Zion in it – and Bob was your uncle. (Carr, that is, not Hawke). Simultaneously, all you had to do was rock up to your local annual Parliamentary Friends of Palestine Ramadan Iftar dinner, bemoan the plight of oppressed Muslims worldwide as you strolled through the Lakemba Night Markets, and sit back and watch the swags full of postal votes land in your metaphorical ballot box. Too easy.

But then along came that damnable 7 October 2023 fiasco. Of course, many on the left knew instinctively that silhouettes of Hamas fighters coming in on hang-gliders was the ultimate graphic symbol of noble Muslim resistance against Israeli oppression, and plastered them all over their social media profiles as swiftly as possible. But for some in the public eye, it was hard to avoid that nagging feeling that maybe, just maybe, those hysterical hollering machinegun-toting dudes with the naked women in the back of their utes weren’t actually the good guys this time around. After all, parading around the broken and sexually mutilated corpse of an innocent teenage girl doesn’t exactly scream ‘oppression’ to most normal everyday folk watching the telly at home.

Still, ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ as the old saying goes, and what better way to avoid confronting the ugliest aspects of the new moral turpitude than by avoiding going anywhere near the kibbutzim and killing fields of the Nova festival, as our morally self-righteous Foreign Minister did when visiting Israel shortly after the massacre? Better still, why not at every opportunity hop in front of a TV and, putting on your most earnest politician’s face, piously pout that Israel must ‘SHOW RESTRAINT and DE-ESCALATE’.

Of course, one can always proudly display one’s humanitarian and caring credentials simply by flinging open the nation’s citizenship doors to some 3,000 clearly ‘oppressed’ peoples from the benighted enclave of Gaza.

Still, the good lefty knows that certain issues are so important and so virtuous that they rise above petty politics or the sensitivities of the moment, so what better way to demonstrate to the world that you will not be swayed from your passionately held undergraduate socialist beliefs than by rushing off to the United Nations and making the Grand Announcement that you now Recognise the State of Palestine? Of course, the fact that under international law Palestine doesn’t actually qualify for such recognition is neither here nor there to our committed, moralistic, virtue-signalling left-wing Labor leader. And in the meantime, to add some icing to the halal cake, along comes one of his senior ministers with a nifty little plan to help bring back those Awkward Brides from the Oppressed State of Syria – without actually ‘assisting’ them in any way, of course, because that would be ‘wrong’.

But then, just as everything is returning to normal, along comes the nightmare of 14 December, at Bondi Beach of all places. Right on your doorstep. And horror of horrors, when you turn up to express your sympathy, you get booed by the public!

And now the secure parameters of that once so-reliable moral universe begin to quiver. First there is definitely no royal commission, then there might be one, then there definitely is a royal commission. Your puzzled Antisemitism Envoy, ignored for the better part of the past year, is suddenly flavour of the month.

And – whoops-a-daisy! – now you’re not rushing off to the airport with a bouquet of flowers to welcome home all those adorable Isis brides, and instead, everyone’s talking about training prison guards to cope with their arrival. Hmmm.

But just when you think you’re getting the hang of this New Moral Universe, can you believe it? Your new bestie Donald Trump, who you worked so hard to cultivate in the Oval Office, goes and bombs the bejesus out of Iran. With the help of Netanyahu!

And so you’ve got to find a way to support the USA, but not support Israel, at the same time as condemning the Iranian nuclear program without condemning the Mullahs, at the same time as urging de-escalation but hoping for a swift end to a war that you don’t support – but at the same time you do. And to top it all off, some of those cute mosques you give hundreds of thousands of dollars to in order to create your precious ‘social cohesion’ go and start mourning the death of the worst terrorist on the planet, the butcher and murderer Ali Khamenei.

I tell you, it ain’t easy being a caring, compassionate lefty leader these days,