Labor’s mixed messages on the Israel-Palestine conflict, inflamed by the barbarous Hamas attacks on October 7, were perfectly illustrated by a midair turn this week. Palestinians fleeing war-ravaged Gaza found themselves turned around during their journey to Australia, with visas that had been approved suddenly cancelled.
The cruelty of turning around refugees seems inexplicable as images of Gazans’ increasing distress among the rubble of their city are carried on traditional and social media. The government has cited “ongoing security checks”, although it has not mentioned security concerns to the Gazans involved. Rather, it has told them there is a concern that they would have overstayed the visas that had been granted.
Palestinians line up for food in Rafah, Gaza Strip. Some Gazans attempting to flee, including to Australia, as international aid agencies say the territory is suffering from shortages of food, medicine and basic supplies.Credit: Fatima Shbair/AP
This episode goes against the way many people understand the world. Either these Gazans are victims, in which case they must be innocents deserving of protection, or they are “security concerns”, implying that they might not be innocent victims of Israeli aggression. Entertaining the idea that someone can be both a victim and not innocent is challenging, but key to how we respond in the face of this evolving crisis.
Humanitarianism, to paraphrase David Rieff’s A Bed For the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, has proven more ambiguous than humanitarians could have imagined. “What aid workers have learned,” Rieff frets, “is that while politics and political analyses matter desperately to them, moral fables matter more to the general public.” But Rieff says “adults who cross a border, or get caught in a crossfire, or risk starving to death as a war intensifies, have political opinions and often have themselves taken part in killing”.
People in safe, conflict-free zones in particular need a “moral fable”. So they simplify conflicts into rights and wrongs, condemning one side and championing the other. On one side of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the narrative goes that the Palestinians are freedom fighters, resisting a colonial power that arrived in 1948 to oppress Palestinians. On the other, the narrative is that Jewish people are the indigenous people of the land on which modern Israel is founded, returning to reclaim what is theirs. Facts can be arranged to make a case in either direction.
Nothing about this is simple, but voters like things to be simple, and democratic politics is always under pressure to take its cue from people. Which goes to the heart of the Albanese government’s dual challenge: to respond to the complex facts of the situation, while simultaneously managing the politics.
The politics are that, according to ABC reports, Labor ministers are under pressure in their electorates as “Islamic and Arab communities are seeking to flex their political muscle”. Everyone in politics is keenly aware that Muslim communities in the US and the UK are mobilising against politicians who are seen as insufficiently strong in their support for the Palestinian side in this conflict. In Australia, this could endanger safe Labor seats with large Muslim communities.
But the complex facts are that victims and perpetrators are often intertwined. The Australian government, like many other Western governments, froze funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugee when it was alleged that some of UNWRA’s staff had participated in the acts of brutality against Israeli civilians during the October 7 attacks. Under sustained political pressure, Labor has backflipped and said it will resume funding the organisation.
Denying desperate Gazans refuge exposes the hard politics for Australia
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16.03.2024
Labor’s mixed messages on the Israel-Palestine conflict, inflamed by the barbarous Hamas attacks on October 7, were perfectly illustrated by a midair turn this week. Palestinians fleeing war-ravaged Gaza found themselves turned around during their journey to Australia, with visas that had been approved suddenly cancelled.
The cruelty of turning around refugees seems inexplicable as images of Gazans’ increasing distress among the rubble of their city are carried on traditional and social media. The government has cited “ongoing security checks”, although it has not mentioned security concerns to the Gazans involved. Rather, it has told them there is a concern that they would have overstayed the visas that had been granted.
Palestinians line up for food in Rafah, Gaza Strip. Some Gazans attempting to flee, including to Australia, as international aid agencies say the territory is suffering from shortages of food, medicine and........
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