Pearls and Irritations

America’s seamless support for Israel’s pitiless onslaught on Gaza has both astounded and angered the world. War crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide have accumulated as the destruction and death have continued. The hypocrisy of the West as a whole is publicly on display on a daily basis. The Western media has performed as poorly as governments and has lost the respect of the world. Once gone it may never be recovered. How can Australia, for instance, expect to be taken seriously when we go forth in our customary manner chiding other countries for their human rights record?

It was a vote in the UN General Assembly which passed without notice in Australia despite the recent attention given to meetings in both the Assembly and the Security Council as a consequence of the disastrous events in Gaza. It was held on the 28th of November and related to the Israel’s illegal occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights in place since 1967. The legal situation was quite clear despite Israel’s assertion in 1981 that it had annexed what was a crucial strategic location. Two earlier General Assembly resolutions passed unanimously in 1967 and 1981 had reasserted that ‘the acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible ‘ and that Israel’s assertion of control over the area was ‘null and void and without international legal effect.’

The situation changed dramatically in March 2019 when the Trump government formally recognised Israel’s sovereignty over the Heights a decision which, in turn, was challenged in the General Assembly which demanded that Israel cease its control over the Heights and return them to Syria. The vote on the motion was 91 in favour, 62 abstentions and 8 against. Three of the no votes came from the America’s Micronesian dependencies and four from the Anglo Five Eyes’ White Man’s Club’—Australia, Canada, the US and the UK.

Two conclusions are inescapable. The rules-based international order, endlessly promoted by the Albanese government, has little to do with international law or United Nation’s Conventions. As the vote on the Golan Heights showed they are promoted in Washington to serve the shifting diplomatic contingencies of America even when in direct contradiction with long standing and widely supported legal principles.

Meanwhile support for America and Israel has fallen dramatically leaving Australia out of touch with world opinion. There has been no obvious reluctance to openly declare our devotion and to continue to show what Penny Wong termed our ‘immovable’ support for Israel for whom we were ‘a steadfast (ie forever) friend.’ At the very time that America’s prestige has dramatically declined the AUKUS Treaty has advanced with the Congress passing legislation in December allowing the sale of nuclear submarines to Australia. Defence Minister Marles found it hard to conceal a boyish enthusiasm declaring that ’we are on a precipice of historic reforms that will transform our ability to effectively deter, innovate, and operate together.’ Minister for Defence Industries Pat Conroy backed him up declaring that the 14th of December was indeed ‘a momentous day in the alliance with the United States.’ What we were seeing was a tectonic shift underway in the U S- Australia alliance.

The far more consequential shift in global politics is the collapse of support and even respect for the West at large of which Australia seems barely aware, so parochial is our mainstream media and what passes for serious debate about the wider world. Kishore Mahbubani, that wise Singaporean diplomat, well known in Australia, declared in an article for Britain’s Financial Times in December that:

“It’s no secret that the West captured the imagination and respect of the rest of the world for centuries. However, what is a secret—because it is happening silently and invisibly in the minds of billions—is that the west is now losing this respect.”

The war in Gaza has dramatically accelerated the process. America’s seamless support for Israel’s pitiless onslaught on Gaza has both astounded and angered the world. The US veto in the Security Council has shielded Israel from global condemnation. War crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide have accumulated as the destruction and death have continued for three months. The hypocrisy of the West as a whole is publicly on display on a daily basis. It can no longer be discretely hidden from sight. The irony is that behind the endlessly reiterated right of Israel to defend itself the whole fabric of international humanitarian law is being torn to pieces. The Western media has performed as poorly as governments and has lost the respect of the world. Once gone it may never be recovered. How can Australia, for instance, expect to be taken seriously when we go forth in our customary manner chiding other countries for their human rights record? The era of down under proselytising is over. It lies there under mounds of freshly shovelled hypocrisy.

At the start of his time in office Biden promised to both ‘restore the soul of America’, and to rebuild the country’s ‘moral standing in the world.’ These worthy aspirations make the behaviour in the Middle East even more egregious. On the one hand Biden and his officials urge Israel to avoid civilian casualties while continuing to arm them to the teeth. In the last three months of 2023 the Americans provided an additional $14 billion in military aid. Israel television reported on the 25th of December that 20 ships and 244 airplanes had delivered over 10,000 tons of armaments and equipment and at least a hundred 2000 pound bunker buster bombs.

There can be no doubt about America’s power to intervene militarily anywhere in the world. But the world cannot forget the catastrophic result of that long sequence of war making in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Libya. Now we have the two proxy wars in Ukraine and Palestine. For the last twenty years we have seen a cavalcade of death and destruction which has left societies with devastation and death which will still be weighing on minds and bodies for generations to come.

Which brings us back to further development of AUKUS on the 14th of December which so delighted the Minister for Defence and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles. We must assume that he knew it was two days earlier when Australia first broke with America and voted in the General Assembly for a ceasefire in Gaza. It is a graphic illustration that Australia has two foreign policies. One is crafted by the Department of Defence and the wider security establishment the other by Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Which one prevails will determine our fate in the world for years to come.

There would be few people who put their money on DFAT. Our current commitment to war with the Houthis, no matter how inconsequential, is a straw in the wind. We are already committed to any wider war including one with Iran. The federal Opposition and the Murdoch press urge the government on. So we have learnt very little. Tightening our ties with America in the way applauded by Minister Marles commits us in advance to whatever new war that is chosen for us. AUKUS has locked us in for at least the next generation on the wrong side of history.

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