The trial of Anthony Albanese

The Bondi Beach memorial was hijacked to force Albanese to act in a way that fully supports Israel’s interest, even though, essentially, it’s what he’s being doing all along.

As governments move swiftly to implement the police state that Australia’s pro-Israel lobby so desperately craves, the extrajudicial trial of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese continues in the court of public opinion – without evidence, without a jury, and driven instead by a maniacal lust for a crucifixion that’s reminiscent of the Salem witch trials. And, of course, he will be found guilty; the verdict has already been determined well in advance.

There was a memorial service for victims of the Bondi Beach massacre last weekend – held exactly a week after the tragedy at the same location – but this wasn’t really much of a memorial; it was a political rally where the victims were forgotten about, and a televised gathering that should have belonged to the dead and the bereaved – an occasion that should have resisted any temptation to play politics – was instead set up as test of political loyalty, a real time event designed to judge and humiliate the Prime Minister, in a purely partisan manner.

This isn’t to suggest that people can’t have opinions about who’s responsible for any of these bureaucratic failures, or that anger has to be withheld during the time of this type of horror, but the complete and total appropriation and politicisation of this event by conservative members of the Israel lobby was grotesque and obscene. The Australian Jewish Association – one of the most hateful and reprehensible bodies in Australia, and should have had its charity status removed many years ago – demanded that Albanese should be publicly harassed, by either being booed or having the crowd turn their backs on him, and this became one of the many public calls to turn the memorial service into an event to use public grief as a political opportunity, and to weaponise it against a specific political leader.

It’s actions like this that contaminate the entire purpose of civic remembrance, and the event was almost like a doxing by proxy – naming, shaming and applying social punishment, encouraging the crowd to jeer the prime minister, as unbecoming as those rabid Israeli settlers in the West Bank, harassing and killing Palestinians and Bedouins, or spitting in the faces of Christians.

And what, exactly, is Albanese on trial for? What are the charges, my learned friends? It’s not for failing to grieve, Albanese has done that. It’s not for disrespecting victims; Albanese was there at the memorial, despite all the hostile abuse that was thrown at him by the crowd. It couldn’t be for actually selling the guns: it’s the lax laws under the government of New South Wales that allowed the gunman to legally purchase and own six guns. Albanese hasn’t been indifferent to violence – he was there, in his public capacity, to do exactly what leaders are expected to do in these moments of trauma: to appear, acknowledge, mourn and symbolically represent a government’s recognition of a tragic loss.

His sins, of course, aren’t any of these – they are all political: that his government has taken steps towards recognising Palestinian statehood; that it has supported a humanitarian pathway for Gaza, even though his support for Palestine has been lukewarm, barely going beyond the words of being concerned or deeply concerned.

But the biggest sin of all, is that Albanese hasn’t endorsed the state of Israel or its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, even though he’s wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Court of Justice; he’s only provided support for Israel that is marginally lower than 100 per cent, and hasn’t given Israel the kind of automatic diplomatic lenience that some these local lobby groups expect as a basic condition of legitimacy: the support for the state of Israel needs to be infinite, as more than adequately shown by Albanese’s counterpart in New South Wales, Premier Chris Minns.

Once we acknowledge these factors, this witchhunt of Albanese becomes easier to understand. It’s a mask-off moment for the conservative Israel lobby in Australia, and in the process, they’ve revealed their true identity. Who’s got time to mourn the many deaths in the Jewish community in the most heinous of crimes, when there’s many political points to be scored?

Once we accept this, the behaviour of this lobby stops being confusing, and starts looking like a familiar political tactics of this group, where no tragedy is beyond exploitation. This is who they are, where they will turn an event of public solidarity and remembrance into a political act; they’ll blur social cohesion with foreign-policy allegiance; insist that an Australian prime minister can’t be legitimate unless they perform the correct line on Israel, as defined by them, and only by them.

Within that type of framework, Jewish safety, Australian unity, and Israeli state policy are worked together into the one form that is indivisible: it’s not just about protection, it’s all about political alignment, and in a reflection of George W. Bush’s simple world, you are with us, or against us.

Of course, in a democratic society, antisemitism is real and must be confronted – through law, policing, education, and solidarity, even if we have to deal with it in ways that the Israeli community will never reciprocate with dialing down the tone of their anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian actions and rhetoric.

The humiliation of Albanese at Bondi Beach wasn’t so much a practical demand for protection or safety, it was show of power to the Prime Minister to let him know who’s really in control, and for failing to conform to their ideological expectations. And once that clear distinction is understood, the nature of the politicisation of this event becomes exposed: the memorial was not hijacked to fight antisemitism; it was hijacked to force Albanese to act in a way that fully supports Israel’s interest, even though, essentially, it’s what he’s being doing all along.

The “done nothing” myth

The claim from the Israel lobby that Albanese has “done nothing”, or “not enough”, to protect Jewish Australians and reduce anti-Semitism, falls apart as soon as we examine what the Labor government has put in place since October 2023. And once again – as we keep having to point out to the keyboard warriors ready to fire off angry pro-Israel missives – the point is not to pretend that antisemitism isn’t real, or that fear within the Jewish community isn’t genuine.

That fear clearly exists, even though some of the data used to suggest the issue is “out of control” has included incorrectly collated Islamophobic and anti-Arab incidents – which are far more numerous – or even fabricated events, such as Ofir Birenbaum’s appearance at the Cairo Takeaway in Newtown to whip up an anti–Semitic incident, or false claims of an ATM dispensing $50 notes graffitied with swastikas in Bondi Junction. None of this changes the fundamental issue: anti-Semitism is real and needs to be taken seriously.

But the main point is that the political accusation being levelled at the Prime Minister is not an honest appraisal of the actions of the Labor government – they’ve actually delivered exactly what was asked of them by the Jewish community – including the most extensive security, legal, institutional and symbolic measures ever directed toward any faith community in Australia.

And these haven’t been vague commitments or rhetorical gestures, it has involved major direct security funding for schools, synagogues and community sites; the creation of a federal antisemitism envoy – even though that appointment seems to have created more problems than it has resolved – a formal “plan” to combat anti-Semitism; a policing focus through federal operations and investigations; bans on hate symbols and Nazi-related activities; the criminalisation of doxxing linked to the targeted harassment of the Jewish community; restoration and building support after attacks on Jewish sites; and new education measures aimed at anti-Semitism across schools and universities.

It’s the exact opposite of “done nothing”, and has been provided as quickly as can be provided by government and, most importantly, it’s close to what mainstream Jewish community leaders have asked for: resources, protection, enforcement, recognition, and a clear national framework for responding to anti-Semitism. If Albanese had been asked for a military tank to be stationed on every street corner in Bondi and Caufield, he probably would have acquiesced and provided that too. And, he’s also continued to provide military parts to Israel under the international F-35 program. So why do the accusations persist with such vehemence and hostility?

Essentially, it’s because of those two entirely different arguments being merged into the one single, emotionally potent accusation, and then coupled with the messaging from other conservative agitators, such as Advance Australia, to which the husband of the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, John Roth, has donated $100,000.

The first part of this argument concerns the safety of Jewish Australians and the state’s responsibility to protect a minority community from hatred, threats and violence which, of course, is a clear responsibility of a government, a position that most people will accept. The second part is the one that’s more problematic, and that’s the one of aligning Australia’s interests with the interests of Israel, as though there can’t be any difference between these two, even though it’s the Australian government that should be determining what’s in our own interests, not something at the behest of a small country half-way around the other side of the world.

These two factors are increasingly have become entwined so that disagreement on the second issue can then punished as a failure on the first. And it’s this mixture that’s being used as a political campaign against Albanese, remembering that as highly conservative right-wing bodies, the Israel lobby is politically opposed to the Labor government, which is putatively a centre-left government, and Albanese himself comes from the left faction of the party, as does Senator Penny Wong.

This fusion is at the heart of the Israel lobby’s political campaign against Albanese. It allows his critics to speak as if they are defending Jewish Australians, while actually prosecuting a foreign-policy issue. It allows them to then make the claims that any positive vote at the UN, the language of ceasefire, the recognition of Palestine, any statement of empathy for Palestinian civilians – or even allowing 300,000 people to walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to protest against Israel’s genocide in Gaza – is a sign of “not protecting Jewish people”. And then the cycle continues.

It then traps Albanese with impossible rhetoric: the government can fund security, appoint envoys, strengthen laws, give the Jewish community everything they have asked for and then some, and still be condemned for “done nothing” – because the condemnation isn’t linked to what the government has done domestically, but to what it has not done geopolitically. It might be perfect politics if the goal is to achieve their political ends, but it’s divisive, destructive and, ultimately, self-defeating.

If this process were about a solemn event or recognising a tragedy, then these Zionist agitators would have chosen a better moment to score political points. If Josh Frydenberg’s outrage directed at Albanese during the week was about the respect of the 15 people who died last week, and not about resurrecting his political career – as his good friends at Sky News keep pushing him to do – he would have waited until a more sensitive moment arose, rather treat the victims as collateral damage. As it stands, players such as the Australian Jewish Association, Executive Jewry of Australia, News Corporation, the Liberal Party – Sussan Ley, Frydenberg, et. al., have condemned Albanese far more than they have condemned the two shooters, Naveed and Sajid Akram, and this is quite telling and clearly suggests what their true agenda is.

“Done nothing” is simply not an accurate accusation to make of the Albanese government, and the louder that accusation becomes, the more hollow it’s going to become. Of course, this depends on whether Albanese can actually dispense with his trademark caution and actually forcefully defend what he has actually done for the Jewish community, rather than get into his usual defensive and mealy-mouthed language, and make it seem likes he’s cowered by an interest group and buckling under pressure.

The shifting goalposts and the permanent state of appeasement

Perhaps if Albanese had been more decisive – either for Israel or for Palestine – since October 2023, he might have avoided the issues that he’s had over the past week and the heightened opprobrium from the Israel lobby. While he has provided all the support asked for by the Jewish community, politically, he’s appeared reserved, unlike Minns in New South Wales, who frantically introduced “places of worship” legislation – even if was deemed to be unconstitutional – or rushed to light up the sails of the Sydney Opera House with the flag of Israel without being asked by anyone in the community. In contrast, Albanese’s actions have been petty and punitive: removing a silence protester holding up a flag of a watermelon and “Shame Albo” scrawled onto it; orchestrating the resignation of Senator Fatima Payman from the Labor Party, after she voted with the Greens to call for the recognition of Palestinian statehood.

His deeper vulnerability, however, hasn’t been the substance of policy, it’s been the style of his leadership on this issue: the both-side-ism of Israel and Palestine but done in different ways. He’s fully supported Israel practically, but not performatively. He’s done very little on Palestine practically, and the performative support has been weak and insubstantial. In New South Wales, Minns made the choice to fully support Israel at the expense of Palestine, and he receives the plaudits and applause – and a political boost – while Albanese copped all the opprobrium, even though he’s done substantially more to support the Jewish community.

Albanese has approached an issue that had become a moral and symbolic one and applied a managerial political instinct to balance, defer and contain. In ordinary politics, that instinct can be a virtue but in this kind of moral crisis, it comes across as weakness and a lack of conviction. He tried to occupy the middle ground after the ground had already been flooded with absolutes: you are either with us, or against us.

He delivered materially to Jewish institutions while failing to project a clear moral stance on Palestine that his supporters could defend. He hedged his bets internationally while appearing to be evasive domestically. He reacted, rather than leading from the front, and reaction is politically fatal because it confirms what you are being criticised of: if you only respond when you’re under pressure, the implication is that the moral conviction wasn’t there in the first place.

And it’s an ongoing paradox that will never be resolved: the Albanese government has met the Jewish community’s formal domestic safety requests in full, but some lobby voices have shifted the benchmark from the issue of safety to one of political alignment. And this is a standard that no democratic government can meet without surrendering its independence and democratic pluralism. Even today, Albanese has apologised, but what is he apologising for? That he hasn’t supported Netanyahu enough? That he hasn’t made daily utterances that Israel has a right to defend itself, even though every knows that’s code for Israel has a right to genocide? Not enough F-35 military parts delivered through export licences to Israel? That he didn’t engage in the armed struggle against the Akrams and personally shoot them down?

What has damaged Albanese is not so much about choosing the wrong side – it’s refusing to choose at all. Prior to becoming the leader of the Labor Party in 2019, Albanese was a vocal supporter of Palestine, but soon lost his voice about the issue after this point. If Albanese was a strong supporter of Palestine then, he should have continued to be one. Of course, the Israel lobby would have despised him for this – and who knows, he might never have become prime minister – but his convictions would have been able to guide him through this mess that he’s found himself in.

In the end, the “trial” of Albanese reveals less about his moral character than it does about the corrosion of Australia’s civic life. Sure, he could have made the “right” political choice, as Minns has – with every negative connotation the word political can muster – but, as a seasoned politician, he should have known how lethal the Israel lobby in Australia can be against a political leader that doesn’t fully act in the interests of Israel. And he should know: he’s been in parliament since 1996.

Albanese’s failure wasn’t because of indifference or neglect – that should be obvious to everyone except for the extremists shouting and encouraging their abuse at Bondi Beach – but because of that timidity and caution: neither being able to defend what his government had already achieved for the Jewish community, or to articulate a principled position on Palestine that could withstand the pressure. Or, in an ideal world, do both.

In the shifting sand that he couldn’t control and can’t assert his authority in, he satisfied no one and has pandered to a group that irrespective of what is done to support them, will ever be enough – even using a sombre memorial that required reflection and humility, to attack him politically. That’s the true danger that has arisen out of this farce – not the weakness of one prime minister, but the precedent that public mourning, democratic debate and foreign policy can be subordinated to the demands of the loudest and most punitive political actors.