Albanese’s Gaza failure a return to Labor’s White Australia racism

Following the ghastly Hamas raid and Israel’s immediate and immediately lethal response, there was never much doubt that the Albanese leadership was going to swing around behind the cause of Israel. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s total commitment to AUKUS set the agenda out of the gate — a dismal caving in to the Labor-right agenda. It would be convenient post-hoc cynicism to say that this was expected. One had thought that a nominally left government might find a way to triangulate between the demands of the permanent security establishment, the right, and setting a mildly independent agenda.

That was not to be, but the unswerving commitment to Israel — and implicitly, its right to act unilaterally and without limit in response to Hamas — was shocking beyond that. It may indeed have even shaken Albanese himself. He was once genuinely of the left; he was a co-founder of Parliamentary Friends of Palestine. He was no Trot — perish the thought — but there was an understanding of class and race/people solidarity across the borders.