(The Age, 27/5/2024)
Does Peter Dutton have no shame – first he destroyed The Voice for political reasons, now he condemns Genocide and Murder for the same political reasons – Mark
We live in a world where international politicians and diplomats cannot stop the wanton killing of children and innocent civilians – in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and many other places. The United Nations is useless, its Security Council broken by the superpower veto wielded by Russia and America.
That is why all well-intentioned people should welcome the action of the International Criminal Court prosecutor in seeking arrest warrants for Hamas and Israeli leaders. That class does not include Australia’s Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, who describes the action as “abominable” and “antisemitic”.
No doubt he thinks all the judges on the UN’s International Court of Justice are antisemitic, too, because of their ruling on the weekend that Israel must end its military assault on Rafah.
As everyone who uses the word should know, antisemitism means hatred of Jewish people in general, and it is the vilest and most destructive form of race hatred. It is not constituted by condemning the policy or the war tactics of the Israeli government. Dutton’s attempt to conflate the two, and his call on the Australian government to withhold support from an independent international justice process, is shameful.
There can be no objection to the warrants for the Hamas leaders. My only criticism is that they are sought too late. Nonetheless, if they are apprehended, sending them to The Hague for trial has advantages over shooting them on sight or prosecuting them in Israel: their crimes of mass murder and hostage taking will be described and condemned by independent and impartial judges, and they will be sentenced to life imprisonment. Some support may drain from an organisation that seeks criminally to destroy the state of Israel.
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