CHRISTOPHER DORE: The truth about Penny Wong’s preposterous ‘Plan for Peace’ that will only unleash terror

Penny Wong couldn’t convince Australians to support Indigenous recognition in our Constitution, but the senator from South Australia reckons she has the solution to finding peace in the Middle East.

Penny’s Plan for Peace. In short. Israel, the victim of a terrorist outrage like none we’ve seen before and under perennial threat of annihilation from its neighbours, should lay down its arms.

Israel. Yes, Israel should stop fighting. Immediately. Leaving Hamas still in power in Gaza.

And as a sick and sickening consequence of the terrorist atrocity committed by its government Hamas, Palestine should be granted official statehood as a precursor to peace. Congratulations on a game well played, gentlemen.

Worse, in this fantasy world where evil is rewarded and victims are punished, Wong hints at publicly what her Labor colleagues insist on privately: Israel’s leadership, not Hamas or its backers, is responsible for this disaster and should be overthrown.

Wong, like all in the left of politics, believe Israel’s right wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should go. Banished. It’s time for the “moderates”, she said today.

Wong and her fellow travellers firmly believe the problem here is Netanyahu, the democratically elected leader of Israel, not Hamas, the terrorist organisation.

In Penny’s World, Israel has forfeited its right to defend itself against Hamas, a radical Islamist movement, masquerading as Palestinian freedom fighters. And Israel should stop hunting down the indiscriminate murderers, rapists and hostage takers of Hamas, who have retreated to the Gazan city stronghold of Rafah. It should leave be their monstrous, callous leaders, kicking back and enjoying their work in Tehran and Qatar.

It’s true, Wong, the Foreign Affairs Minister who previously had not delivered one significant speech on the Middle East since assuming the role in May 2022, says Hamas should have no leadership role in the future of Gaza.

However, when quizzed today about how and why Hamas would give up their fight, she skirts the issue. No future role in Gaza is her best. So, Israel, give up against Hamas, and somehow Hamas will be emboldened by this to … also give up.

Minister, what is the plan for Hamas if they are left, as you are advocating, in Gaza? That’s the sound of crickets. Well in fact not, because Wong talks a lot. In circles. On the basic question: How do you get rid of Hamas? Silence.

This is student politics. For all her fancy talk, and furrowed brows, and exasperated huffing and puffing, Penny Wong is not a serious foreign minister.

The extremists do the dirty work on the ground, in doing so also forcing the weak, gormless, imbecilic current leaders of the US, the UK and Australia to surrender to terror, and then those same fighters happily hand over to the Palestinian moderates to strike a peace deal with Israel.

This is some mind-bending, twisted, illogical, thinking.

Dangerous and dastardly.

Moronic, self-serving, diplomacy from Wong, the master peace negotiator, whose expertise before being gifted a seat in the Senate by her union was as a left-wing industrial lawyer.

Hamas, backed by Iran, seized power in 2005, slaughtered their rivals, and have shown no inclination of ever giving it up.

But under the Wong Accords, well they will, of course, once we let them know, the world wants to reward their terrorism with statehood.

Problem is Hamas - and the “more moderate” Palestinian Authority - don’t want a two state solution, never have. Iran certainly don’t. Hezbollah don’t. They all want the destruction of Israel and the termination of the Jews. They also wouldn’t mind taking down the US and the rest of the West, and stretching out their depraved Islamist ideology as far as it can go. One in which Penny Wong, on several levels, wouldn’t be as warmly embraced as she is today for supporting their crazed anti-Israel, anti-West cause.

This is what a real world leader, US President Bill Clinton, said on the topic in 2016: “I have killed myself to give the Palestinians a state. I had a deal they turned down that would have given them all of Gaza, 96, 97 per cent of the West Bank.” They weren’t interested then. They are not today. “Hamas is really smart, when they decide to rocket Israel they insinuate themselves into hospitals, into schools, into highly populous areas, and they are smart, so they try to put the Israelis in a position of not defending themselves or killing innocents.”

In the Clinton era, world leaders understood this. Today, tortured by self-preservation, principle is abandoned for political survival.

The Penny Peace Plan is driven largely by the socialist left’s long held hatred of Israel and its puerile pro-Palestinian posture.

But Wong and Anthony Albanese, the leaders of the Labor left, are also locked in a growing existential crises of their own against an emerging suburban Arab uprising in the rank and file of their party and the far left of politics, epitomised by the Greens, who are stalking them in several crucial electorates around the country.

So Penny’s Peace Plan is a little bit about the Middle East and a lot about crass survival politics at home.

The Wong speech on Tuesday night made the obligatory remarks, lamenting the Hamas incursion across the Israeli border to murder and slaughter, but then quickly moved onto her pet topic - lecturing the Netanyahu Government.

“It must make major and immediate changes to the conduct of its military campaign,” she says. In relation to a ground offensive in Rafah, finger-wagging Wong says: “Do not go down this path.”

She openly insinuates that Israel is committing war crimes, by killing civilians, and that it is deliberately starving Palestinians.

It is extraordinary stuff. Israel must respond to the “demands of the international community”. No mention of Egypt’s fortified border with Gaza, no lectures for Iran.

Why is Wong telling Israel how to defend itself?

Having failed to control the outbreak of disgusting antisemitism since October 7, Wong’s offer of a fast-tracked “pathway” to a two-state solution neither side of the conflict wants right now has unleashed this here in Australia.

An Australian Palestinian spokesman called Nasser Mashni, on national TV today, praised Wong, urging her to go even further.

“It is a welcome first step for Australia to talk about the recognition of Palestine, but it’s just a first step,” he said.

“What we need to do is move beyond this infatuation, fascination with Hamas … Hamas is not the problem, the problem is zionism, is settler colonialism is the supremacist ideology that says the Jewish homeland has to come at the expense of the indigenous people.

“What we need is Australia to recognise that Israel is an apartheid regime, that oppresses more than 50pc of the population.”

Egged on by Wong’s succour speech overnight, Mashni, on Sky News of all places, was given the platform to defend Hamas and demand Israel be ostracised like Russia and North Korea.

“The state of Israel was founded by terrorist groups.”

This is what Wong’s intervention unleashes on Australian society.

The question middle Australia would also be asking is, why are you even getting involved? Why are you, by inserting yourself into this conflict, in this way, stoking division in the suburbs of Australia?

Unsurprisingly, despite Wong indicating a clear departure from what has long been a bipartisan position on the question of Israel and the Palestinian claim for state hood, her prime minister Anthony Albanese claimed the speech didn’t redefine anything.

“Nothing has changed in our position,” Albanese insisted today.

The moderate, sensible, Coalition Foreign Affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham, writing in The Nightly, couldn’t disagree more.

“The timing of this speech is downright reckless. Exactly six months since the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, ceasefire talks are underway in Cairo, where Hamas cooperation is politely being described as “less than encouraging.”

“At the same time as Wong’s speech, United States national security adviser Jake Sullivan urged the world to “train the attention where it belongs, which is the world should say at this moment that ‘Hamas, it’s time. Let’s get that ceasefire”. “The Albanese Government is choosing to instead signal to Hamas that their pressure is helping to get a policy change they want. The Albanese Government’s argument to pre-emptively recognise a Palestinian state puts statehood, and domestic politics, before security. Faster recognition would be seen as a win by the terrorists who initiated the current horrific conflict.”

In just 6 months, Penny Wong has gone from saying this: “Our position has always been the guiding principle when it comes to the Middle East is just and enduring peaceful two-state solution, where both Israelis and Palestinians can live within secure borders. The actions of Hamas are completely inconsistent with this aspiration. And they have set back this cause.”

… to a complete and shameful surrender to terrorism.