AARON PATRICK: Sussan Ley’s late-life conversion to the Israeli cause is working, politically

After a lifetime supporting the rights of women, racial and sexual minorities, the poor, dispossessed and powerless, Prime Minister Julia Gillard stunned many Australians when she voted against the legalisation of same-sex in marriage in 2012. Ms Gillard later expressed regret at her decision, which she said did not reflect her personal views.

Now, another ground-breaking politician is being challenged on a point of principle. Sussan Ley was Parliament’s leading right-wing advocate for Palestinian cause through most of her career. Today, her support for Israel is as solid as Donald Trump’s.

The shift may be key to understanding the Liberal leader and how she will lead the Coalition. Ms Ley presents herself as a person willing to change her mind when presented with new information. Anthony Albanese portrays her as a hypocrite who shifts views out of self interest.

Before the Palestinian-Israeli conflict became a powerful force in Australian politics, Ms Ley never tried to keep her allegiance to the Arab side of the fight secret.

She took a leadership role with parliament’s Friends of Palestine group early in her career, and condemned West Bank Jewish settlers and violence in Israeli jails. She sponsored a Palestinian boy in Bethlehem, and visited his run-down school. He had “rebellion in his eyes,” she told Parliament in 2017.

Her speeches from then sound similar to opinion articles written recently by some of the anti-Israeli marchers on the Sydney Harbour Bridge two weeks ago.

“When sitting in the bustling cafes of Tel Aviv, it’s easy to forget that the Palestinians even exist,” she said in 2017. “There are roads into the West Bank on which only Israelis can travel.

“As you look across the landscape from settlements high on the hills in occupied territory, you see no evidence whatsoever of the Palestinian indigenous occupants. The richness of Israel makes the misery of Palestinians all the more troubling.”

As early as 2008, as a junior shadow minister, she obliquely expressed support for international recognition of Palestine, a symbolic but powerful step now being adopted by some of the leading Western democracies.

The International Olympic Federation was an early supporter of Palestinian representation, and six competed in the Beijing Olympics under the same black, white, red and green flag carried at anti-Israel protests today. Ms Ley lamented that more international organisations did not offer the same recognition.

“It is sad that it is only at major sporting events like the Olympics that something called Palestine really exists today,” she said.

Conversion

Such sentiment led Mr Albanese to criticise Ms Ley on Thursday over the Coalition’s position, which is that a Palestinian state should be recognised after peace is reached, not before. “I note that an opposition figure, the Opposition Leader, had this to say in the past: she supported Palestinian statehood,” the Prime Minister said.

Mr Ley’s conversion to the Israeli cause came in her 60s, when she was deputy leader of the Liberal Party. In 2022 she went to Israel on a trip paid by a pro-Israeli lobby group, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. Even though she had grown up in the United Arab Emirates, rather by a British father in MI6, it was her first time in the Jewish state.

She was caught up in a sense of optimism sweeping through the region that peace was possible thanks to US-brokered agreements known as the Abraham Accords. Emirates and Etihad had begun flying to Tel Aviv. Israelis were holidaying in Dubai.

On the trip, Ms Ley heard that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was no longer the “main game” in the region, according to a report in Australian Jewish News. Back in Sydney, Ms Ley told her travel sponsor the “the accords and the visit had changed her view,” the newspaper reported.

Then, on October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel from the Gaza Strip, initiating a war that continues today. She has described the attack as another turning point in her perceptions of the conflict, and credited a Jewish Liberal MP, Julian Leeser, with helping her understand the Israeli perspective.

Feeling isolated, Jewish community leaders welcome her support. “She has moved on, thanks to Palestinian militarism and intransigence,” one said Thursday. “The Australian Jewish community knows she is solid.”

Mr Albanese’s attack on Ms Ley’s mixed record might have worked if Hamas had not endorsed the Government’s policy. In a sign that the Prime Minister is struggling to find a way to counter perceptions he is rewarding the terrorist group, he also called on journalists to ignore the congratulatory comments from Hamas co-founder Hassan Yousef.

The media “shouldn’t repeat Hamas’s propaganda,” Mr Albanese said Thursday, after the comments received blanket coverage. Hamas later denied the message was genuine, and said Mr Yousef was imprisoned in Israel with no way of communicating with journalists.

Nonetheless, the Government’s always-tenuous position that recognising a Palestinian state would be opposed by Hamas has been undermined, and Ms Ley has struck one of her strongest blows against Mr Albanese. Ironically, it was made on a point of principle that she may or may not hold.