Wong Turns to Blatant Gaslighting on Gaza, as Majors Attempt to Out Scum Each Other

A series of tweets from Australian foreign minister Penny Wong regarding the ongoing 10-month-long Israeli perpetrated mass slaughter and coordinated starvation of the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza, reveal a minister making assertions that given the broader context are absurd.

The statements Wong has been making have also tended towards attempting to hide her complicity in facilitating genocidal acts, which might have been sparked by the International Criminal Court having accepted into evidence a document charging her and the PM with complicity in genocide.

At the site of the genocide, around 40,000 Gazans have been killed off, thousands more are missing under the rubble, and the entire population, after Israel cut off food supplies entering the walled-in region last October, are now experiencing famine.

Meanwhile, the PM has raised yet another lopsided ceasefire deal the US, Egypt and Qatar are brokering, with Anthony Albanese adding, that “the human suffering is unacceptable” and “civilians must be protected”, despite his also having condemned local protests calling for the same outcomes.

And after months of sustained criticism over the PM having refused visas to two-thirds of those fleeing what the International Court of Justice has ruled is a “plausible” genocide, he’s now defending the pittance granted, as Liberal leader Peter Dutton claims none should have been issued.

Penny’s offending posts

“Australia joins international partners, including the United Kingdom, Germany and France, in condemning the comments made by Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich,” the foreign minister tweeted. “The deliberate starvation of civilians is a war crime. There is no justification for it, ever.”

This appeared on 10 August, in response to comments by Israel’s finance minister Smotrich, who complained that global pressure has caused a situation where “no one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”

But the hypocrisy behind Wong’s comments were lost upon few, as it’s well known that on 27 January, the foreign minister decided to cut funding to UNRWA, the main aid channel into Gaza, which meant less food for starving people, making Australia one of the first four nations to do so.

And this occurred the day after the ICJ ruled Israel is likely carrying out a genocide, and it ordered the resumption of aid into the starvation zone as it had been cut off. And further, Wong made this decision based on an Israeli report accusing UNRWA staff of being terrorists, without any evidence.

While linked to her first 10 August post on X was a further comment below that too reinforced the hypocrisy of these sentiments, as she wrote, “An immediate ceasefire in Gaza has never been more urgent, to protect civilians, see hostages released and enable aid to flow.”

Short memory, must have a…

But Wong hadn’t finished her attempt to disprove public opinion that may consider that for the vast majority of Israel’s wanton killing fest of Palestinians in Gaza, she’s looked the other way, as well as shown support for Israel and propagated the myth that the genocide is an act of self-defence.

“Innocent Palestinians cannot continue to pay the price of defeating Hamas. Australia condemns the deaths of civilians from Israel’s strike on Al-Tabeen School,” Penny posted on 11 August. “Israel must comply with international humanitarian law. We again call for an immediate ceasefire.”

But Al-Tabeen School was not the first such institution sheltering displaced kids and adults that has been targeted by Tel Aviv.

In fact, over the past weeks, as the world awaits Iran to attack Israel and escalate the extermination project in Gaza to the point of a regional war that will further drag in forces from around the globe, Israel has continued to attack numerous schools and tent cities, housing many children and adults.

While a study released in The Lancet in early July arrived at a conservative estimate based on past conflicts and the reporting of official deaths tolls during the course of them that at the point of publication Israel’s assault on Gaza would result in 186,000 direct and indirect deaths.

But the minister went further on the 11th, as she also posted about the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions and affirmed Australia’s commitment to internation humanitarian law and that her government continues to press all other states to do the same.

But the irony here is that for ten months, the minister and her government have been in full support of Israel, while it’s hard to find an international crime it hasn’t perpetrated: this is from the blatant killing of civilians to targeting of medical staff and journalists and military assaults upon hospitals.

Indeed, there’s a document before the ICC charging her, Albanese and Dutton all with complicity in their support for and facilitation of Israel in perpetrating its project, which is designed to remove an entire group from the land they live upon, whether that be by death or fleeing persecution.

Bipartisan twisting of truth

On Wednesday morning, opposition leader Dutton told Sky News that he considers that the Albanese government isn’t correctly conducting security checks on Palestinians being provided visas to enter Australia, adding that he doesn’t think anyone from Gaza should be accepted into the country.

Dutton has made these comments, however, after a sustained grassroots campaign has been calling out the Albanese government on its denial of visas to Palestinians fleeing Gaza, including why it’s insisting on handing out tourist visas to those granted entry instead of humanitarian protections.

In a 15 August press release, however, Amnesty International asserted that “the Australian government’s rejection of over 7,000 Palestinians fleeing Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza is a shocking abdication of its legal and moral obligations to provide safety to those in crisis”.

“Despite the catastrophic toll on Gaza’s population, the government’s response remains inadequate,” the rights organisation added.

Yet, somewhat conveniently, due to Dutton’s call for a ban on those fleeing Gaza to come to Australia to seek safety, the debate in federal parliament was not in relation to Amnesty’s condemnation over the rejection of two-thirds of applicants but rather it involved justifications for accepting the rest.

“The statistics on visas applied for and rejected are as follows,” said newly-minted home affairs minister Tony Burke, “from 7 October to 12 August, which are the statistics I have available, 2,922 visas were granted, 7,111 were rejected”.

So, instead of revealing an inhumane approach to extending asylum to a group of people being actively hunted down and starved to death, Burke was trying to argue that the 2,922 people granted asylum by his government had not created a domestic national security threat for this nation.

And despite Dutton’s outburst about a prohibition on those fleeing Gaza giving the Liberals reason to lay multiple boots into Labor over the two next sitting days, it certainly also worked to deflect rising criticism now coming from abroad regarding Albanese’s Gaza visa policy being too severe.