Australia – Penny Wong’s Israel Double Standard

Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, is entitled to expect that detainees intercepted aboard the Gaza flotilla be treated appropriately and without unnecessary humiliation. Democracies should hold themselves to high standards, even in wartime. But Wong’s latest intervention against Israel drifts beyond measured diplomacy into selective outrage. In a conflict as complex and volatile as this one, selective outrage matters.

Wong condemned footage released by Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir showing detained activists being mocked after Israel intercepted the flotilla. She labelled the scenes “shocking and unacceptable”.

Yet what remains conspicuously absent is any criticism of the activists themselves, who knowingly embarked on a mission designed to provoke precisely this sort of confrontation.

These were not unsuspecting civilians wandering accidentally into a war zone. The organizers were fully aware that previous flotilla attempts to breach Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza had repeatedly been stopped. They understood Israel remained at war with Hamas after the October 7 massacres. They knew interception by Israeli forces was overwhelmingly likely.

So what exactly was the objective?

If the flotilla was intended as symbolism, then its real purpose was political spectacle: generate confrontation, produce viral imagery and pressure Western governments into publicly condemning Israel. Wong obliged almost immediately.

And had the activists somehow reached Gaza, what then?

Gaza is not a peaceful humanitarian enclave. It is governed by Hamas, a terrorist organization with a documented history of hostage-taking, repression and violence. Foreign activists entering Gaza during wartime would not have been entering a safe relief corridor. They would have been stepping into territory controlled by armed Islamist factions.

Best-case scenario: they become propaganda assets. Worst-case scenario: they become hostages, bargaining chips, human shields or victims themselves. Women, in particular, would face significant risks of sexual assault in an environment where extremist groups continue to operate openly. Israeli hostages taken into Gaza on October 7 reported their own experience of sexual assault.

The dangers are not theoretical. Vittorio Arrigoni, the Italian pro-Palestinian activist, was kidnapped and murdered in Gaza in 2011 by jihadists associated with a Salafi extremist faction. He was abducted and strangled despite being deeply sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

His fate exposed the fantasy underlying much Western activist romanticism about Gaza. Violent Islamist movements do not distinguish neatly between ideological allies and expendable foreigners once power and chaos take hold. Yet figures like Wong appear reluctant to acknowledge that uncomfortable reality. It doesn’t suit her ideological narrative.

There is also the question of what this flotilla tangibly delivered. Reports indicated the vessel carried only modest quantities of aid, including drugs and condoms. If the mission’s primary purpose had genuinely been humanitarian relief, recognized aid channels through Egypt, international agencies and Israeli-inspected crossings already existed. The flotilla looked far more like a political provocation than a serious humanitarian operation. I don’t recall Wong condemning Hamas for stealing aid during the war and selling it to Gazans for exorbitant prices, but anyway!

Security concerns cannot simply be dismissed either. Israeli authorities had every reason to ensure the activists were not carrying explosives, weapons or devices intended to endanger boarding personnel. In another setting such precautions might sound excessive. In the Israeli context, they are not.

Israel’s security mindset was shaped by decades of terrorism, including the suicide bombings of the First and Second Intifadas, when attackers entered buses, cafés, restaurants and shopping centers before detonating explosives among civilians. Hundreds of Israelis were killed in those attacks. While the second Intifada was underway, Wong’s boss, Prime Minister Albanese, was busy leading pro-Palestinian protests.

Against that historical backdrop, Israeli forces were never going to treat unauthorized vessels attempting to breach a wartime blockade as though it were a harmless peace excursion. They were always going to prepare for worst-case scenarios because Israeli history repeatedly punishes complacency.

The Foreign Minister is quick to condemn Israeli behavior, yet markedly quieter when extremist rhetoric emerges from within pro-Palestinian movements themselves. Australians have repeatedly heard chants of “globalize the intifada” at rallies across Western and Australian cities, language many Jews understandably interpret as invoking an era marked by suicide bombings, terrorism and civilian massacres.

And still Wong refuses to condemn such rhetoric with the same clarity and urgency she applies to Israel.

This is also the same Foreign Minister who travelled to Israel following the October 7 atrocities and chose not to visit the massacre sites in southern Israel where Hamas terrorists slaughtered civilians. Those sites are approximately an hour from Tel Aviv by road and even closer by helicopter. Anyone genuinely determined to honor the victims could easily have done so.

Nor did Wong prominently visit or publicly stand with the family of Galit Carbone, the Australian woman murdered during the attacks.

Instead, much of the focus of Wong’s visit centered on announcing further aid support for Palestinians. Symbolism matters in diplomacy. Leaders visit Auschwitz because symbolism matters. Leaders visited Ground Zero because symbolism mattered. Visiting the devastated kibbutzim after October 7 would not have signaled endorsement of every Israeli policy; it would have signaled solidarity with victims of terrorism and with Australian Jews back home.

That omission left many Australians questioning where the government’s emotional and moral priorities truly lay.

Even more striking is the fact that Israel itself has publicly criticized the conduct Wong condemned. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuked Ben-Gvir’s behavior, while others inside Israel’s governing coalition also distanced themselves from the stunt.

Which raises an obvious question: if Israel’s own prime minister has already condemned the behavior, why escalate matters further by recalling Hillel Newman for diplomatic reprimand? What practical outcome does that achieve beyond political theatre?

The contrast with Australia’s handling of Islamist extremism domestically is difficult to ignore. How many Islamic imams are publicly summoned, reprimanded or diplomatically scrutinized after antisemitic sermons or inflammatory rhetoric? How often do Australian officials display the same urgency when confronting extremist incitement directed at Jews?

The answer is effectively never.

That inconsistency is precisely what troubles many Australians. When Israeli misconduct occurs, condemnation is swift, public and emphatic. When antisemitic rhetoric or Islamist extremism emerges elsewhere, the response becomes hesitant, cautious or absent altogether.

Wong rarely acknowledges internal Israeli debate, democratic dissent or the fact that Israelis themselves frequently criticize their own government more aggressively than foreign critics do. Instead, her interventions increasingly reinforce the perception that Israel is judged according to a uniquely harsh standard.

That perception grows stronger when compared with the relative silence surrounding atrocities committed against Christians and other minorities in places such as Nigeria, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Islamist militias and extremist groups have inflicted horrors vastly more severe than the treatment endured by these flotilla detainees.

A serious foreign policy requires consistency. It requires the capacity to condemn Israeli misconduct while also condemning Islamist extremism, antisemitic incitement and terrorism with equal moral clarity.

Australia’s diplomacy should be grounded in strategic balance and principle, not performative outrage calibrated for activist approval. Condemning Israel over a deliberately provocative flotilla while largely ignoring the recklessness of those who organized it sends the wrong message and weakens Australia’s credibility as an honest actor.

Selective condemnation is not principled diplomacy. It is political signaling dressed up as foreign policy.

When Hamas thanks you Penny, I would think the penny should drop that you’re on the wrong side of history. Yes Penny, the pun was intended.