Australia’s Dept Foreign Affairs takes a swing at Israel

The world’s favourite punching bag, Israel, has been deemed guilty by Australia’s foreign minister Stephen Smith of falsifying passports in order to get its agents in and out of hostile nations safely.

Smith didn’t state his evidence. And nor would we expect him to do so. But his decision followed an embarrassingly farcical investigation by the Australian Federal Police that saw its officer run over bicyclists in Israel.

It’s hard to imagine them finding a smoking gun. Or warm laminating machine.

We don’t fault Smith too much in all of this. He is one person presiding over a department whose hostile intentions towards Israel couldn’t be any more obvious if they donned a face mask and burned the country’s flag.

VEXNEWS understands Smith has done as much as possible to limit the desired departmental response.

He has long delayed the response, way beyond the knee-jerk over-reaction of the previous British government.

He has also minimised it, by apparently punting an Israeli cultural attache due to leave in a couple of weeks anyway.

His initial meeting with the Israeli Ambassador about this issue was said to be brief, formal and courteous.

That’s good.

What’s not good is the perception that Australia engages in this kind of anti-Israel stunt motivated by a desire to win United Nations member votes for election to the Security Council.

The department Smith has the odious job of presiding over rates getting on the Security Council as desperately important. It even has a campaign page on DFAT’s website.

Nothing wrong with winning elections but we wonder whether the friends Australia needs to repudiate and the friends we need to make in order to win are worth this dubious prize?

It is widely understood that the Arab League, the Non-Aligned Movement and the African Union blocs at the UN are not willing to support Australia unless it distances itself from Israel.

VEXNEWS has recently learned that a senior federal government minister is soon to visit Syria, a leading force in the Arab League, and will be given an award by the nation’s president for fostering close relations between that country and ours.

While there has been encouragement from Israel’s government of talks between Syria and Israel, the Syrian Foreign Minister said over the weekend that their government “will not be a policeman for Israel”, language interpreted as signalling that the country will continue to facilitate the transfer of weapons including Scud missiles to Hezbollah and other forces within Lebanon that attack Israel in the Arab world’s proxy war against the Jewish state.

Israel’s government seems to believe it can have sensible peace discussions with Syria, an optimistic position we think but we’re usually reluctant to second-guess people like its President Shimon Peres or Prime Minister Netanyahu. Unlike our own Department of Foreign Affairs, we cannot imagine either ever selling out their country. It has been interesting to see Bibi’s conciliatory moves towards Syria. Hopefully it can drag its regime out of the gutter and into the light.

And while we trust Israel’s leadership to get these things right, it’s very difficult to have confidence in our own Department of Foreign Affairs that seems to desperate to climb the incredibly greasy pole of the United Nations that it is willing disregard long-term Australian friendships with countries that share our values.

Stephen Smith’s reaction could have been worse but it is hard to imagine a federal department any worse than the bureaucracy over which he presides. They are a menace, an embarrassment and a national disgrace. They were just as bad under Howard and they’d be just as bad under Abbott, so it’s not a party political thing.

It’s not time our democratically elected leaders took real control of Australia’s foreign policy and stopped suspending our disgust at brutal military or religious fundamentalist dictatorships of the kind that constitute Israel’s enemies.

Original article: http://www.vexnews.com/news/9398/the-unelected-australias-department-of-foreign-affairs-swings-at-israel-once-again/