Our Inability to Call Out Evil Has Gone Beyond Our Worst Fears

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese seems to me to be like a man trying to navigate with a moral compass that only ever points towards political convenience.

But this week, Albo took that moral fog to new depths.

He declared that the situation in Gaza had “gone beyond the world’s worst fears.”

Really?

The world’s worst fears surely came to life on October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists stormed across the Israeli border as civilians slept in their beds …

The barbarians murdered over 1,200 innocent civilians - including women, children, and the elderly.

They decapitated babies.

They killed young women and then had sex with the corpses.

They kidnapped more than 250 people, dragging them into Gaza like war trophies.

But that, apparently, did not qualify as surpassing the world’s worst fears in the Prime Minister’s mind.

No. What really jolted Mr Albanese into an impassioned statement today was not the beheading of babies or the rape of Israeli women, but Israel’s response to such savagery.

Apparently, it’s their response that has gone too far.

Albanese chastises Israel for going beyond the bounds of international law, as if Israel is somehow the problem for defending itself and seeking to rescue its people.

Our PM urges Israel to abide by the Geneva Conventions while completely ignoring the fact that Hamas doesn’t just ignore international law, it commits war crimes as policy.

Using civilians as human shields, operating out of hospitals, targeting schools - this is not just incidental collateral; it is the Hamas strategy.

And there’s this …

In Albanese’s carefully worded world, this isn’t a war waged by a liberal democracy against a genocidal terror organisation.

This is a “conflict.”

Listening to him, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a border dispute between two irritable councils, rather than a war launched by an Islamist death cult that openly declares its intention to wipe out the world’s only Jewish state.

Of course, the Prime Minister calls for the release of the hostages too. But the word “too” indicates the problem.

The call for hostages to be freed is an addendum; a tack on, a footnote. Dare I say, an afterthought?

It’s a weary gesture buried beneath mountains of concern about Gazans - many of whom have been complicit in the atrocities against Israel.

It’s hard to say “moral leadership” when your outrage has a running order.

Of course, the war could end tomorrow.

If Hamas surrendered and released the hostages, the bombing would stop, the blockade would ease, and Gaza could begin to rebuild.

If there’s one thing that’s truly gone beyond the world’s worst fears, it’s not the situation in Gaza - it’s the West’s inability to call evil by its name.

And Anthony Albanese is leading the chorus.