repatriate members of our diaspora communities should never underestimate our capabilities and resolve," Burgess said.

Of course, he means business and is oblivious of the many contradictions between what he, on behalf of ASIO, says and what it does in the national security space.

Burgess never misses an opportunity to suggest that China is a great threat and is engaged in large-scale spying on us. It is, apparently, the worst it has ever been.

Like many members of those who seem to think that war is inevitable, he has never had a reproach for the role of some of our allies in stoking up conflict, and community disharmony.

He is not a Cassandra warning us that we are living in a dream so much as an advocate of pre-emptive conflict.

There is an extensive lobby singing from the same hymn sheet, with others, former professional colleagues of Burgess, discussing mass internment in the event of war. Polling evidence from the Lowy Institute suggests that more Australians regard the US as a greater threat to our sovereignty than China.

As it happens, one reason I feel uneasy about the arrests is that I had an office in the building where the crime is alleged to have occurred.

I occasionally let in would-be Chinese worshippers and listened to their children tearing around the stairwells and corridors of the four-storey building.

I thought the coincidence of the offices on the ground floor amusing. On one side was a business apparently promoting travel to China, and assistance with student visas and entry into educational institutions.

On the other side was Five Eyes Consulting, which seemed to be about selling specialist advice from expert former intelligence folk about cyber security and such things.

Each could look on the other. Or on Chinese visitors or (presumably) harassers and intimidators. It was very cosy; I was focused on sorting my books, but it could have been cover, of course.

Mike Burgess's making ex-cathedra statements invites questions about his judgment, his leadership and stock of ideas.

Some of his ideas - for example in his correspondence with Mike Pezzullo about creating a national security surveillance state of Australia that would put China to shame or his own-goal advice about the exclusion of Huawei from 5G research - fail to show a proper balance between the needs of security and respect for democratic rights. Getting national security any infusion of cred requires putting it in better hands.

• Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times

QUOTE ENDS

#AusPol #WhyIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts 2/2

resistance to Israel's occupation.

Netanyahu declared war on Hamas, and Western politicians, including Australian ones spoke of an Israeli "right of self-defence". It soon became clear that Netanyahu's words were more than rhetorical: bombs began falling on the inhabitants of Gaza. At first there were claims of precisely targeted missiles, and bullets, firing at known Hamas centres, with civilians "unfortunately" paying the price of allowing alien and wicked Hamas soldiers operating in their midst.

In time, as casualties began to mount, it has come to seem as if Palestinian civilians are living in a deliberately constructed free-fire zone.

What Israel is doing may have the support of a substantial number of Israelis who were shocked and horrified by the October 7 massacre.

So also, among the Jewish diasporas.

But soon there was substantial unease at the ruthlessness and disproportion of the retaliation, and at suggestions that the war had become a cover for ethnic cleansing.

Around the Western world as much as in areas traditionally much more friendly to Palestinian aspirations, protests and demonstrations began, sometimes, in the West, including in NSW, put down harshly by police and civil authorities.

What was surprising was the amount of open Jewish dissent, both in Israel itself and in Western countries.

Any former reflex of holding back because of a Jewish sense of siege, or fury at comparison of the scale of killing with the Holocaust, seems to have given way to a sense that Israel has abandoned civilised restraint, is committing war crimes, and exceeding any moral or legal rights that might have been there because of an unprovoked attack.

That sense has increased with Israeli restrictions on the supply of food and essential health items to Gaza and by sophistry blaming Hamas, the UN, or the victims themselves for the death toll.

That the Western media is not permitted inside Gaza aggravates the suspicion and sense that the truth is being hidden.
Israel has lost the support of many Jews, many old sympathisers

If Israel thought it could harness outrage to quietly push the inhabitants of Gaza, and perhaps later of the West Bank out of the country, it could hardly have created an environment more likely to make such a task impossible - even in the face of some of its more rabid and unapologetic ministers.

Israel has embarrassed its population, many Jewish people and their friends in the outside world and made the life of politicians who have usually been excessively effusive miserable.

Even Donald Trump, hitherto an uncritical friend of all of Israel's excesses has signalled his disgust with official denials of starvation and blaming of the victims.

Many of the ordinary public have become angry at the lack of progress, correctly discerning that the problem has been Israeli intransigence.

Responding to the public reaction, old allies have become more measured in any statements supporting Israel and much more inclined to acknowledge the roots of Palestinian grievance.

By now, Israel, which had friends and sympathisers aplenty 22 months ago, is significantly more unpopular around the world.

Westerners tend to estimate this by Western opinion polls. Most of the non-industrial world has long been hostile to Israel, if perhaps now even more unpopular.

Now it is manifesting itself in a renewed movement to recognise the right of Palestinians to become a nation within the bounds of the old Palestine - including in control of lands taken from them in war.

Some national leaders, including Anthony Albanese, have dragged their feet on this, while others such as France, Canada and now Britain have adopted the cause with less reservation.

Albanese insists that Australia will make its own sovereign decision on its own timetable, rather than falling into line with an artificial deadline caused by a UN meeting soon.

Although Albanese, like Penny Wong from Labor's notional left, has had a traditional lean towards Palestine, he has been playing the game very slowly and cautiously, anxious not to upset opinion among Australian Jews, the Murdoch press (which has become hysterically pro-Israel), and, probably, Donald Trump.

Yet the outcome seems inevitable. Israel will have to face a fresh challenge to its policies, in the face of determination by some former allies that it will not be able to delay, debate and dither yet again.

Palestinians will have direct agency in the outcome.

And Palestinian rights will not be brokered by Arab nations with their own agendas, but by people with direct and bloody experience of the forces with which they are reckoning. It won't be a gathering of friends.

• Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times

QUOTE ENDS

#AusPol #WhyIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #genocide 2/2