Albo's Holocaust

will you let him get away with it? Will you forget?

Yesterday, Foreign Minister Penny Wong announced sanctions against two far right Israeli government ministers, Bazalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. Two of the major architects and proponents of the genocide in Gaza, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich make useful bogeymen/figureheads for Israel’s war crimes — a sorta Goebbels and Goering duo that can easily absorb the brunt of the West’s latest wave of light admonishments. For Albanese, they are convenient names to wheel out when you want to look like you’re doing a little Something, in the face of Israel’s unthinkable Everything.

In the past month, we’ve seen the Government and media begin to tepidly criticise Israel for continuing to do what they’ve been doing for two and a half (let’s face, it 70+) years. They are attempting to turn the narrative about, kinda. It is a slow, clunky, obvious turn, like watching someone pull a u-ie in a one way street, awkwardly sputtering back and forth an inch a million times as they repeatedly hit the doors of parked cars while shakily apologising to the furious truck bearing down on them.

It is obvious, stupid, and far too late.

The ABC and The Guardian, the two ‘liberal bastions’ of Australia’s decidedly far right mainstream media, have finally begun to call a spade a spade. In The Guardian Australia’s case, people who work there have told me off the record that there is a massive split between Guardian Aus and its UK overseers, as well as management at Guardian Aus and the reporting staff, that accounts for the nature of their tepid coverage of Gaza for the greater length of the genocide. Their pivot began in earnest late last year, the ABC’s only a couple of months ago. The ABC’s approach remains very wimpy, and their pivot was forced by circumstances: Israel is starving a concentration camp of civilians to death on live TV, it is very hard to spin that horror any other way.

This granular shift by the media has given Albanese all the permission he needs to dip the tip of his pinky in the waters of ‘Israel should chill out, maybe.’

As always with Albo, the change in language is as workshopped as it is cowardly. A deeply cynical man obsessed with how he is perceived who will also take his rattlebag of grudges with him to his grave (sorry, Tanya), the Prime Minister is well aware how his hypocrisy on Gaza is the greatest thorn in what he dreams to be his unimpeachable brand. A smoothed down hollow vessel like Albanese, programmed to project and regurgitate myths that only dipshits adhere to (and Australia has many dipshits), can not tolerate the incongruity of ‘inconveniences’ like the genocide, which frame him as imperfect, no matter what he does.

The darkest trick he pulled during the election campaign was the annihilation of Gaza from the national discourse. As I’ve written elsewhere, this was aided along by a willing and obsequious press, but the effectiveness of covering his left flank by barely acknowledging Israel’s New Holocaust was, if repulsively, the peak example of Albo’s political savvy.

The nature of Holocausts that you have the power to effect, even end, is that by not alluding to them at all, they become yours. This is Albo’s Holocaust. The hundreds of thousands murdered in Gaza by the Israeli regime were nudged to their graves — yes, one nudge amongst a million nudges is still a nudge — by Albanese, who has spent his time since October 7 bending over backwards for Israel and its bloody knife-licking goons here in Australia and abroad.

For all his 5-D chess playing brilliance, a brilliance he was convinced of by men so stupid they can only find employment as government advisors (this is a bit like being a naked mole rat who exists solely in a zoo’s incubator), Albanese has succeeded only in protecting his reputation and legacy by painting himself so thickly in layers of blood that whatever man was once beneath those gory coats no longer exists.

This should be the only thing he is remembered for. Of course, Australia’s political journalists and historians are as dimwitted and venal as our parking inspectors. When the history books are written in 10 to 20 years, and Israel’s Holocaust has long since reached its inevitable and genocidal end point — a complete annihilation of the people of Gaza and a complete theft of their land — Albanese’s name will be lucky to be a footnote in that history. In Albanese’s biographies, histories, and reckonings, Gaza will be lucky to receive a single chapter, where our slackjawed commentariat will no doubt conclude it was a moral and political grey zone with no real winners, that Albanese handled sensibly by never tipping his hand one way or the other. The fact that he held his cards backwards from the start will go unremarked upon.

This is not how being accomplice to murder works, not in terms of the soul, at least. Albanese’s damnation will be something beyond the Biblical, spiritual, and just — it will be a slow and steady drip fed haunting that will reverberate in and around him for what remains of his insignificant life. If he had a conscience, one hopes it would be tortured. Though if he did, he probably would not have the job he has, would he?

What our responsibility is, as otherwise powerless witnesses to these events, is to never let Albanese and anyone associated with him and his Government forget where they stood. Israel has been insistent on transforming the Star of David into the 21st century’s swastika, so the would be Nazi-hunter in me likes to fantasise about pinning Albo down like Hans Landa at the Inglorious Basterds, and carving one into his forehead. How else? How else to brand him for what he is, forever?

What Albo, Wong, 90% of parliament, 99% of Australia’s media etc. are counting on is that their championing of the New Holocaust will not be forgiven (as forgiveness requires acknowledging it) but forgotten entirely. I think, knowing how this country operates, that that’s not unlikely. But I myself refuse to let my memory lapse. I will stalk these dogs for the rest of my days. Whenever I alluded to them, I will allude to them as happy clappers for mass death and annihilation. What are their legacies otherwise, besides deeply mediocre avatars for a deeply mediocre country that ducks behind that mediocrity and cowers whenever it is asked to hold itself accountable for anything?

That burning girl was burned by Albo. That starving grandfather was starved by Albo. That journalist’s family, purposefully targeted and blown to smithereens, was done so by Albo. Every murder scene in Gaza has his finger print on it. Yes, there are countless more at the scene also, but his is amongst them, another hand curled round the innocents’ throat, and I, for one, think that will be worth remembering forever.