Maurice Klein speaks with Senator the Hon Simon Birmingham, who is the Liberal Party Senator for South Australia since May 2007 and is the current Leader of the Opposition in the Senate and Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs. We hear from Senator Birmingham that the recent cross-party delegation to Israel that he led was an opportunity to express very clearly, their resolute commitment to Israel and its inherent right to self-defence and to see the disabling and removal of Hamas as a terrorist threat. Senator Birmingham's visit to Israel was to also demonstrate the support for Israel on behalf of the Liberal and National parties. Asked about Prime Minister Albanese's reluctance to visit Israel and Penny Wong's clear failure to visit Israel's devastated Ground Zero in the south, Senator Birmingham expressed disappointment and said that it was a serious error of judgement. He went onto say that also very disappointing and appalling, was Australia voting with Israel's enemies at the UN calling for a ceasefire. As for foreign aid to UNRWA, no Australian taxpayer dollars should be going to support anything that could promote extremism, extremist ideology and to incite any type of violence based on any type of hatred on terrorist grounds. The concerns about UNRWA are long standing with questions for the Albanese Government to answer, about why correspondence from the Jewish community was ignored, along with UNRWA employee involvement in the October 7 feverish, barbaric evil. There needs to be alternatives to UNRWA. The Palestinians in Gaza are suffering as a consequence of Hamas; the future for the Palestinians begins with security for Israel. Our Federal and State Government need to do much, much more in addressing the hateful, rising antisemitism in Australia. Senator the Hon Simon Birmingham is an unequivocal, staunch friend of Israel and the Australian Jewish community.

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