Badly misjudged action will have a political cost

Its action has already dismayed and divided the government's supporters. Michael Danby, the Labor member for Melbourne Ports, and the chairman of the parliamentary sub-committee on foreign affairs, immediately condemned the expulsion.

"I do not agree with the decision," Mr Danby said.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith cited Britain, France, Germany and Ireland in justifying his overreaction.

Yet of these only the British have expelled an Israeli diplomat and that was the action of a dying government desperately casting around for minority support.

Surely the Rudd government is more mature and worldly than the most desperate days of the dying Gordon Brown interregnum?

Australia should not ape its former masters in London in this but embrace some of the sophistication of Berlin or Paris, neither of which is regarded as a hive of unreasonable pro-Israel bias.

This is a very poor, very feeble decision by the government and it will probably pay a political price.

Last night the government was desperately trying to reassure friends of Israel in Australia, but this gratuitous and needless action will license a new round of anti-Israel activism and outrage throughout Australia.

The government has also opened a clear partisan divide on this issue. In an interview with The Australian some weeks ago, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott called on the government not to expel an Israeli diplomat.

It is now crystal clear that the Abbott opposition has a deeper level of support for the Israel relationship than the Rudd government.

The government was under no obligation to take this action. It had already condemned the apparent misuse of Australian passports in the strongest possible terms. It had switched its vote not to oppose a resolution at the United Nations based on the wildly anti-Israel Goldstone report on Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

It had used extravagant language to condemn Israeli home unit construction in East Jerusalem. It could easily have issued a further condemnation yesterday without deliberately choosing the most extreme action available to it.

Australians ought to ask themselves about double standards here. China imprisons an Australian citizen and there is no suggestion of expelling a Chinese diplomat. The Iranians defy countless binding rulings on nuclear proliferation and there is no question of the expulsion of an Iranian diplomat. But the Israelis are accused of misusing Australian passports and the maximum diplomatic action is taken.

The hypocrisy exists at other levels as well.

Well-informed sources tell me that Australian agencies have used foreign passports.

The truth is that in the grey world of espionage many things happen which good friends do not use to embarrass each other.

The tone and content of Mr Smith's statement yesterday are also perplexing. For some reason he refers to the killing of the Hamas terrorist as murder, as though that were the end of the moral equation.

Hamas is committed to murderous terrorism directed at killing Israeli civilians. It is a proscribed terrorist organisation.

Australian troops in Afghanistan have targeted al-Qa'ida leaders personally and directly in missions to kill these leaders. In Mr Smith's terms, the Diggers must also be guilty of murder.

The government has mishandled this matter from the start, and the Keystone Kops escapades of the Australian Federal Police in Israel on their fact-finding mission were not the worst of it.

Whether this bad decision was the sign of government weakness in the face of the bureaucracy, or yet another move in the pathetic effort to court Arab votes for our meaningless bid for a UN Security Council seat, or just a bad misjudgment by Mr Smith which Kevin Rudd ratified, it is a poor and misjudged move against a close friend which made a mistakein exceptionally difficult circumstances.