Christopher Pyne, Bronwyn Bishop and Tim Wilson: have they no shame ?

In the week before Christmas, a guest at a wedding in Israel was filmed as he stabbed the image of a Palestinian toddler from the Dawabsha family. Five months earlier, that eighteen month old child had been burned to death by Israeli settlers.

The video film of that apparently joyous event – the wedding not the arson attack – is said to have caused outrage across Israel. What's the reaction from Australian politicians who give unqualified support to an Israeli government whose policies encourage hatred and extremism?

Christopher Pyne, Bronwyn Bishop and Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson should answer that question. In early December they returned from an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel. Pyne has enjoyed such largesse on seven occasions.

It also beggars belief that expense-claim-greedy, helicopter-tripping Bronwyn Bishop would still be a privileged traveller on such embedded trips.

Yet the conduct of these three in meetings with Israelis and Palestinians appears to have been far more reprehensible than their fascination for overseas funded journeys.

The Australians apparently absorbed claims about Palestinians made by their Israeli hosts. This is part of a pattern of Australian conservatives happy to be members of the Israel right or wrong brigade, dramatizing Israel's virtues, demonizing Palestinians.

And how do we comprehend the hypocrisy of a Human Rights Commissioner - Wilson - who appears to have been 100% reliant on the word of one side?

The three Australians were making the visit to see how they might 'best support the Jewish state.' They did not say, 'We are interested in justice,' 'We are keen to observe how human rights and international law are upheld, 'We would like to know how the brutal occupation of Palestinian lands, and the associated violence between Israeli settlers and Palestinian youth, can be ended.'

Instead, after briefing by their Israeli government hosts, they met with the Palestinian Education Minister Dr. Sabri Saidam who said that as a result of the Australians being fed 'false information' and 'twisted facts', they were 'not well educated.'

There could be an excuse why the Australians did not know about the suffering of Palestinians. Their Israeli hosts would want to conceal living conditions in Gaza, the violence on the West Bank or the decades of virtual imprisonment in refugee camps. At least one of the 'not well educated' could have raised questions. It's not difficult to discover answers.

In the last three months of 2015, over one hundred Palestinians have been killed in shootings by settlers or Israeli soldiers while 16 Israelis were killed in random attacks by Palestinian youth.

The death toll of Palestinians has included the arson attack in late July on a family home in the West Bank village of Douma when members of the Dawabsha family were burned to death.

If Pyne and Co were interested in racism, which is encouraged across Israel, they might have asked about the Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barikat's request to the city's residents to take up arms against anyone who looks like a terrorist. His statement is reported to have contributed to the near lynching – in mid October 2015 - at a Beersheba bus station of an Eritrean asylum seeker who although a Jew was thought to be an Arab because of the colour of his skin.

Did these three Australian visitors know what happens to Israeli citizens who make principled stands on behalf of Palestinians and against extremism ? Senior Rabbi Arik Ascherman has been attacked for trying to prevent settler thugs from burning down the olive groves of destitute Palestinians. A bilingual school in Jerusalem, which sits Arab and Jewish children next to one another has been set alight. The President of Israel Reuven Rivlin has received death threats for daring to condemn hate crimes and other forms of racism.

Even a smidgeon of curiosity about the politics of the country they were visiting would have informed Pyne and Co of these events.

In their escorted, cosseted, protected visit they could perhaps be excused from knowing the full extent of Israeli police and army violence and cruelty. A few months ago I sat on the floor of the Jahalin Bedouin camp one hundred meters off the main Jerusalem to Jericho Highway. Community leader Abdul Khanavan and his friends had built a school for 170 children aged between 6 and 14. They came from five other Bedouin communities. But the school was in the way of Israeli government policies that Bedouin people must not be allowed to settle in one place. Abdul has received notice that the school must be demolished.

A week before I visited the Jahalin camp, another Bedouin community, located next to the large settlement of Ma'aleh Adumin on land which Israel wants in order to prevent the movement of Palestinians, was destroyed. In the early hours of one morning, troops arrived to enforce the eviction of people from their homes.

The forced removal took place in 42 degrees Celsius heat. One hundred and twenty seven men women and children became homeless. Haaretz journalists Gideon Levy and Alex Levac observed, 'Nothing was left, no tent, no roofing material, not even a water container.'

The people were abandoned to their fate. The troops treated this exercise as a job well done.

If Pyne, Bishop and Wilson had been genuinely interested in human rights, their 'job well done' would not have been characterized by subservience to their Israeli hosts coupled to an apparent indifference to Gazans living under an eight year long siege, part of a brutal occupation which has been underway for at least fifty years.

Peace with justice between Israel and Palestinians could be a step closer if supporters of Israel's policies observed the realities of life for Palestinians within Israel, on the West Bank, in Gaza and in the myriad refugee camps. Being open to considerations which do not match pre-conceived ideas is not only good science, it is also a criterion for an honest politics.

Visitors to Israel and to Palestine could display their humanity by asking questions about justice. Unless they do so, they will continue to appear smiling in official photographs, their apparent pleasure displaying no shame for their indifference to the plight of people they've been visiting.