Turnbull's Netanyahu-Beersheeba treacle

Such apparent indifference to justice is coupled to euphoria about water which Turnbull describes as 'one of my greatest passions.'

Regarding Israel's control over and distribution of water supply, what Turnbull doesn't say reveals uncomfortable truths.

Successive Israeli governments use water to exercise power and to punish an entire population. UN figures show that each day Israeli citizens have access on average to 240 litres of water, settlers to 300 litres but Palestinians on the West Bank to only 73 litres. The world minimum standard is 100 litres per day. Across Gaza, tap water, from the crucial aquifer, is unfit to drink. In the 2014 invasion of Gaza over a million Gazans were left without access to water.

The Final Flourish

In a final flourish, after more ingratiating references to Bibi, Turnbull refers to tikkun olam, 'one of the greatest imperatives of the Jewish tradition, the obligation of every person to seek to make the world a better place.'

Of ways to meet this obligation, many examples could have occurred to the Prime Minister, or to the person who wrote this speech. He, or she, could have referred to an end to the occupation, to ceasing the building of settlements, to ending the siege of Gaza.

In reference to the recent torture of a 14 year Palestinian boy from a Bethlehem refugee camp, Issa-al-Monati whose right leg had been amputated after he was shot by Israeli soldiers in 2015, even an expression of mild dismay would have been appropriate.

On the Palestine Israel questions, there is no end to cruelty, no end to the Australian Prime Minister's ignorance, or indifference, his willingness to dissemble and deceive.