Refuge from double standards

One would have thought that, given the very public findings of the Goldstone report, Australian political leaders and the media would be making it clear to Shalom and Olmert that they risked arrest if they entered Australia.

You can bet if it were a Tamil leader seeking to enter Australia, about whom Goldstone-type findings had been made, that would definitely have been the reaction.

But Abbott and, it has to be said, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his deputy Julia Gillard feted their Israeli guests.

The Australian's Greg Sheridan conducted a long and sympathetic interview with Olmert and slobbered that he spent "90 minutes in the boardroom of Sydney's Park Hyatt, and then over a relaxed lunch with his wife, Aliza, at Circular Quay", while "Olmert talked with remarkable frankness about the military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, the historic peace deal he offered the Palestinians, [US] President Barack Obama's Middle East policy and the options for action against Iran".

Would Sheridan roll out the read carpet for a Tamil leader? One thinks not. Hypocrisy and double standards are awful things.