Mark Kenny | The dance of democracy and deceit in Ukraine, Israel, and Australia

Like the fact that the right-wing Coalition and the left-wing Greens are making common cause against Labor's emissions capping scheme.

The Coalition opposes it because that makes life harder for the government, even if it also means opposing its own mechanism and further alienating ex-Liberal voters lost to the teals, Greens and Labor over climate failure.

The Greens party opposes it because it doesn't do enough. Which is at least a genuine critique.

Adam Bandt says his party only wants to stop emissions from getting worse, but voting against Labor's bill would do that anyway.

His party faces a fateful test. By insisting on no new coal and gas projects, it reprises its opposition to Kevin Rudd's imperfect CPRS in 2009. Fourteen rancorous years on, Australia still has no economy-wide mechanism for driving serious decarbonisation. Is that progress?

Few voters in Australia can follow this tango so what hope would a recently arrived representative of a foreign government have in deciphering it?

READ MORE MARK KENNY OPINION COLUMNS:

Maimon was a guest in the House of Representatives chamber for our famously robust Question Time. He was courteously welcomed by MPs on all sides (nearly) when Speaker Milton Dick announced his presence.

More enthusiastically received was another envoy, Ukraine's still new Ambassador Vasyl Myroshnychenko with whose country Australia feels such kinship as a fellow democracy. The entire House of Representatives posed for a photo with Ambassador Myroshnychenko. It was a strident declaration of belief in freedom over force, civilisation over savagery.

So far Australia has provided Ukraine with some $655 million in support, of which $475 million is military, making it among the largest non-NATO contributors to the Ukrainian defence.

Similarly, Australia has always defended Israel fiercely, justifying this loyalty (despite unconscionable policy and aggression) with the claim that it is the only committed rule-of-law democracy in the Middle East.

Yet even that rationale is all but lost as Israel teeters on the edge of a religious-authoritarian abyss under the most extreme right-wing government in its history.

A fifth national election in four years saw the return to power in the final days of 2022 of the pre-eminent polarising figure of Israeli politics, Benjamin Natanyahu.

In cobbling together his majority in the 120 member Knesset, Netanyahu appointed Itamar Ben Gvir, from the tiny Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) to his cabinet, an ultra-religious ultra-nationalist who has faced charges including that of involvement in terrorism. And he's in charge of national security.

Facing corruption charges of his own, a plainly desperate Netanyahu is currently trying to weaken the independence of Israel's judiciary, sparking six weeks (and counting) of the biggest and politically broadest public demonstrations ever seen there.

Unbowed, the government has routinised the use of Israeli police and security forces in the occupied West Bank (which has helped obliterate the border), approved 10,000 new illegal settlement units there, granted access to precious water and power for existing settlements, and backed easier gun ownership for Israelis - all of it diminishing the hopes of the international community of a sovereign Palestine in future as part of peaceful two-state solution.

In a sign that Netanyahu's hard rightward lurch is a whole new game plan, Israel's most powerful ally has spoken out against the proposed dilution of judicial independence.

"The genius of American democracy and Israeli democracy is that they are both built on strong institutions, on checks and balances, on an independent judiciary," President Joe Biden said pointedly on February 12.

The intent of the famously pro-Israel Biden was clear, leading the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, to whom Biden's words were initially provided to call it the first time an American president has "weighed in on an internal Israeli debate about the very character of the country's democracy".

The US then went further four days ago following the Netanyahu government's acceleration of permanent Jewish expansion into the occupied West Bank.

In a joint statement to which the US was signatory, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Italy, and the UK said, "(we) are deeply troubled by the Israeli government's announcement that it is advancing nearly 10,000 settlement units and intends to begin a process to normalize nine outposts that were previously deemed illegal under Israeli law. We strongly oppose these unilateral actions which will only serve to exacerbate tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and undermine efforts to achieve a negotiated two-state solution".

Australia, too, has endorsed these concerns with Penny Wong telling an Estimates Committee hearing on Thursday that these settlements were an obstacle to peace.

"I would like to associate Australia with the joint statement made by those members of the G7 and I understand that Australia's views were communicated to Israeli counterparts," she said.

Overnight, defence ministers of many nations gathered in Munich to discuss the Russo-Ukraine war with Israel agreeing to help Ukraine defend itself against Iranian-supplied Russian drones. Called "David's sling", the secretive Israeli technology could prove crucial in saving a democracy under siege in Europe.

Unfortunately, the one under siege in the Middle East seems intent on destroying itself.

If Ambassador Maimon struggled with the glaring hypocrisies in Australian politics, he might note that those of his own government are infinitely worse. The world is watching.