History is a wolf at the door

In 2020 the Washington Post ran a story about Benjamin Netanyahu that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. The White House provides a free courtesy service for visiting dignitaries where they wash and iron your clothes, like a nice hotel. Most people only visit the White House for a night or two so the laundry is usually two button-up shirts and maybe some socks and underwear.

White House staff began noticing that every time Netanyahu visited on a diplomatic trip he and his wife Sara would bring an insane amount of dirty laundry with them. Not metaphorical dirty laundry but multiple suitcases filled with actual bedsheets and towels and stuff. The staff shrugged it off the first few times but it kept happening. It got so bad that multiple American government employees were eventually willing to leak to a newspaper about it.

The Netanyahus are worth about US$80 million. They could pay the laundry bills of everyone in Israel if they wanted. They act this way because they know the White House will let them.

I bring this up because I think it explains how Australia and other Western nations are acting in response to Israel’s new claims that UNRWA workers participated in October 7.