Let’s dispense with the polite fiction first: this is not a mystery of leadership. It is a case study in it.

What you are witnessing from Anthony Albanese and Chris Minns is not hesitation born of confusion. It is hesitation born of calculation. And calculation, dressed up as prudence, is one of the most overused disguises in modern politics.

They know exactly what the word “intifada” carries. They know its history is not one of abstract resistance but of very real violence, buses blown apart, civilians targeted, Jews murdered for being Jews. To pretend otherwise is not sophistication; it is wilful illiteracy. As has been observed in the aftermath of October 7, when slogans like “Long live the intifada” were chanted even as atrocities were still unfolding, the gap between rhetoric and reality is not merely wide, it is morally grotesque.

And yet, here we are. Faced with a proposal to platform precisely that language in Sydney, by The City of Sydney Council and the response from leadership........

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