Just three days after the Manchester Yom Kippur terror atrocity, and two before the second anniversary of October 7, 2023, Greens leader Larissa Waters delivered a moral abomination for the ages.

Appearing on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday, Waters was asked about the deadly attack in Manchester. “No violence anywhere is acceptable,” she said, before pivoting to lay blame elsewhere. “This is exactly why … Australia should have, two years ago, imposed serious sanctions on the Israeli government.”

Then came the kicker. “I think the reason why tensions are so inflamed is that we’ve seen a genocide for two years that our government has refused to condemn and, in fact, has been fuelling by sending those weapons.”

In a few astonishing sentences, Waters shifted responsibility from a murderer in Manchester to Anthony Albanese’s Labor government – a rhetorical inversion that is as obscene as it is dangerous.

Waters’ political point scoring and reverse causation is not just morally bankrupt; it is socially poisonous and demands condemnation.

There is no moral or political logic by which the religious or ethnic identity of a terrorist’s target explains the murderer’s actions – or implicates other parties on the other side of the world.

Context is critical. These sorts of claims occur against the backdrop of other discourse, including the resurgence of one of the most vile antisemitic traditions. According to the medieval dogma of deicide, Jews were responsible for the death of Christ and for all suffering since. The conflict in Gaza is now the apotheosis. It is a short step to blood libel, and the related idea that Jewish suffering is self-inflicted.

To shift responsibility from the terrorist to the Australian government is bizarre and opportunistic. The Manchester atrocity was carried out by an Islamist, not through diplomatic inertia in Canberra, which has adopted the most pro-Palestinian stance of any government in our history.

Waters’ claim that the Albanese government, by not embracing her preferred set of radical sanctions or unilateral diplomacy, bears moral blame for an independent terrorist act is a rhetorical sleight-of-hand. It is so bold, it borders on mishigas — that wonderful Yiddish term for unadulterated lunacy.

Or does Waters imagine that Jihad Al-Shamie was a devoted Guardian Australia reader, well-versed in our foreign policy machinations?

According to Waters’ logic, if an Australian Sikh were murdered by a Hindu extremist, we’d blame Albo for not taking a tougher line on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. If a Sunni Muslim were gunned down by a Shia fanatic, we’d fault Penny Wong for not sanctioning Tehran fast enough. The mishigas speaks for itself.

Despite a bipartisan outcry, Waters has not retracted her statements, explained, or apologised. She has instead dug deeper. Her obstinacy is not a mark of principled courage – it is an admission that she meant every twisted syllable.

A leader who cannot acknowledge when she has grievously erred should not stay in public office. And if she believes it, it is time to leave.

Let us be franker still: if another Queensland Senator, possibly by the name of Pauline, were to make analogous comments that involved excusing terrorism or scapegoating our government, the media derision would be instantaneous and merciless.

Acrid editorials, calls for resignation, public disgrace. But because it is Waters and because she is considered “progressive”, too many in the political elite and progressive media offer her a pass. Integrity in public life cannot hinge on your party label or public brand.

All this matters because Waters’ reckless rhetoric does not exist in isolation. Michael Gawenda has written about ending Australian Jewry’s “Golden Medina” post-October 7.

When voices in public life grant even a morsel of legitimacy to terror, even rhetorically, they threaten the social compact that protects all Australians, as well as minorities. To suggest that terror could be intelligible, or a far-flung government’s fault, has real-world consequences for Australian Jews already on edge from growing global antisemitism. The logic is chilling.

This is not merely about some ill-considered words – it speaks to the long-term collapse of the Greens’ moral core.

As I have previously argued in these pages, the Greens have morphed into an insular political cult that is intolerant of dissent, impervious to criticism, and detached from the values of mainstream progressive Australians.

Waters arguably can’t backtrack now because her party would revolt. The post-Bandt Greens resemble the Bourbons after Napoleon, having learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. Defeated at the ballot box in May 2025, humiliated in the court of public opinion, they are growing more consumed by dogma and more concerned with radical posing than environmentalism.

So what must happen? Labor and the Coalition should jointly condemn the Greens leader in parliament. Prominent public intellectuals and community leaders must rally to expose and reject any victim-blaming and defence of terrorism. And the media must treat this not as another political spat, but as a matter with consequences for society.

If, in 2025, Australians allow Waters to propagate such toxic logic, the precedent it sets will outlast her. Once you start excusing terror, you invite it.

Australia’s strength has always rested on a shared understanding that whatever our politics, we do not rationalise evil. That line must be redrawn, tightly and unapologetically. Because when a nation forgets the difference between the murderer and the murdered, it risks becoming meshuga itself.