Three months later, it’s the smell of death I remember most. The rancid odour of dried blood filling my nostrils. On a reporting trip last year, when photographer Kate Geraghty and I visited Kfar Aza – a kibbutz in southern Israel that was attacked by Hamas on October 7 – the once tranquil communal town was a massacre site frozen in time.

There was a chilling emptiness to the place: all Kfar Aza’s remaining residents – those that hadn’t been killed or taken hostage – had been evacuated. The body bags were gone, but you could still see bullet holes, blood-smeared walls and clothing scattered everywhere, macabre mementos of the violence that took place there. Then there was the smell, one that still makes me flinch if I close my eyes and think back.

Destroyed homes in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz infiltrated by Hamas during the October 7 massacre. Credit: Kate Geraghty

Many foreign politicians who have visited Israel since October 7 have participated in similar kibbutz tours organised by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Among them: British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Many others have not. US President Joe Biden did not tour a kibbutz when he visited Israel. Neither did Secretary of State Antony Blinken during any of his four visits since October 7. Nor did the foreign ministers of Canada and Japan. Yet the Coalition and pro-Israel lobby groups became apoplectic when Foreign Minister Penny Wong decided not to visit a kibbutz during her Middle East trip this week. Instead, she chose to meet with families of Israeli hostages and visit a Holocaust memorial.

“Petulant and childish,” said NSW Liberal Senator Dave Sharma, a former ambassador to Israel, of her decision. The leaders of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry branded it “insulting and deeply concerning”.

The backlash was a uniquely Australian phenomenon: the US, Japan and Canada’s top diplomats were not pilloried for declining to visit a kibbutz. Certainly, declining to do so not was not interpreted as a lack of sympathy for the estimated 1200 victims of the Hamas attacks or a slap in the face to Israel.

Illustration: John Shakespeare

The overheated focus over the symbolic aspects of Wong’s itinerary was a distraction from the substance of her trip and the diabolical array of problems plaguing the Middle East: the war in Gaza, with its mounting death toll and no end in sight; the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and fading hopes of a two-state solution; Iran-backed Houthi rebels menacing merchant ships in the Red Sea.

While a moving experience, visiting a kibbutz will not help resolve any of these issues.