At first Moscow dubbed ‘unacceptable’ Tony Abbott’s brief speeches in Parliament and elsewhere on the downing of the Malaysian airliner in Ukraine. Beijing called them ‘rash’. Prime Minister Abbott did not allege that Mr Putin himself had ordered the killing of the 298 passengers and crew, including 37 Australians, but he condemned his evasive buck-passing as ‘deeply, deeply unsatisfactory’. He also said that Mr Putin could still play ‘a crucial role’ if he would stop supplying his proxies in eastern Ukraine with weapons and intelligence, and would co-operate fully in the investigation of the ‘unspeakable crime’. Most Australians, including the Labor party and all mainstream media, applauded the Prime Minister. He especially spoke, in ‘this sad and bitter time’, to the families of the dead Australians, but also of all those killed. His judicious, heart-felt, eloquent and in the end persuasive statements will be long remembered — in Australia and around the world.

It was called a ‘Solidarity Gathering’. Some 1,500 people, mainly Jews and a few odds and ends like me, assembled at a public meeting last Sunday in Sydney’s Central Synagogue to hear Israel’s ambassador to Australia speak about the horrifying conflict in Gaza. The ‘Gathering’ was of an entirely different character from the huge Palestinian/Arab rally outside Sydney Town Hall the previous weekend with its 4,000 supporters, many waving jihadist flags and chanting anti-Israel slogans (‘Israel, USA! How many kids did you kill today?’), not to mention a few anti-Semitic incantations (‘Khazar Jews out of Palestine!’) There were no inflammatory posters or demonstrators outside the synagogue in Bondi’s Bon Accord Avenue and only a couple of police cars on stand-by. You had to prove your identity to get inside, but a driver’s licence got you there. The meeting began with the male choir singing a prayer for the Israel Defence Forces, followed by ‘Advance Australia Fair’ and prayers for all those killed in Ukraine. A speaker quoted Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu on Hamas: ‘This is the difference between us. We are using our missile defence to protect civilians; they are using their civilians to protect their missiles.’ The Israeli ambassador, Shmuel Ben-Shmuel, a former paratrooper and political scientist, declared that if Israel lays down its arms, it will be destroyed; if Hamas lays down its arms, there will be peace. Now is the time, he said, to eliminate Hamas once and for all. This produced a rustle of applause, but no one really believed it would happen. Thanking the ambassador, Ron Weiser said ‘it baffles the mind, it defies logic’ that so many around the world do not see that Israel is in the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom against dictatorship and tyranny. ‘Stop the rockets! Stop the tunnels! Stop the terrorism!’ He called for an end to ‘this madness’ in Gaza. Amen to that.

The memorial meeting in Sydney University’s Great Hall to celebrate the life of David Armstrong brought together philosophers, friends and old students from around Australia and the world. John Bigelow of Monash noted that Armstrong did not encourage disciples. There are no Armstrongians as there once were Andersonians. (‘Having disciples is a personality disorder.’) His students did not spend years laboriously trying to work out what he meant by his various ‘mysterious utterances’; they simply followed or imitated him by forthrightly disagreeing with him. Armstrong’s contribution to philosophy and to the rebirth of metaphysics was enormous. It was recognised not only in the anglosphere but in Japan, Poland, Spain, Italy and France (where l’école australienne is a special subject of study). But his influence went beyond metaphysics and ontology. Jim Franklin of the University of New South Wales recalled the days of the Philosophy Strike in the early 1970s when students had to cross aggressive picket lines to attend Armstrong’s lectures. The Builders Labourers Federation came on campus to threaten industrial strikes in the university if it did not stop Armstrong teaching philosophy. But he never gave in. University scholars and students today who can work in relative peace are all in his debt. (‘We should have thanked him,’ Franklin said.) John Heil from Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, caught the mood. Armstrong was, he said, ‘a model of Australian civility and urbanity.’ (Heil’s wife called him ‘a Virginia gentleman.’) He lived philosophy. He embodied the ‘virtues I most associate with Australian philosophy: forthrightness, independent-mindedness, clarity of expression and, most importantly, ontological seriousness.’ Heil’s tribute concluded with these great lines on the death of Cardinal Wolsey from Shakespeare’s Henry the Eighth:
   He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one;
   Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading;
   Lofty and sour to them that loved him not;
   But those men that sought him sweet as summer.

However often we are told that naturalism in films is boring and that we really want something more imaginative, along comes a film like The Selfish Giant. Set in the run-down north of England, it is plainly realistic in the Ken Loach style, although its title, from Oscar Wilde’s parable for children, alerts us to the poetic vision of the director and writer of the screenplay, Clio Barnard. But here Wilde’s withered garden is a scrapyard, the giant is the head crook, the children are thieves and the signs of redemption are elusive. The story is about two doomed 13-year-old boys in the part-urban, part-rural wastelands of Bradford. I sometimes had trouble understanding their Yorkshire dialect. But however grim the story and background it is a deeply moving fable.