Bob Carr at it again
COMMUNAL leaders and politicians have blasted the inaugural patron of Labor Friends of Palestine, Bob Carr, who delivered a one-sided speech against Israel last week that accused the country of being on the road to “apartheid”.
They have also rubbished his claim this week that “A majority of the Israeli cabinet is now on record opposing a two-state solution.”
Addressing the Australian Friends of Palestine Association in Adelaide, the former foreign minister, who set up Labor Friends of Israel 40 years ago, claimed, “Israel has gone from secular to religious … from cosmopolitan to chauvinist,” adding that the government won’t force settlers to move and that Zionism has been taken over by “the fanatics”.
“An indefinite occupation morphs into the extremists’ goal of a Greater Israel, with one catch: it will have two classes of citizen,” Carr said.
He continued: “The word is apartheid, of course … and the only word that can be applied if, within one nation, there is one set of laws for one race and an inferior set for the other – the other being the majority.”
Speaking to The AJN this week, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister Josh Frydenberg said Carr is welcome to be the patron of any group he wants, but took issue with “the hypocrisy of his position and the factual inaccuracies of his argument”.
“How many articles has he written about the slaughter in Syria, the human trafficking in Qatar or the nuclear program in Iran; let alone his relative silence over the brutal advances made by ISIS?” Frydenberg asked.
Carr’s former parliamentary colleague, Federal Member for Melbourne Ports Michael Danby, told The AJN: “Sadly, Carr’s obsession with Israel, and his focus on one aspect of this longstanding and complex conflict, namely settlements, and one party to that conflict, Israel – to the exclusion of anything the Palestinians say or do and whatever is happening in this highly volatile region – does not indicate that he is genuinely concerned with peace or encouraging all parties to come together to negotiate a two-state solution.”
Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) national chairman Mark Leibler and executive director Colin Rubenstein said Carr “displays at best superficial knowledge of Israel’s egalitarian society, reliable facts concerning settlements and Israel’s political trajectory – especially having made far-reaching two-state offers on several occasions – leading him to make conclusions which are intellectually dishonest and morally offensive”.
Responding to Carr’s claim that a majority of the Israeli cabinet oppose a two-state solution, Rubenstein said, “A majority of Israel’s 22 ministers have made it clear they would favour a two-state solution if the result would be genuine peace, though many have expressed scepticism whether this is currently available. Only around six are on record opposing two states in all circumstances.”
Writing in this week’s AJN, Executive Council of Australian Jewry executive director Peter Wertheim said: “Putting aside for the moment the tendentious ‘apartheid’ allegation, the references to a ‘Jewish minority’ and ‘Palestinian majority’ are basic factual errors.”
He continued, “Even if one adds in the Arab populations of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and counts all Arabs as Palestinians (including the Bedouin, many of whom definitely do not see themselves as Palestinians), there is still no ‘Palestinian majority …
“Within Israel, Palestinians and other non-Jews are fully-fledged citizens. They vote in Israel’s elections, and 12 of them are currently members of the Israeli Parliament.”
For full coverage, see this week’s AJN.
EVAN ZLATKIS
Bob Carr is the inaugural patron of Labor Friends of Palestine.
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