Carr’s latest rant leaves ALP leaders’ patience ‘stretched’
A senior NSW Labor figure has slammed former foreign minister Bob Carr after he accused Israel of "war crimes" and said the recent Gaza violence "makes it inevitable" that federal Labor will recognise Palestine.
A SENIOR NSW Labor figure has slammed former foreign minister Bob Carr after he accused Israel of “war crimes” and said the recent Gaza violence “makes it inevitable” that federal Labor will recognise Palestine.
Speaking to Sky News last week, Carr misquoted a Times of London story about a Palestinian boy who was shot in the leg near the Gaza border fence by claiming he was “deliberately targeted” and called the Israel Defence Forces’ handling of the violent protests “horrifying and sickening”.
“It just makes it inevitable, the passage of a motion using the words of the NSW State Conference … that says an incoming Labor government will recognise Palestine,” he said, adding that “the only argument” was whether the national conference would strengthen “wording that I drafted … with references to what appear to be war crimes committed by the IDF on the Gaza fence”.
But a senior ALP NSW source said, “this is just another Bob Carr comment” and that he seems to spend “every single waking minute thinking about how he can attack Israel or represent the interests of China”.
“Carr is humoured and tolerated, but he has stretched the patience of the senior ALP leadership and the union movement to breaking point with his constant interventions on Israel,” the source said.
“The general view is that the ALP just wants to debate working conditions and improving the lives of working families rather than debating faraway Palestine.”
Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Anton Block said Carr “diminishes his own political legacy by descending to this kind of inflammatory falsehood and rush to judgement”.
“Carr’s attempts to rewrite history and to use the ALP as a vehicle for pursuing his personal obsessions ought to be met with the peremptory rejection they deserve,” he said, adding that Carr mischaracterised the NSW resolution as supporting his own position for immediate, unilateral Palestinian recognition.
“Such wording was specifically rejected. Words were added over the objections of Bob Carr supporting ‘the recognition and right of Israel and Palestine to exist within secure and recognised borders’. Recognised borders by definition cannot happen unilaterally.”
Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Rubenstein said Carr’s allegation the boy was “deliberately targeted” was “yet another example of why his contributions to public debate in this country are increasingly being seen to be unprincipled, unhelpful and counterproductive to formulation of rational public policy”.
Labor’s federal conference has been postponed, but leader Bill Shorten has said the party is looking to hold it before the next
election.
GARETH NARUNSKY
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