705 Bob Carr switches from Friend of Israel to Friend of Palestine

Bob Carr switches from Friend of Israel to Friend of Palestine

Newsletter published on 15 November 2014

This material is at http://mailstar.net/Carr-Palestine-Protocols.doc

(1) Why I’m now a friend of Palestine rather than Israel - by Bob Carr,
former Foreign Minister of Australia
(2) Australia Foreign Minister Bob Carr’s Protocols of Zion paranoia -
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
(3) Australian Jewish leaders seething over former FM's pro-Palestine
shift - Haaretz
(4) Bob Carr at it again - Australian Jewish News
(5) Bob Carr is no friend of Israel or Palestinians - proprietor of
Australian Jewish News
(6) Jewish MPs attack ‘Pope’ Bob Carr
(7) Carr pivots from Israel to Palestine; accused Gov't of
subcontracting Mideast policy to Jewish lobby

(1) Why I’m now a friend of Palestine rather than Israel - by Bob Carr,
former Foreign Minister of Australia

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/why-im-now-a-friend-of-palestine-rather-than-israel/story-e6frg6zo-1227116367617

Why I’m now a friend of Palestine rather than Israel

     Bob Carr
     The Australian
     November 08, 2014 12:00AM

PENNANT Hills Golf Club in Sydney is an unusual place for an epiphany on
the changes in Israel. Still, it was there I met a Christian volunteer
who went to the occupied territories to escort Palestinian children to
school, to protect them from verbal and physical -violence by Israeli
settlers.

Violence against Arab kids? Christian volunteers to protect them? From
Jewish settlers?

None of this was around in 1977 when I rented a room in Sydney Trades
Hall and called on Bob Hawke, ACTU president, to help me launch Labor
Friends of Israel.

In 1977 the Israeli occupation was 10 years old. There were 25,000
settlers. It was easy to believe the Israelis were holding the West Bank
only as a bargaining chip. Arabs were terrorists.

Now the occupation has lasted 47 years. There are 500,000 settlers. Up
to 60 per cent of the Israeli cabinet is on record as opposing a
two-state solution. Palestinians have been part of a peace process for
25 years.

Israel has gone from secular to religious. The ultra-Orthodox and
religious Zionists hold 30 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. It has gone
from cosmopolitan to chauvinist, with some ministers -espousing a brand
of radical -nationalism like that of France’s Le Pen or Austria’s Jorg
Haider.

“The symbol of Israel used to be the kibbutz,” says a friend in the
British Labour Party. “It’s now the settlement.” They have doubled in
the past 54 months alone. The -Atlantic reported the Obama
-administration is deeply offended at how the Israelis use settlements
to wreck any peace deal. Settlers won’t move. The Israeli government
won’t force them. So an -indefinite occupation morphs into the
extremists’ goal of a Greater Israel.

With one catch. It will have two classes of citizen.

“A term used about another country on another continent”, Ehud Barak
told me when I as foreign minister discussed this very dilemma. The word
is apartheid, of course, used by another former prime minister, Ehud
Olmert, 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.

Barack Obama says that if settlement expansion keeps growing he can’t
manage the fallout for Israel. That fallout has begun, with Sweden
joining 138 nations that have already recognised Palestine and Britain’s
House of Commons endorsing recognition. In the British debate, Richard
Ottaway, a Conservative and long-term supporter of Israel, -declared,
“If they are losing -people like me, they will be losing a lot of people.”

He and others in centrist politics have been sickened by religious
fanatics standing on seized Palestinian land declaring that God gave
them Judea and Samaria, and the Arabs are inferior anyway. Sickened by
the routine violence of the settlers, serious enough to warrant
front-page treatment in that voice of the US foreign policy
establishment, Foreign Affairs: settlers smashing the windows of
Palestinian flats to drive families out, uprooting the date and olive
trees on Palestinian farms, spraying graffiti on -churches and mosques.

In 1977 the Palestine Liberation Organisation was blowing up planes. Now
for 25 years Palestinians have been committed to a neg-otiated solution,
most recently to a demilitarised state with the presence of a US-led
NATO force on the West Bank and East -Jerusalem.

In 1977 when we launched Labor Friends of Israel we knew, to our
disgrace, none of their narrative. Now Israeli historians — this is a
measure of Israel’s openness — have gone to the archives of their army
to tell the full story of how massacres were used during the foundation
of Israel in 1948 to drive out 700,000 Palestinians. The credibility of
historian Benny Morris is confirmed when he declares he agreed with the
policy and thinks David Ben-Gurion should have gone further until there
were no Palestinians left.

Where do Palestinians stand now? Gideon Levy wrote in the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz that it leaves them living with mass arrests (760 in a
recent sweep, 260 of them children) expulsions, demolitions. A former
head of Shin Bet (Israel’s ASIO) said in the 2012 documentary The
Gatekeepers that his paratrooper son invaded Nablus two or three times.
He asked, “Did this bring us victory? I don’t think so.”

This week 100 ex-generals, senior police and a former head of Mossad
issued a letter urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to
negotiate with “moderate Arab states and with the Palestinians (in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip as one)”. They know a two-state solution will
not be perfect but preferable.

Permanent occupation means Israelis get cast as Afrikaners and the world
will recognise Palestine and isolate Israel.

After all, the alternative would be unthinkable: to accept colonial rule
with one religious and racial group enjoying the vote, the majority
denied it.

 >From the writers of The West Wing came this. Discussing Gaza and the
West Bank, a White House adviser says to another, “Revolutionaries will
outlast and out-die occupiers every time.” No other colonial rule has
survived, let alone with rich settlers on fortified hilltops with Los
Angeles lawns, the wretched huddled in the gullies, their 12-year-old
kids subject to military arrest and -detention.

We have politely pitched the case for Palestinian statehood as creating
security for Israel. But in view of the settlements and settler
violence, I now pitch the case in terms of the rights of the Palestinian
people, recognised in international law and every draft peace statement
supported by the world for a quarter of a century.

Palestinians must commit to non-violent resistance, not a third
intifada. They must build international support. They must engage with
the righteous Jews who condemn the takeover of Zionism by the fanatics.

Forty years ago I signed up to be president of Labor Friends of Israel;
I still count myself a friend of the liberals in that country but it
serves the cause of a just peace better by me this week becoming patron
of Labor Friends of Palestine.

Bob Carr is a former NSW premier and foreign minister. This is part of
an address he gave to the Australian Friends of Palestine Association in
Adelaide last night.

(2) Australia Foreign Minister Bob Carr’s Protocols of Zion paranoia -
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

http://www.jewishjournal.com/rabbi_shmuley/item/australia_foreign_minister_bob_carrs_protocols_of_zion_paranoia

Australia Foreign Minister Bob Carr’s Protocols of Zion paranoia

by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

November 11, 2014

As an American who is married to an Australian, whose children are
Australian citizens, and who visits this beautiful country annually, I
care deeply when the decency of Australia is maligned by the likes of
Bob Carr, Australia’s former Minister for Foreign Affairs.  His vicious
assault on Israel demands a response.
In April of this year Carr made his bid for continued relevance by
signing on to a version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in a
bizarre claim that Melbourne’s Jewish lobby controls Australia’s Middle
East foreign policy. To be sure, a distressed former political figure
scapegoating the Jews with claims of Jewish control of governments to
get into the news is nothing new. And it usually works. Carr’s book,
Diary of a Foreign Minister which, like himself, would have been
relegated to obscurity, sold a couple more copies through the press
coverage he received with his claims of a Jewish conspiracy. Still, it’s
sad to see a once-influential man reduced to crude anti-Semitism to
remain relevant.

But not content to impugn the Jews of Melbourne with the scandalous
charge of dual loyalty, Carr has just come out with his newest
allegation. Israel is an apartheid state committed to disenfranchising
the Palestinians, as evidenced by their expansion of settlements. It is
for this reason, Carr claims, that he is turning on Israel and becoming
a supporter of Palestine instead.

In this too Carr is wholly unoriginal. If you’re going to savage the
Jewish state surely you can do so by saying something novel? But is this
all we get, the over-roasted chestnut of Israel as pre-Mandela South Africa?

But in his obsession with Jewish world domination there are things that
Carr omits.

He omits the fact that the land ceded by Israel to the Palestinians in
peace deals has been transformed every time into terrorist enclaves. He
omits the fact that Hamas is a genocidal organization committed in its
charter to Israel’s destruction and the murder of Jews worldwide. He
omits the fact that the Palestinian Authority is now a dictatorship run
by Mahmoud Abbas who has not gone to elections in more than a decade. He
omits the fact that Abbas runs a kleptocracy enriching his sons Tarik
and Yasser who illegally control the construction and cigarette trade,
among other lucrative industries. He omits the fact that Nelson Mandela
was a true apostle of peace who languished in jail for 27 years while
Yasser Arafat is the father of international terrorism who made his name
by blowing up children. He omits the fact that Arab citizens of Israel
enjoy more rights than Arabs anywhere in the Middle East. In his charges
of Jewish racism he omits the fact that Arabs serve at the highest
levels of Israeli officialdom, including the Supreme Court, something
unthinkable in an apartheid regime. He omits the fact that Israeli
hospitals treated Abbas’ wife and the daughter of the current Hamas
leader. He omits the fact that the single greatest threat to world
civilization today is not the Jews and the puny State of Israel but
radical Islamic terrorism which is producing monsters like ISIS, Hamas,
and Boko Haram.

Oh, were it so, Bob, that Australia’s biggest worry was Melbourne’s
Jews, a community famous for its philanthropy, civic responsibilities,
and patriotism.

All this Carr omits as he assails the Jews as apartheid racists. And in
so doing Carr not only shows his cards but offends the brave black
population of South Africa who are models of reconciliation and forgiveness.

Sorry, Mr. Carr, but the Jews are the indigenous people of Israel. It is
not I who says it but your own Christian Bible. Read the New Testament
and try and find mention of a single Arab resident of ancient Israel.
The Jews were the land’s inhabitants and they were displaced by a
European colonial occupier named Rome. They were forcibly removed from
their land and displaced for 2000 years, while a small remnant always
remained. The Jews prayed thrice daily to return to their land. And when
finally granted the political opportunity, they came and drained the
swamps, irrigated the sands and made the land so much more inhabitable
for Arab brethren that had migrated in the interim.

The Jews were happy to share the land but it was a sentiment that was
sadly rejected by the Arabs. They rejected the 1936 Peel Commission
Partition. The rejected the 1947 UN partition plan. They rejected
Israel’s offers to return all conquered 1967 lands with their famous
three “No’s” in Khartoum: No peace, No recognition, No negotiation. And
they turned the Oslo peace accords – which granted Arafat political
autonomy over 95% of the Palestinian population – into a murder-fest by
launching a never-ending terror war against Israel’s buses, schools, and
cafes.

Rather than Western statesmen like Carr demanding from the Palestinians
to stop the never-ending incitement against the Jews and the promises to
push them into the sea, rather than calling out Mahmoud Abbas for his
monstrous lies about an Israeli genocide in Gaza, rather than objecting
to the rampant assassination of Palestinian gay men by Hamas and the
honor killings of innocent women, Carr would defend this barbarity by
pointing the finger at the Middle East’s only democracy.

Indeed, Mr. Carr should be forced to publicly defend his allegations
against Israel and if there were a sincere conviction in his body he
would accept my challenge to debate the issue before an audience of
peers at a reasonable time and place of his choosing.

Australians are some of the warmest, tolerant, and peace-loving people
on earth. Australia is a model of social harmony and ethnic integration.
Australia took in scores of holocaust survivors who fled Hitler’s ovens
after World War II. Australians love and support Israel. I know that
they will reject pathetic attempts at Jewish character assassination
leveled by desperate former politicos like Bob Carr.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” is the international
best-selling author of 30 books, winner of The London Times Preacher of
the Year Competition, and recipient of the American Jewish Press
Association’s Highest Award for Excellence in Commentary. He has just
published Kosher Lust: Love is Not the Answer. Follow him on Twitter
@RabbiShmuley.

(3) Australian Jewish leaders seething over former FM's pro-Palestine
shift - Haaretz

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/.premium-1.626249

Australian Jewish leaders seething over former FM's pro-Palestine shift

Bob Carr has increasingly become known for his critical stance on
Israel, but in earlier days cofounded the Labor Friends of Israel.

By Dan Goldberg | Nov. 13, 2014 | 1:18 PM

SYDNEY – Australian Jewish leaders were seething this week after a
former foreign minister who founded the Labor Friends of Israel in the
1970s announced that he will become patron of the Labor Friends of
Palestine.

Bob Carr, who was foreign minister from 2012-2013, cited the “takeover
of Zionism by the fanatics” and its lurch toward an “apartheid” state as
a trigger for his backflip.

During a speech to the Australian Friends of Palestine Association last
weekend, he pointed to the scale of new Israeli settlements, as well as
the posture of Israeli government ministers.

“Up to 60 percent of the Israeli cabinet is on record as opposing a
two-state solution,” he said. “[Israel] has gone from cosmopolitan to
chauvinist, with some ministers espousing a brand of radical nationalism
like that of France’s Le Pen or Austria’s Jörg Haider,” he added.

While Carr’s revelation stunned some Jewish leaders, it came as little
surprise to others.

“Mr. Carr’s decision to publicly align himself with the Palestinian
cause comes as no surprise, given his abysmal track record on Israel in
his thankfully limited tenure as Australia’s Minister for Foreign
Affairs,” said Dr. Danny Lamm, president of the Zionist Federation of
Australia.

“His willingness to misrepresent historical fact while currying favor
with his new friends does him no credit, nor does it aid the cause of
peace which he claims as his motivation,” said Lamm.

Since 2003, when Carr controversially agreed to present Palestinian
legislator Hanan Ashrawi with the Sydney Peace Prize despite trenchant
opposition from Jewish groups, he has incensed Jewish leaders on
numerous occasions.

As foreign minister under the previous Labor government, he led a revolt
inside the party to overturn then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s
intention to oppose Palestine’s bid to upgrade its status at the United
Nations. Instead, Australia abstained in what was a humiliating defeat
for the PM.

In his memoirs “Diary of a Foreign Minister,” released last April, Carr
attacked the “extraordinary influence” of the pro-Israel lobby based in
Melbourne, led by Jewish power broker Mark Leibler.

Michael Danby, one of two Jewish MPs inside the federal Labor Party,
accused Carr of singling out Israel. “We will not resolve the conflict,
nor impose a solution on the Israelis or the Palestinians, with pious
words from Australia. Bob Carr seems to have appointed himself the ‘pope
of social democracy,’ where he can announce doctrine ex cathedra.”

Carr used his speech to compare Israel with apartheid-era South Africa.
“So, an indefinite occupation morphs into the extremists’ goal of a
Greater Israel,” he said. “With one catch – it will have two classes of
citizen. ‘A term used about another country on another continent,’ Ehud
Barak told me when I, as foreign minister, discussed this very dilemma.
The word is apartheid, of course.”

‘Elephant in the room’

Peter Wertheim, executive director of the Executive Council of
Australian Jewry (ECAJ), said Carr’s apartheid analogy was “tendentious.”

“The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and
Gaza is an international one, whereas the conflict between the races in
South Africa was intranational,” he said.

The former foreign minister’s rationale for his decision to become
patron of the Labor Friends of Palestine was notable for a “glaring
omission,” Wertheim added: “The elephant in the room – the Muslim vote
in western Sydney.”

Dr. Dvir Abramovich, chairman of Australia’s B’nai B’rith
Anti-Defamation Commission, blasted Carr’s allegations of apartheid as
an “inflammatory lie,” adding, “It has been continuously employed by
Israel’s detractors and enemies to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish
state.”

Josh Frydenberg, the only Jewish MP in the governing Liberal Party,
accused Carr of suffering from “relevance deprivation” syndrome. “This
grandstanding by Bob Carr is all about him,” Frydenberg said, in an
interview on Sky News. “He’s been silent as we’ve seen ISIL or ISIS
[Islamic State] go ahead and engage in beheadings in Iraq and Syria, and
butchery and genocide, but he’s just obsessed with the
Israel-Palestinian issue. I just think it’s because he’s got relevance
deprivation syndrome.”

Even Jewish liberals rounded on Carr. Irving Wallach, president of the
local branch of the New Israel Fund, told Haaretz this week, “Accusing
Israel of apartheid is false and destructive. This wild language
provides an excuse for those in Israel who claim there is no Palestinian
partner for peace. By all means be a friend of Palestine, but you also
need to be a friend of Israel.

“Supporting statehood for the Palestinians is not a threat to Israel and
should not be a pretext to shut down dialogue,” Wallach added.

In his speech, Carr – who colaunched the Labor Friends of Israel in 1977
– said he still considered himself a friend of Israeli liberals, but his
new post as patron of the Friends of Palestine served the cause of a
“just peace.”

The blowback from Carr’s decision will likely further strain relations
between Jews and the Labor Party. While tensions have eased since former
PM Kevin Rudd’s departure after he lost the general election in
September 2013, the left flank of the party continues to push for
recognition of a Palestinian state while the right flank maintains its
support for a two-state solution.

A showdown on recognizing Palestinian statehood looms at next year’s
national conference, given that state conferences in New South Wales and
Queensland have already passed pro-Palestinian resolutions.

Carr’s bombshell comes as the ECAJ released its annual report into
anti-Semitic incidents in Australia, revealing a spike of more than 35
percent in the last year.

The report’s author, Julie Nathan, claimed that parts of Carr’s
controversial autobiography “played in all sections of the media for
many days, and were cited as an endorsement of its views by a neo-Nazi
group, in anti-Semitic flyers that were letterboxed in Sydney’s eastern
suburbs.”

A total of 312 incidents were logged, with the ECAJ attributing much of
the spike in incidents to the summer war in Gaza between Israel and
Palestinian militant groups.

(4) Bob Carr at it again - Australian Jewish News
https://www.jewishnews.net.au/bob-carr-at-it-again/38409

Bob Carr at it again

Australian Jewish News

by Evan Zlatkis

November 13, 2014

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.

Bob Carr is the inaugural patron of Labor Friends of Palestine.

(5) Bob Carr is no friend of Israel or Palestinians - proprietor of
Australian Jewish News
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/bob-carr-is-no-friend-of-israel-or-palestinians/story-e6frg6zo-1227119909004

Bob Carr is no friend of Israel or Palestinians

     Robert Magid
     The Australian
     November 12, 2014 12:00AM

ISRAEL lives in a rough neighbourhood. Syria recently killed more than
200,000 of its citizens and more than half of its population have fled
their country. Lebanon has tens of thousands of missiles pointed at
Israel. Gaza recently fired batteries of Fajr-5 missiles not at military
targets but Israeli civilians. An army of fanatics is intent on killing
anyone who is not Sunni, beheading or mass murdering prisoners,
enslaving women and children. Iran is marching inexorably to acquire
nuclear weapons, intent on wiping Israel off the map.

Into these shark-infested -waters swims our heroic former foreign
minister with all the answers. His view? Everything is Israel’s fault.
The Palestinians are helpless victims. The expansion of settlements is
irreversible and renders peace impossible. With the -absorption of the
West Bank, Israel will become an apartheid state. Israel is becoming
more religious, hence more fanatical and more right wing, and while
Israel expands, Palestinians have been thwarted in the peace process for
25 years. The imagery is all there. Mahmoud Abbas sits, pen in hand, a
jilted bride.

What is the reality? Start with the peace process. Every Palestinian is
suckled on the belief that Palestine includes all of Israel. Look at any
map in the Palestinian territories or the Arab world. To Palestinians,
“the Occupation” is not of Jenin or Ramallah but Tel Aviv and Haifa.
Anyone who betrays that birthright should be killed as a traitor. The
only peace agreement Abbas would sign is for Benjamin Netanyahu to hand
over all of -Israel.

So who is responsible for the lack of progress towards peace?

Israel agreed to the Oslo Accords that brought to the West Bank Yasser
Arafat and his PLO, who, rather than seeking peace, unleashed an
intifada that killed more than 1000 Israelis.

Under the aegis of Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak offered a bold peace plan at
Camp David that Arafat rejected outright without a counter proposal.

Ariel Sharon removed all Israelis from Gaza in the hope of peace. Is
there peace? No. Since then, Israel has been on the receiving end of
continual rocket attacks.

Ehud Olmert offered Abbas further far-reaching concessions to which he
failed to respond.

Netanyahu accepted US Secretary of State John Kerry’s terms of a
settlement freeze for 10 months to jump-start negotiations. Abbas
refused to participate. Surprised?

Bob Carr sees settlements as the essential obstacle to peace from which
Israel will never withdraw, the only possible outcome a Greater Israel
with a disenfranchised Palestinian minority.

Yet there were no settlements between 1948 and the war of 1967 and
Palestinians refused to negotiate peace, and all Israeli proposals since
then have been rejected. Former Peace Now activist Ari Shavit
acknowledges that even if all the settlements were dismantled,
Palestinians would never sign a peace agreement.

Carr implies Israel is becoming more right wing. But democratic politics
is a pendulum. When Israelis feel secure, they vote on domestic issues,
usually for leftist parties. When they feel threatened, they vote for
the party they believe provides them with security.

Carr shows his ignorance by confusing religious parties in the Knesset
with support for extremists — the main religious parties are focused on
support for their education and welfare priorities and join in
coalitions with whichever party meets their needs.

Carr also fails to mention that the Netanyahu government is committed to
a two-state solution.

The emotional part of Carr’s case relates to attacks by fanatical
settlers on Palestinian neighbours, acts condemned by almost all
Israelis, including settlers. The press loves to interview Messianic
settlers but there are also secular ones who live there for economic
reasons and religious ones who coexist harmoniously with Palestinians.
The handful of violent fanatics is a problem but every country has bigots.

Carr claims settlers will never leave. In fact, polls indicate that
many, given the right incentives, would return to pre-1967 Israel.

Carr talks about future apartheid if Israel remains in control of the
West Bank but Israel is the only country in the neighbourhood where
apartheid is not practised. Israeli Arabs vote, are represented in
parliament, sit on the judiciary, are active in academe as students and
lecturers, are doctors and staff in all hospitals, and represent Israel
in international forums.

Palestinians born in Syria, Lebanon and other Arab states have no right
to citizenship and are restricted in their place of residence.

As for the West Bank, Palestinians voted for their own government, which
is responsible for all domestic policies.

So why has Carr painted such a distorted caricature of Israel? Could it
have something to do with a cynical rush for Muslim votes in Labor
electorates in Sydney and Melbourne? Could he be as fickle a friend of
the Palestinians as he was of Israel if political prospects change?

The West Bank cannot be a stand-alone economy. Many Palestinians see
their future not in exacerbating relations with Israel, a technological
wonder but in constructive economic and social ties. Palestinians are
forming companies linked with Israeli hi-tech companies to provide services.

Hamas has shown considerable technical skill building rockets, missiles
and tunnels but these skills should be harnessed to improve its people’s
lives. Instead of encouraging constructive dialogue, Carr plays to the
victim mentality. Therein lies the difference between those who welcome
an integration of Palestinian and Israeli economies to the benefit all
rather than the destructive negativity of Carr. Sadly, he is no friend
of Israel or of the Palestinians.

Robert Magid is the proprietor of The Australian Jewish News.

(6) Jewish MPs attack ‘Pope’ Bob Carr
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/pope-bob-carr-raises-party-ire-on-israel-apartheid-claim/story-fn59nm2j-1227117669301

‘Pope’ Bob Carr raises party ire on Israel apartheid claim

     The Australian
     November 10, 2014 12:00AM

LABOR MPs have criticised Bob Carr’s claim of creeping “apartheid” by
Israel, with one describing the former foreign minister and NSW premier
as the self--appointed “Pope of Social Democracy”.

Mr Carr, the inaugural patron of Labor Friends of Palestine, hit back at
claims he was “grandstanding” and a “dilettante” for leading a party
push to recognise the Arabs’ 26-year-old claim to statehood. He said it
was “inevitable” that Labor would support recognition of Palestine,
possibly before the next election.

As the party prepares for a rancorous ALP national conference battle
over the issue, several of Mr Carr’s former colleagues moved to distance
themselves from his comments — or openly attack him. Deputy Labor leader
Tanya Plibersek said recognition of Palestinian statehood must occur “in
the context of a negotiated peace process”. “I don’t think we should
diminish the seriousness of the apartheid struggle in South Africa,” the
opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman told Sky News’s Viewpoint.

Melbourne Ports MP Michael Danby accused Mr Carr, who founded Labor
Friends for Israel with Bob Hawke in 1977, of obsessing about
overturning Labor’s support for a two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He called Mr Carr “the Pope of Social Democracy” pronouncing party
policy. “Bob Carr never says anything about the seven million peaceful
Tibetans living under Chinese oppression, “ he said.

“He has never said anything about the 300,000 North Koreans in
concentration camps. He said little about the 200,000 dead in Syria, or
the Christians and other minorities facing death right across the Middle
East,” Mr Danby, one of two Jewish federal Labor MPs, told The Australian.

“We will not solve, let alone impose, a solution on the Israelis or
Palestinians from Australia.”

Mr Carr now believes fanatics in the Israeli government favour ongoing
“apartheid” over a two-state solution. He did not know how long it would
take for the Labor Party to achieve a unified stance for a Palestinian
state. “These things are being determined on the ground. In the West
Bank, the living conditions of the Palestinians are getting worse,” Mr
Carr said.

“Every week there’s a new settlement announcement. Every week another
Israel cabinet minister announces formally and -officially he’s opposed
to a Palestinian state.”

Melissa Parke, a former Rudd government minister, said the intervention
of a Right faction figure in Mr Carr was important in pushing the issue
at the supreme policy meeting, the national conference.

“(Recognition) would be a -fairly popular position within the Left and
you would also have many people within the Right who have had a change
of heart on this issue in recent years,” the Fremantle MP said. “If I
were to say this, nobody would be surprised and it probably wouldn’t get
much attention. But when it’s somebody like Bob Carr, such a respected
figure in Australian politics over many years, it makes people stand up
and take notice.”

Josh Frydenberg, the - Coalition’s only Jewish MP, - attacked Mr Carr as
a “lazy” minister and a “dilettante” on foreign affairs.

“This grandstanding by Bob Carr is all about him. It is nothing else but
an obsession on Bob Carr’s part,” Mr Frydenberg told Sky News’s
Australian Agenda.

“I just think it is because he has got relevance-deprivation syndrome.
He was a failure as a state premier, he was a failure as a foreign
minister.”

Mr Frydenberg also criticised Mr Carr’s “obsession” with Israel while
remaining “silent” about -Islamic State.

Mr Carr discounted Mr Frydenberg as a “fanatical Likud supporter” who
supported settlements and opposed a two-state solution.

“Fanaticism adds nothing to this debate,” he said.

“ISIL (Islamic State) has got nothing to do with Palestinians. The
spread of settlements or the loss of the opportunity for a two-state
solution I think is the issue here. To suddenly throw ISIL up as a
reason for no two-state solution is pure opportunism.”

Mr Carr said as more countries observed that a two-state solution was
unlikely, and as settlements spread, other governments would follow
Sweden’s lead in recognising a Palestinian state.

The British House of Commons also voted to recognise the state of
Palestine last month in a symbolic and non-binding motion that passed
274 to 12. More than half of MPs abstained, although Labour leader Ed
Miliband, who is Jewish, voted in favour.

(7) Carr pivots from Israel to Palestine; accused Gov't of
subcontracting Mideast policy to Jewish lobby

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/patron-carr-pivots-from-israel-to-palestine/story-fn59nm2j-1227116346996

Patron Carr pivots from Israel to Palestine

     The Australian
     November 08, 2014 12:00AM

Brad Norington
Reporter
Sydney

JULIA  Gillard’s former foreign minister Bob Carr has agreed to be the
patron of Labor Friends of Palestine after accusing fanatics in
-Israel’s government of promoting “apartheid” — a move likely to
-infuriate sections of Australia’s Jewish community.

The decision to take up a prominent role for a new ALP group pressing
for Palestinian statehood comes almost 40 years after Mr Carr launched
Labor Friends of Israel with Bob Hawke, believing then that “Arabs were
terrorists”. Mr Carr, premier of NSW for a decade before his stint as a
federal minister, said Israel had changed.

His reversal of allegiance was prompted by his revulsion for an
“apartheid” policy within Israel’s government as it fostered one set of
racially based laws for the Jewish minority — and an inferior set for
the Palestinian majority.

“It has become virtually impossible for the centre-left in politics to
maintain support for the ‘ethno-nationalists’ who are now opposed to a
Palestinian state and back expansion of Jewish settlements in occupied
territories,” he said. “Social democrats find this impossible to live with.”

As Ms Gillard’s foreign minister in October 2012, Mr Carr led a cabinet
and caucus revolt when the then Labor prime minister was determined to
oppose a Palestinian bid for upgraded status in the UN. Eventually
accepting she lacked a majority, Mr Gillard was forced into a
humiliating backdown and Australia abstained from the UN vote.

Mr Carr wrote in his book Diary of a Foreign Minister, released in
April, that Ms Gillard’s office had subcontracted out Middle Eastern
policymaking to the wealthy and powerful Jewish lobby in Melbourne,
which had infiltrated her government. In July he moved a motion from the
floor of the NSW Labor conference, carried on -voices with support from
the ALP Left and Right, which committed the state party to a more
pro--Palestinian position. Mr Carr saidhis view was part of a worldwide
trend that included conservatives and long-time supporters of Israel. He
gave last month’s House of Commons vote endorsing recognition of
Palestine, and recognition by Sweden, as examples.

Slotted into Ms Gillard’s ministry after Kevin Rudd quit to wrestle back
the prime ministership, the former foreign minister said he was
approached by rank-and-file party members to be patron of the fledgling
Labor Friends of Palestine. He revealed his decision last night during
an address to the Australian Friends of Palestine Association. Mr Carr
said his “epiphany” on the changes in Israel occurred when he met a
Christian volunteer who had gone to occupied territories to escort
Palestinian children to school, and protect them from violence by
-Israeli settlers.

He still counted himself a friend of liberals in Israel, but it served
the cause of a “just peace” to accept his new patron role.

Settlements had doubled in the past 54 months, settlers would not move
and the Israeli government would not force them to leave.

Comparing Israel with pre-Mandela South Africa, Mr Carr said: “So an
indefinite occupation morphs into the extremists’ goal of a Greater
Israel. With one catch — it will have two classes of citizen. ‘A term
used about another country on another continent,’ Ehud Barak told me
when I, as foreign minister, discussed this very -dilemma. The word is
apartheid of course.”