Carr gesticulating as he explains something

Labor is looking more and more shifty on Israel

WHERE you stand on Israel is a pretty decent litmus test for where you fall on the political divide.

On one end of the spectrum: democracy, fairness and facts backed by hard evidence.

On the other: anti-Israel politics and pure fantasy.

NSW Labor has been gradually lurching towards the latter, with former premier and federal foreign minister Bob Carr — who once started the Labor Friends Of Israel group — warning there will be a motion to recognise a Palestinian state at the party’s national conference in December, which had been rescheduled from this month due to a clash with the Super Saturday by-elections.

Visiting Israeli Opposition leader Isaac Herzog, who is head of the country’s Labor party, will press upon his counterpart Bill Shorten and other ALP members during his trip here why that’s such a terrible idea.

“That would be adverse to any peace process because you have to have both sides in the room negotiating and outside influence of unilateral decisions will only be adverse to that cause,” Herzog told me in Sydney yesterday.

Read the article by Caroline Marcus in The Daily Telegraph.