Only two days into the federal election campaign, and five days after her preselection, Labor candidate for the Western Australian seat of Curtin, Melissa Parke, has quit.
Parke says she doesn’t want her “well-known views” on Israel to distract from Labor leader Bill Shorten’s talking points. Her decision came after Fairfax media attacked Parke, and Labor parliamentarians senator Sue Lines and Fremantle MP Josh Wilson, for describing Israel as an apartheid state at a public launch of WA Labor Friends of Palestine.
“The homemade rockets fired indiscriminately from Gaza towards and into Israel, are absolutely unacceptable and illegal under international law, but there is no doubt that they are a reaction to and a consequence of decades of brutal occupation”, Parke, a former minister in Kevin Rudd’s government, told the 5 March meeting. “They are no match for the combined power of an elite and well-resourced army, navy and air force.”
She called on the incoming Australian government to recognise the state of Palestine (now federal Labor policy) and “to support an end to the brutal occupation of Palestine and for the right of return of the Palestinian refugees”. Formerly a lawyer for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Parke also recounted her firsthand observations of Palestinian suffering during her two year stay in Gaza.
“One case I remember vividly: a pregnant refugee woman ordered at a checkpoint in Gaza to drink a bottle of bleach”, she said. “It burnt out all her throat and insides. Fortunately her baby was saved. Another refugee was forced to put her baby through the X-ray machine.”
Read the article by Nick Everett in Red Flag.