Greg Barns’s diatribe against Israel and his apologia for dumped ALP candidate Melissa Parke (Talking Point, April 22) are sadly typical of the way the facts can get lost when it comes to much commentary about the Middle East.
Barns accuses Israel of foreign interference in Australia’s domestic politics and asserts the ALP has been “captured by the Israel lobby”. The claim would be laughable if it were not so insidious.
As recently as December, the ALP National Conference passed a resolution, supported by Labor foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong, calling on the next Labor government, as “an important priority”, to recognise “Palestine” as a state.
Penny Wong also announced that an ALP government will reverse, not merely review, the present government’s recognition of west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and spend an extra $20 million of Australian taxpayers’ dollars to support the Palestinians through UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the near east), which has been accused of allowing aid money to be diverted for terrorism.
The ALP leadership was fully aware aspects of these announcements would be criticised by most Jewish organisations in Australia. But the ALP made them regardless, making a nonsense of Barns’s claims about the Israel lobby having captured the ALP. So what is really behind these false claims? My organisation consists of elected representatives of Jewish communities across Australia, with some 200 organisations under its umbrella. Like other organisations representing the many ethnic and religious communities, we seek to articulate the interests and mainstream views of our community on policy including education, welfare, aged care and security.
Read the article by Peter Wertheim in the Mercury.