Bob Carr's 'Run for Your Life' 1

In my post, Kevin Rudd's 'The PM Years' (3/1/19), I mentioned several recent Australian memoirs that shed light on the tactics used by the Israel lobby to keep our politicians and journalists in line. One of these, Run for Your Life (2018), by former Labor Party foreign minister Bob Carr, has its own chapter on the subject - Me and 'The Lobby'.

These days, Carr is known for his efforts to push Labor in a pro-Palestinian state direction. This position, however, developed relatively late in his political career.

A mindset of blind support for Israel seems to have characterised most of the Labor Party since the creation of Israel in 1948, through to at least the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000. (It should be noted that NSW state MP George Petersen (1921-2000), and Bill Hartley (1930-2006), state secretary of the Victorian ALP from 1965 to 1970, were honourable exceptions to this tendency.) In fact, during this period, dogmatic support for Israel could almost be said to have become one of Labor's much-trumpeted 'values'.

I will examine the process of Carr's move from received to actual wisdom on the subject of Palestine/Israel, and the Israel lobby's response to same, in follow up posts. For now, here are excerpts from Carr's account of his early days, shilling for Israel:

"I had been a long-term supporter of Israel. In 1977, as a young trade union official, I had rented a room in the Trades Hall, bought some cask wine and invited Bob Hawke to come along and launch Labor Friends of Israel. I had remained its token president ever since and was always on hand to greet delegations and troop along to the [Israel] Independence Day celebrations... In 1983 I had visited Israel with a delegation of NSW Labor people... and had found it congenial enough, if not a revelation, admirable for its strong labour institutions. We met no Palestinians and were not driven around the occupied West Bank. At that time no Israeli historians had explored what had really happened in 1948. That would occur only when Benny Morris and others uncovered the story of massacres and expulsions that had forced the Arab population to flee. We just accepted the prevailing wisdom. It had been 'a land without a people for a people without a land': this was the Exodus narrative." (pp 174-5)

If Begin and Sharon's bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982 registered with Carr, he doesn't mention it.

"I and my Labor crowd were in the Zionist camp. I remember joking with John Wheeldon, a former Labor senator and a minister in the Whitlam government, about our special closeness to Israel - with its craggy old Labour Party in permanent power, its collectivised agriculture, kibbutzniks who were Holocaust survivors... I entertained the notion that in retirement I might sign up as a volunteer to talk about the Holocaust to counter Holocaust denial. It seemed to me self-evident that the Jews were in fact an exceptional people who - and I said this in many speeches at their community events - had made a contribution to civilisation well above their numbers. I didn't dream that in feeding this self-image I might be encouraging a strand of thinking that, among other things, had Jews enjoying a view of themselves as the 'Chosen People' and therefore entitled to uncontestable rights to the land God gave them. (ibid)

As an example of collective delusion, the ALP's historical love affair with Israel is reminiscent of many Western leftists' unquestioning support for Stalinist Russia. To be sure, at the time, the lobby will have lapped up the kind of adulation of Israel expressed by Carr and others in the party - to the point of taking Labor's support for its cause for granted. But, as the old adage goes, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. My next post will look at Carr's gradual awakening to the reality of Palestine/Israel.

To be continued...

Bob Carr: Nagging Questions Remain

Whilst I welcome politicians finally seeing the light on the subject of Jewish State, and going public with it, their enlightenment is invariably less than 100 watt.

Former foreign minister Bob Carr is a classic example of the phenomenon, as his address to the Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA) on Friday night, reprinted in part in The Weekend Australian, reveals.

Some excerpts, annotated:

"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." (Why I'm now a friend of Palestine)

Easy to believe? Who was easy to believe, Bob? Someone must have been in your ear at the time, spruiking the cause. After all, a party operative (Carr was not an MP until 1983) doesn't simply up and start a fan club for a foreign state apropos nothing. (Carr reveals neither why he set up - or helped set up? - LFOI in the first place nor whether he now regrets having done so. That late, great, always staunchly pro-Palestine NSW MP George Petersen describes Carr in the 80s as "an unabashed admirer of United States capitalism" with "a total commitment to the ideology of economic rationalism." (George Petersen Remembers, 1998, p 356) For the WikiLeaked details of Carr's and Hawke's links with US diplomats back in the 70s, see my 11/4/13 post Rats in the Ranks.)

And those Arab terrorists? You honestly couldn't see them for what they were, a national resistance movement with genuine grievances? As a voracious reader, did it not occur to you to read a book on the subject, one not pushed on you by those whispering in your ear at the time? And are you now prepared to concede, after all these years, that George Petersen (and Bill Hartley) got it right on Palestine? Just asking.

"Israel has gone from secular to religious... from cosmopolitan to chauvinist... 'The symbol of Israel used to be the kibbutz,' says a friend in the British Labor Party. 'It's now the settlement.' They have doubled in the past 54 months alone."

So when Israel, to use your terms, was secular and cosmopolitan, it was OK? You really had no idea that exploiting religion for political ends has been a central feature of Zionism from its inception? What part of Jewish State did you not understand? And don't tell me you still can't see that the kibbutz was just the settlement of its day? Is it really that hard, Bob?

"He (UK MP Richard Ottaway) and others in centrist politics, have been sickened by settler fanatics standing on seized Palestinian land declaring God gave them Judea and Samaria, and the Arabs are inferior anyway."

What about the kibbutz fanatics who perpetrated the Palestinian Nakba, Bob? Those who, by fire and sword, drove out the indigenous Palestinian population in their hundreds of thousands in 1948, stole its land, and refused its return?

But wait, what's this? 1948 finally gets a look-in:

"In 1977 when we launched Labor Friends of Israel we knew none of [the Palestinians'] narrative. Now Israeli historians... 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."

You really needed Israeli historians to explain why all those Palestinian refugees were twiddling their thumbs in refugee camps throughout the Middle East? Seriously?

And who are you to preach to those you once dismissed as mere terrorists? 

"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."

The takeover of Zionism by the fanatics? Blimey! You still haven't twigged to the fact that Zionism, from Herzl to Netanyahu, is fanaticism incarnate? 

Still, it's a measure of how just how much Israel has alienated so many in the Western political establishment (the recent House of Commons vote, dealt with in my 17/10/14 post Britain's Moral Responsibility for Palestine, is another case in point) that Carr can conclude his speech thus:

"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."

Rats in the Ranks

No surprises here:

"Bob Carr may have been Foreign Minister for only 12 months, but he started talking to American diplomats about internal Labor politics nearly 40 years ago. Previously secret US embassy and consulate reports incorporated into a new searchable database unveiled by WikiLeaks on Monday reveal that Senator Carr was a source for US diplomats seeking information on the Whitlam government and the broader Labor movement in the mid-1970s... A former Australian Young Labor president and then education officer with the NSW Labor Council, Senator Carr later 'expressed deep concern to [the US] consul-general over [the] impact of Labor disputes on the prospects of [the] Labor government'. The once confidential cables also suggest US envoys turned to him as a source of background information on Labor figures. For example, Senator Carr explained that a speaker at a pro-Palestinian protest in 1975 - left-wing Labor parliamentarian George Petersen - was 'a NSW equivalent of Victoria's [Bill] Hartley', another prominent Labor Left figure who developed close ties with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.* Senator Carr has long been a strong supporter of Australia's alliance with the US. He was a prominent participant in the Australian American Leadership Dialogue while serving as NSW premier." (Hawke & Carr were US sources on Whitlam turmoil, Philip Dorling, Sydney Morning Herald, 9/4/13)

The late, great George Petersen had Carr figured out decades ago:

"Paul Landa was succeeded as [NSW] Attorney-General by Terry Sheahan. The Cabinet vacancy was filled by Bob Carr, who is an unabashed admirer of United States capitalism, and who became Minister for Environment & Planning. He has been Premier since 1995. Together with the Treasurer, Michael Egan, he represents a total commitment to the ideology of economic rationalism." (George Petersen Remembers: The Contradictions, Problems & Betrayals of Labor in Government in New South Wales, 1998, p 356)

No surprises here either:

"Then ACTU president Bob Hawke was the US embassy's most valued Labor contact, conferring regularly with embassy officers and the consulate in Melbourne... Mr Hawke was especially critical of what he called Mr Whitlam's 'immoral, unethical and ungrateful attitude' towards Israel. He told the US consulate he felt unable to approach the Jewish community for campaign funds because of 'Whitlam's 'unprintable' even-handed 'unprintable' Arab policy'." (ibid)

George Petersen also had Hawke's number, describing him as a "reliable servant of the Australian capitalist class and United States imperialism." (George Petersen Remembers, p 185)

[*This is misleading. Saddam Hussein did not become Secretary of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party until 1979.]

Chalk & Cheese

Australian Labor politician circa 2011:

"The decision of the Greens Party-controlled Marrickville Council to 'boycott all goods made in Israel and any sporting, academic, government or cultural exchanges', is unfortunate and misguided at best. The council goes even further and suggests that any organisation or company with links to Israel should be boycotted also. It is not clear how much of ratepayer funds will be expended on this research... It's not as if there are no policy challenges or local issues facing the mayor of Marrickville." (Anthony Albanese, federal member for Grayndler, writing in Murdoch's Australian, 14/1/11)

Australian Labor politician circa 1968:

"Two similar members [of the NSW state parliament] were Reg Coady, the Labor member for the marginal seat of Drummoyne, and Davey Hunter, the Liberal member for the equally marginal adjoining seat of Ashfield from 1940 to 1976. Reg was a cripple. Davey was blind. During the 9 years when Reg was in parliament they were friends. When parliament sat late it was somehow touching to see them going home together in the same taxi. Both were bachelors, both had sisters as housekeepers, and both were local members par excellence. They very seldom spoke in parliament on an issue that did not directly affect their electorates. They were perhaps the ultimate in the enervating effect of parliament on class hostility. It was not difficult to imagine Davey as Labor, or Reg as Liberal.

"Reg was known affectionately as the member for bus stops and traffic lights. I got to know Reg quite well. I listened with interest to his tales of how he looked after the interests of his constituents whether it involved the Commonwealth, State or Local government, how he gave legal and other advice, and sometimes just a sympathetic ear. He pushed parish pump issues with a greater intensity than any other MP. He just never had time to engage in politics.

"For me Reg's example was rather frightening. Whilst I was willing and anxious to fight for any cause in which an injustice had been done, I did not believe that injustices were confined to the 60,000 men, women and children in my electorate." (George Petersen, state member for Illawarra (1968-1988), writing in his autobiography George Petersen Remembers: The Contradictions, Problems & Betrayals of Labor in Government in New South Wales, 1998, p 34)

George Petersen (1921-2000) campaigned strongly against injustice wherever he saw it, whether in his own electorate, in NSW, in Australia, or overseas. He campaigned against both South African and Israeli apartheid. Were BDS around in George's day, he'd have embraced it unequivocally. Certainly, you'd never have heard him say, 'Any lasting resolution to the conflict in South Africa cannot be at the expense of either blacks or whites', or, to quote Albanese, "Any lasting resolution to the Middle East conflict cannot be at the expense of either Palestinians or Israelis." George was the real thing. Albanese reveals himself to be just another parish pump hack.