Bob Carr Responds to Norrington:

"For the record, your feature article (Carr alarms pro-Israelis, 6/7) implies extreme language from me out of my recent speech making the case for recognition of Palestine and an end to the occupation.

"In my speech I was doing no more than advocating what every former head of Shin Bet and Mossad has advocated, although in more pungent language than mine. Paragraph 4 of the article has this dastardly Carr accusing Israel Israel of implementing a 'looting bill' and condoning 'war crimes'. Let's make it clear: this was Carr quoting Labor leader Isaac Herzog and Likud Knesset member Benny Begin. They were not Carr formulations. Two other Israeli prime ministers have used the word 'apartheid' - Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. The assassinated Yitzhak Rabin is reported to have used the same language.

"'Massacres' in 1948 was a conclusion of Benny Morris, an Israeli historian, who detailed this from Israeli army archives. As I said in an op-ed published in The Australian on November 8, 2014, Morris's revelations were a tribute to openness in Israeli society. And I began my speech by paying tribute to Jews who opposed the occupation - a number in attendance at the meeting - and said they were the best allies of the cause for Palestinian recognition. It would have been nice if that had been included." (Letter to The Australian, 7/7/17)

The irony here is that "Benny Morris' revelations," far from being "a tribute to openness in Israeli society," as Carr says, reveal only the extreme pressure brought to bear on any academic who departs from the Zionist narrative. Rather than stand and defend his revelations, let alone draw universal moral conclusions from them, Benny Morris long ago effectively reverted to the role of a shill for Israel. (My May 2008 posts on the subject make for harrowing reading, Bob. Just click on the Benny Morris label below.)

In today's Australian, there's more from Norrington on how Carr has been instrumental in "rolling" the NSW ALP's foreign affairs committee [dominated by Mike Kelly MP], which had recently assured Bill Shorten that the current "soft language" of its Palestine/Israel policy - "committing Labor in government only to 'discussing' recognition [of Palestine] with like-minded nations if there was no progress in peace talks," would be retained at the upcoming NSW Labor Conference. This Carr has done by coming up with an alternative policy, resolution 23 on the party's agenda, reportedly agreed to by shadow foreign minister Penny Wong, Jason Clare MP, and state secretary Karla Murnain, which the foreign affairs committee has to accept. "Carr's supporters," says Norrington, "wanted an even stronger resolution, but accept the revised Murnain wording," which they are "confident the federal conference will adopt next year." (How Carr turned ALP from Israel to Palestine)

Oh, and an op-ed by ALP political has-been-turned-defender-of-Israel, Peter Baldwin, in which, despite Zionism's age-old stranglehold over the ALP, he contends that "the Labor Party risks becoming a vehicle for sectional interests."

Seriously Weird Shit in Murdoch's Australian

Beyond its usual fear & smear, the Australian has carried some seriously weird shit this month. For instance, this 'opinion' piece by Peter Baldwin, billed as "a minister in the Hawke and Keating governments." Extract:

"Recently Bob Carr made a short speech at an event marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People... Extraordinary stuff, coming from one of the founders of Labor Friends of Israel 40 years ago... [not even] a scintilla of balance. All the violence is put down to Israeli villainy. The Palestinians... are treated as helpless victims, devoid of agency or moral responsibility. The Palestinian narrative is embraced wholesale, without qualification..." (Bob Carr has joined the hard-left Israel-bashers, 22/12/15)

Now what interests me here is not Baldwin's railing against Bob Carr. Bob has simply evolved on this issue. Woken up. Seen the error of his ways, partially at least. An all too rare phenomenon in a politician, but one to be applauded. Think Amazing Grace.

No, what really interests me is the phenomenon of Peter Baldwin. As in, What has possessed him to leave behind a long and comfy retirement and come out swinging for Israel in the Murdoch press? (See for example my 3/4/15 post Baldwin's Balderdash.)

Now I must confess to knowing nothing about this bloke's background. Maybe he's like Greg Sheridan. Maybe his mind simply shut down after an Auntie Poppy figure whispered in his ear at a tender age that he must never forget that the Jews are God's chosen people (See my 3/8/15 post Greg Sheridan: The Making of a Gentile Zionist).

If not, then why has he suddenly taken up the cudgels? Extraordinary stuff, indeed.

Then there's this other weird shit too. I mean, how does one explain the sudden possession, in the same week, of letter writers John Bell of Heidelberg Heights, Vic, and Peter R.Tredenick of Paddington, Qld by that most virulent strain of Jerusalem Syndrome  - Temple Mount Syndrome?

Behold:

"Palestinian sympathiser Bob Carr ignores an inconvenient fact when he claims Israel is guilty of eliminating the Arab character from the great Arab city of Jerusalem... The Temple Mount, the sacred site that is central to the Jewish religion, is located in Jerusalem and came into existence hundreds of years before the birth of Christ." (Bell, 5/12/15)

"If Muslims weren't invading every country they could, and had not taken Jerusalem by force for themselves, then rubbed salt in the wound by building the Dome of the Rock on top of the site of former holy Jewish temples, there would have been no need for the Crusades in the first place..." (Tredenick, 9/11/15)

Like I said, seriously weird shit, eh?

Baldwin's Balderdash

The Australian's tedious Zionist crusade against Professor Jake Lynch of Sydney University's Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies continues in the form of an opinion piece by a former Labor politician with a Zionist bee in his bonnet about Hamas.  

Peter Baldwin "was minister for higher education (1990-93) in the Hawke-Keating government." (Where the right to speak is howled down, 2/4/15)

There's the usual tiresome tripe about "mob rule" at Sydney University, "genocide by Hamas," and "the vicious persecution of Christians [presumably by Hamas] most of whom have now fled the territories."

Then there's the following eye-rolling stuff and nonsense: 

"Riemer gave a detailed defence of the disruption in a long article in the online journal New Matilda. This piece of casuistic nonsense..."

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. What's casuistry compared to the confusion that stems from a failure to distinguish between polar opposites? (Remember that this bloke's the convener of something called the Blackheath Philosophy Forum): 

"My sense is that increasingly anti-Zionism is a mask for occulted anti-Semitism."

Which, of course, is merely the obverse of the classic Zionist conflation of Judaism (faith) with Zionism (political ideology).

Just as bad is Baldwin's failure to see the issue of Gaza in its historical context:

"As for the stuff about failing to promote human flourishing, perhaps Riemer should consider that by turning Gaza into an armed camp... Hamas and its supporters and apologists are failing to 'promote human flourishing'."

Leaving aside the hypocrisy of describing Gaza as an "armed camp" while ignoring the Zionist movement's turning of what was once Palestine into the Middle East's largest and most powerful armed camp, Baldwin blithely ignores the fact that the rise of an armed resistance movement in the Gaza Strip was the inevitable result of Israel's ethnic cleansing of southern Palestine in 1948, the population of which was not only forced to seek refuge there but forced to remain there in violation of international law and common humanity so that their ethnic cleansers could get on with the business of stacking their former homes with Jews from all over. 

Maybe he thinks those refugees should have set up a 'Gaza Philosophy Forum' instead.