Bob Carr & His Imaginary Friend

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."
Bertrand Russell

Welcome though the leadership and common sense shown by Foreign Minister Bob Carr in saving the Prime Minister from herself and heading off a foreign policy disaster in the UN General Assembly is,  it should in no way blind us to the frankly risible simple-mindedness of his position on the Middle East conflict:

"'No, it doesn't change things,' an insouciant Foreign Minister Bob Carr told the Weekend Financial Review after he led a successful revolt against Prime Minister Julia Gillard's insistence that Australia vote against upgrading the status of Palestinians at the UN. 'Australia is, and always will be, a friend of Israel. They have their own democracy. They have a system that enables them to throw out prime ministers and ruling parties. They have the rule of law and their Supreme Court can overrule the government of the day on difficult issues.' However, 'good friends speak the truth to one another and, as a friend of Israel, we have a duty to highlight our concern about the settlement activity which is illegal under international law.'" (A loss for the Jewish lobby, Andrew Clark, 1/12/12)

Where to begin with this pollyanna-ish guff?

Israel is not a democracy. Only when the 5 million Palestinian refugees, who were disenfranchised (and so much more) in 1948, return to their homeland and get to vote in Palestine's first post-apartheid election will 'Israel' be a genuine democracy.

Now apart from that little caveat, the other slight problem I have with Carr's position is that, while he's now speaking out about Israeli settlements, he's never once mentioned, so far as I'm aware, the occupation itself - the trigger-happy troops, the land-grabbing Wall, the checkpoints and roadblocks, the closures and curfews, the arrests, imprisonments and torture, and the home invasions and demolitions; or Israel's Gaza blockade or killing sprees; or its apartheid laws; or its history of ethnic cleansing, wholesale theft and dispossession; or its serial aggressions and invasions of neighbouring lands (annexation optional). Presumably, all that's just water under the bridge for Carr.

As for Carr's delusional nonsense about Australia being a 'good friend' of Israel, don't even get me started.

The origin of his Israel fantasy - and this probably applies to many others in the Labor party - is of interest here. In establishing his credentials as a long-time Israel luvvie during an interview with Richard Glover on the latter's Drive program yesterday afternoon, Carr mentioned he'd read some pro-Israel pamphlet or other written by former Prime Minister and Labor elder Bob Hawke back in the 70s, and that, as they say, was that. Sort of, 'If it was good enough for Hawkie, it was good enough for me.'

Talk about the blind leading the blind. Here's where the credulous Hawke was coming from back then:

"[Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir] showed [Hawke, soon after the Arab-Israeli war of 1973] photographs of 18-year-old Israeli kids whose hands had been tied behind their backs and who had been shot in the back of the head. Mrs Meir wept with Hawke over the pictures. 'She said she felt guilty about it because if she had taken a pre-emptive strike [presumably on Damascus] those kids would not have been dead.' Hawke took the pictures back to Australia and showed them on television. He told the story about Golda Meir's agony again and again, and every time he did it, he wept. 'I came away from that,' he said four years later, his voice breaking, 'in an intellectual position which was incapable of change.'" (Bob Hawke: A Portrait, Robert Pullan, 1980, p 158)

If Carr has read a serious book on the subject of Palestine/Israel since then, I'd like to know about it.

Julia the Downhearted

Cry me a river:

"One of the things that I suppose has made it very difficult for me is that I am just so downhearted about the absence of any progress towards peace... Whether it [the UN resolution] was carried or whether it was lost, nothing is going to change on the ground and nothing is going to change in the peace process and that is what is so downheartening about it all... Have a look at the Congress legislation and what is self-actuating out of this... It's not President Obama's choice. What happened in UNESCO when they passed the Palestinian resolution [last year] was that they [the US] stopped funding UNESCO... That is why I actually think that this doesn't strengthen the hands of the moderate Palestinians. I actually think it will do the complete reverse which is why I am kind of downcast about it." (Quoted in Defiant PM digs in on Palestine, Geoff Kitney & John Kerin, The Australian Financial Review, 30/11/12) 

Downhearted? What bullshit! A person with no heart describing herself as downhearted? Give me a break: "Julia Gillard has declared the best way to help people on Newstart was to provide a strong economy after 2 Labor senators broke ranks with a majority Senate report and called for a boost to the single rate of the dole." (PM dodges commitment to Newstart boost, Lanai Vasek, The Australian, 3/12/12) [On the subject of Gillard's 'heart' see my 16/10/11 post What You See Is What You Get.]

Nothing is going to change on the ground? If only! Surely, as Prime Minister, Gillard cannot possibly be unaware that her soulmate in Jerusalem gave the thumbs up to another 3,000 settler homes in and around the city in retaliation for the UN vote. Or that prior to that "the [Israeli] government had issued tenders for the construction of 2366 units in 2012, more than twice the number built in the previous 3 years combined."* (See Israel's growing settlements are fast approaching 'point of no return', Jodi Rudoren, New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 3/3/12)

And if, solely for the sake of argument mind you, Gillard was really so downcast about events on the ground in occupied Palestine, did she ever speak to any of her Zionist soulmates about the matter? Did she, for example, have a word with Albert Dadon while supping with him in his flash new Italian restaurant in St Kilda in June?* Or take it up with Netanyahu minister Avi Dichter, while dancing the Hora with him in Sydney in December 2009, when he told there was no way, Jose, Israel was returning to the 1967 borders?** Or with the organisers of the Jewish National Fund Gala(h) Dinner that she attended in Melbourne in June 2008?*** Or...

Have a look at Congress? Can she be serious? Does Gillard really not understand what drives the US Congress in this matter? Such ignorance alone would be enough to render her unfit for leadership. The only other interpretation possible is that she's playing dumb, an equally damning state of affairs for a prime minister. Whichever direction she's coming from - sheer stupidity or guile or both - we're presented here with the incredible spectacle of a politician who is as putty in the hands of Australia's Israel lobby (her claim of coming to this matter "with my own perspective" notwithstanding) telling the public to look at another bunch of politicians who are as putty in the hands of their own Israel lobby - as Mearsheimer & Walt's classic, The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy makes clear:

"Not only does [the Israel lobby] exert significant influence over the policy process in Democratic and Republican administrations alike, but it is even more powerful on Capitol Hill. The journalist Michael Massing reports that a congressional staffer sympathetic to Israel told him, 'We can count on well over half the House - 250 to 300 members - to do reflexively whatever AIPAC wants.' Similarly, Steven Rosen, the former AIPAC official who has been indicted for allegedly passing classified government documents to Israel, illustrated AIPAC's power for the New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg by putting a napkin in front of him and saying, 'In 24 hours, we could have the signatures of 70 senators on this napkin.' These are not idle boasts. As will become clear, when issues relating to Israel come to the fore, Congress almost always votes to endorse the lobby's positions, and usually in overwhelming numbers."

No, she can't possibly go there for obvious reasons. And so she blames the Palestinians instead: "I actually think the adoption of this resolution will create further problems in terms of the peace process."

Allow me to conclude by drawing your attention to the following highly perceptive letter in Monday's Sydney Morning Herald. It encapsulates beautifully the mess that a leader can get herself into when, for whatever reason, she subordinates her country's interests to those of an apartheid state in full swing:

"So the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, averted a 'public humiliation' by abandoning her position on the Palestinian Authority's application for observer state status at the UN, demonstrating her 'poor judgment and feeble authority' within her party ('PM lives to fight another day', December 1-2). If this circumstance was a 'rare and real humiliation' for the Prime Minister, imagine then the scale of her humiliation and that of our government had they opposed the Palestinian proposal, only to wake-up to Saturday's announcement by Israel that it is proceeding with the expansion of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank with the construction of another 3000 housing units. It would seem that the Prime Minister should not only be eternally grateful to the Labor caucus for having saved her from being on the wrong side of history, but also for having prevented her further humiliation at the hands of Israel, as a result of its latest attack on the Palestinian people's struggle for self-determination and the so-called 'peace process'." John Richardson, Wallagoot

[*See my 7/6/12 post Spilling the Cannellini Beans; **See my 11/12/09 post Just Do It, Bitch!; ***See my 29/6/08 post Soft on Israel]

As Though They Owned the Place

The Palestinian homeland held a magnetic attraction for the early Zionist colons:

"Hitherto the Turks had been [the Arabs'] landlords indeed, but the key of the house had been the Arabs' and the Arabs' only. Now* the Arabs were presented with latchkeys to their own hearths, Zionist strangers were given identical latchkeys, and in a day or two were pointing out the rooms in which they had been born." (Palestine: The Reality, JMN Jeffries, 1939, p 410) *1919-1923

Of course, following the depredations of 1948, the only bit of Palestine to escape their 'attention' was the fragment known as the West Bank - but, mind you, that was only until 1967:

"It is like being in a small room with your family. You have bolted the doors and all the windows to keep strangers out. But they come anyway - they just walk through your walls as if they weren't there. They say they like your room. They bring their families and their friends. They like the furniture, the food, the garden. You shrink into a corner, pretending they aren't there, tending to your homework, being a rebellious son, a strict father or an anxious mother - crawling about as if everything was normal, as if your room was yours for ever. Your family's faces are growing pale, withdrawn - an ugly grey, as the air in their corner becomes exhausted. The strangers have fresh air, they come and go at will - their cheeks are pink, their voices loud and vibrant. But you cling to your corner, you never leave it, afraid that, if you do, you will not be allowed back." (The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank, Raja Shehadeh, 1982, p 133)

These days, having swallowed and digested the Palestinian homeland in its entirety, it's the humble Palestinian home that's now become the focus of these invaders. No one is safe. Nothing is sacred:

"There was an operation in the company next to mine where they told me that a woman was blown up by a fox*, her limbs were smeared on the wall, but it wasn't on purpose. They knocked and knocked on the door and there was no answer, so they decided to open it wet**. He put down a fox and just at that moment the woman decided to open the door. And then her kids came over and saw her. I heard about it during dinner after the operation, someone said it was funny, and everyone cracked up, that the kids saw their mother smeared on the wall." (Our Harsh Logic: Israeli soldiers' testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010, Breaking the Silence, 2012,p 40) *explosive device; **with explosives

"We got an order, some team went to an IDF benefit, and they told us to go into a house in Hebron. We'd been in that house 2 weeks before, same owners, same procedure. We didn't really understand why we had to do it. You went to search, or to stay there? The same procedure, to take down the family... that night, all of a sudden they tell us a TV crew's coming, they want to film you - it was Hanukkah - eating doughnuts. Slowly we started to realize that they sent us into the house to film us for television. Really. They sent us into the house to film us for television. Also, afterward, we left in the morning or the afternoon, there were warnings or something. And they sent us in to film us for television. That night we were on the Channel 2 news for 20 seconds, that's it. They prepared everyone, they brought us doughnuts to show that we were happy and strong." (ibid p 106)

"They go into a house, part of what's called 'personal pressure', the whole idea is that you go in... you rest inside the house. Meaning, you move the family to some room and you rest, you make a kind of war room in some room, in the living room or I don't know... whatever room you come across. But there was one time when they came, they went in, and they wanted to watch something on TV. So they took the family and put them in another room. The family was sitting near the TV, but the soldiers wanted to watch something, they took the family, moved them into a different room so they could watch something. There was an explicit rule not to do something like that, not even to sit on the chairs. When I went around, I normally went around with the deputy company commander, wherever he went around, he made sure the soldiers didn't... the team above me, they sat on the sofas and moved the family... What was it? What was it? I don't know, soccer, something with soccer." (ibid, p 107)

"We got an order to go into the Al-Amari refugee camp, I think. There was an order that now we're going every week to a refugee camp to 'go over it.' 'Going over it' means you search everything... We'd come in, send all the men to the school - from age 15 to 50... there were always all kinds of numbers. Whoever has a mustache goes to the school... they stay there all day. And with the women and children we go from house to house with maps. You go through each house and search everything. We're good kids, so we come, open the closets, look, move things around, put things back, like that, all day. That particular day was the World Cup final, and we're finished, also because it was the final, and because it was extremely hot. So we go, make our rounds, as usual we don't find anything, like in all those operations. Our officer was always into... we'd go in, like, a team of 5 to blow up every door. This was covered up. It wasn't really, it was to train us to blow things up. So we'd learn a bit. Also, we did it out of enthusiasm for this game: any door that was a bit difficult, even though we had a crowbar, hammer, all kinds of equipment, we had to blow it up." (ibid p 109)

It should come as no surprise that this extraordinary 'interest' in Palestinian homes is almost as old as the Zionist project itself. In fact, I think I may actually have stumbled upon the earliest recorded instance of the phenomenon. The year is 1920:

"The American Zionist Medical Unit (that which had obtained special Zionist passports for the journey), good as its work was in itself, would not hear of acting under the control of the Public Health Department. It toured the country without authorization, and was involved in quarrels with Arab municipalities because it carried out inspections of Moslem houses through its own uniformed inspectors, who entered them without the consent of the inhabitants and as though enjoying the very Governmental authority which its members had refused to accept for themselves." (Palestine: The Reality, JMN Jeffries, 1939, p 310-311)

Under the Influence at The Australian

No one does Palestine/Israel editorials quite like Murdoch's Australian. Yesterday's editorial, After UN vote, Israel digs in: settlements are a provocative but predictable response, is a case in point.

Far out, man, you reflect, after imbibing, no reefer madness was ever quite like this.  If altered states are your thing, Zionism beats psychedelics out of the proverbial strawberry fields... forever.

"It is all very well for Foreign Minister Bob Carr to join others across the world in denouncing Israel for pressing ahead with more Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, but they all would have done better to realise this is one of the consequences of the vote in the UNGA that granted non-member statehood to the Palestine Authority."

Right, so Carr and the rest of the world are responsible for Israeli settlements. Pretty trippy, eh?

"Certainly, the Israeli move appears short-sided and potentially self-defeating."

But not, apparently, when you're snorting Zionism:

"But, if it does nothing else, it underscores the foolishness of the Palestinian ploy in trying to achieve statehood through the back door at the UN rather than in negotiations with Israel."

Wow, the Israelis achieved statehood through the same back door at the UN in 1947, rather than in negotiations with the Palestinians, but far from underscoring their foolishness, that just underscores their brilliance, right?

Right... Did I not intimate that Zionism was pretty potent stuff?

Another thing it does is make you see double. For example, no sooner had I taken on board the current American foreign policy wisdom that there is no daylight between Israel and the US than I'm reading here in the Australian about two quite separate entities:

"The announcement of the new settlements is just the start of a range of retaliatory measures that the Palestinians now face, and not all from Israel. In the US Senate, for example, moves have begun to cut American funding to the PA by 50%, something that would cripple the Palestinian administration."

Now one of the downsides of inhaling Zionism is that the user can become markedly paranoid when contemplating even the most mundane of human activities, such as voting in the UNGA for example:

"A majority of the 138 'yes' votes came from countries who crowded into Tehran in August to acclaim Holocaust-denying Iran's accession to leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement."

Another is that the user loses all grip on reality, even projecting his own strange Herzlian life history - If you will it, it is no dream - onto those of other people:

"The UN vote has only served to encourage the PA in its adherence to a make-believe world in which it can achieve statehood through a so-called UN 'birth-certificate'."

But don't think that this kind of substance abuse is confined to just a few bad apples over at the Australian. No, the fish, as they say, stinks from the head down. That's right, Rupert Murdoch himself, who's been tripping out on Zionism for yonks, recently tripped up big-time over this particularly mind-bending little tweet: 'Why is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?' (See Murdoch sorry for 'Jewish owned press' tweet, The Australian Jewish News, 30/11/12)

Better to stay well away from the stuff I reckon.

While You Weren't Looking 2

Further to my post on December 1, While You Weren't Looking, new details have emerged in the extraordinary story of how the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was effectively dragged, kicking and screaming, from the clutches of the Israel lobby by leading members of her own party and forced to see reason, or at least some measure of same, on the Palestinian bid for observer status in the UN.

These are contained in the following report by Dennis Shanahan & Joe Kelly, Fears PM isolated on UN vote, in the December 1 issue of the Australian. The highlightings (and interleaved commentary) are, of course, my own :

"After Julia Gillard announced on Tuesday afternoon that Australia would abstain from a UNGA vote on state observer status for the Palestinians, two things happened. Our most important ally, the US, decided to make its 'disappointment' clear to the Australian ambassador in Washington, Kim Beazley, and the Prime Minister's 'special emissary to the Jewish community', Bruce Wolpe, was fingered as having an inordinate influence on Ms Gillard, who had intended to vote against the UN motion."

Yes, you heard correctly: the PM's special emissary to the Jewish community...

"During the previous 48 hours Gillard had been defied by her cabinet, rolled by caucus, abandoned by key supporters in the NSW ALP Right, put her leadership on the line and was accused of giving too much access and influence to Melbourne Jewish business leaders through Wolpe, a Jew, a former Fairfax executive and US Democrat adviser, and her special business and Jewish affairs adviser. It was no small matter for Gillard to defy advice from the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade, the strongly held view of Foreign Minister Bob Carr, previous policy positions, lobbying from Bob Hawke and his foreign minister Gareth Evans, most of her backbench colleagues and the 'demographically challenged' NSW Right, including her staunchest cabinet supporter from that faction, Water Minister Tony Burke. As one cabinet source told The Weekend Ausralian last night: 'The Prime Minister turned this into a leadership issue herself by demanding cabinet follow her and a failure of process and consultation beforehand'. The opposition to Gillard cut across factional boundaries and went beyond supporters of former prime minister Kevin Rudd. The success of the party in rolling the Prime minister will have reverberations into the election year and has diminished her authority.

"While it should have been apparent for months - indeed it was a year since Rudd, then foreign minister, wrote suggesting an abstention on the Palestine issue, that now Labor overwhelmingly favoured a less dogmatic approach to Israel - Gillard insisted Australia oppose the move for Palestinian observer status, which was carried at the UN yesterday. On Monday evening, cabinet convened for what was to become an exceptional meeting and an eventual decision that may set various benchmarks in Australian political history. It changed a basic tenet of Australian foreign policy, it broke longstanding bipartisanship on Israel, it ditched a tradition as old as 'Doc' Evatt, disappointed the US, Israel and the local Jewish community and may yet prove to be a more potent leadership issue for Gillard than the Australian Workers Union affair."

Shanahan and Kelly could well be correct here, although the idea that uncritical bipartisan support for Israel and all its works has been a tenet of Australian foreign policy since the days of Evatt completely overlooks the era of Australia's 'even-handed' approach to the Middle East conflict. As former Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam said in 1973: "Australia has a bi-partisan policy, a policy of neutrality in the Middle East. The ALP policy is substantially the policy which governments have pursued for the last quarter of a century in Australia." (Quoted in Bob Hawke: A Portrait, Robert Pullan, 1980, p 159)

"Before Monday's meeting DFAT and Prime Minister and Cabinet prepared an options paper - not a cabinet submission - which set out the pros and cons of the 3 UN vote choices for Australia; a vote against with the US, Israel and half a dozen small states, abstain on the basis of a principled position to get Israel to negotiate, or vote for Palestinian state observer status. Carr's position, spelt out to the Prime Minister, was to abstain at least, as was the majority position in cabinet, the outer ministry and the Labor backbench. Carr committed to Gillard before the meeting that he would not speak because it would be obvious the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister were at odds. After the cabinet meeting began and Gillard made it clear she intended to go for the minority position all hell broke loose in the windowless room opposite her office suite in parliament. Minister after minister lined up to tell her - some forcibly - her position was wrong on policy and political grounds. The opposition included Burke and fellow NSW Right minister Chris Bowen, with Burke's contribution particularly significant as the last of the NSW faction's cabinet ministers supporting Gillard's leadership. Even Trade Minister Craig Emerson, derided for his public loyalty to Gillard, was opposed. Only Victorian Right Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, later backed by fellow Victorian right-winger Bill Shorten, spoke up for Gillard's position. Carr couldn't contain himself after 10 ministers had spoken in his portfolio area and made it clear he was at odds with his leader.

"Carr's opposition was significant not only because he was Foreign Minister but also because he had been hand-picked by the NSW Right to replace Rudd in the ministry and will always be seen as a safe fallback as leader should Gillard fail. What's more, Carr, who founded the NSW Labor Friends of Israel, has assiduously worked with Palestinian groups for 17 years and is aware of the plight of Christian groups throughout the Middle East who want peace. After Gillard insisted the cabinet had to agree to her minority position and demanded 'cabinet solidarity', there was a bemused and sullen response, with Carr ringing backbenchers to foment rebellion and government whip Joel Fitzgibbon defying the Prime Minister's request to lock in the Right behind her. Fitzgibbon yesterday said that if Australia had adopted the Prime minister's initial position it would have looked like Australia was acting as a puppet of the US.

"Carr informed Gillard minutes before Tuesday's Labor caucus meeting that she needed to change her position or face a humiliating defeat that would undermine her authority. Gillard conceded and backed a compromise of abstention. In the face of Gillard's initial demand for support, cabinet ministers began to complain there was no real explanation for the position, arguing the US was not overly exercised, many Labor seats were affected by Middle Eastern populations, Christian and Muslim, and there was a policy argument for sending Israel a message 'as a friend'.

"Ministers believed Wolpe was providing 'inordinate access' to the hardline pro-Israeli elements of the Melbourne Jewish community who were having an undue influence on Gillard."

IOW, they felt that Australia's foreign policy stance on the Middle East conflict had effectively been contracted out to a bunch of apologists (as much by omission as commission) for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose real goal, a Greater Israel covering the entirety of historic Palestine 'from the river to the sea', runs counter to the 'two-states for two peoples' solution espoused by Labor.

"As a hard left-winger in her younger days..."

A truer picture of Gillard the student politician may be found in my 25/7/10 post Me, A Zionist? How Very Dare You!

" ... Gillard was not seen as a natural supporter of Israel or the US, but has worked hard at links with both, and her partner, Tim Mathieson, worked for Jewish Melbourne developer and Labor benefactor Albert Dadon. As deputy prime minister, Gillard visited Israel and was feted by the Israeli leadership. In Perth last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had indicated to Gillard that the US would prefer a vote against the Palestinian UN motion. It is understood Gillard's decision was determined from her own views and that Wolpe hadn't arranged a prime ministerial meeting with the Melbourne Jewish community for some time. Labor MP Michael Danby, who in Melbourne Ports represents the biggest Jewish community in Australia, said yesterday: 'I hope I am wrong and the UN resolution turns out to give the Palestinian Authority the confidence to begin direct talks with their neighbours, the best outcome that may result.'"

Such is the surreal level of misrepresentation of the true nature of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians by Zionist apologists such as Danby that he can get away with spinning a dispossessing colonial power, engaged in a decades-old process of screwing a dispossessed and colonised people, as a neighbour with whom the dispossessed and colonised need only to sit and have a chat with for a satisfactory solution to their 'differences' to emerge.

Just as you cannot, so the adage goes, fool all of the people all of the time, could it be that the reality of Israel's relentless colonisation drive in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem (indeed, a new round of settlement construction has just been announced in retaliation for the Palestinians' upgraded status in the UN) is beginning at last to dawn on Labor politicians? Hard to believe, I know, but I'd like to think that the cabinet/caucus revolt against Gillard, described here and in the Australian's earlier report, reflects, at least in part, a more realistic understanding by the ALP of what is actually taking place on the ground in occupied Palestine.

Baruch O'Farrell

At a pre-Chanukah function at the NSW Knesset last month, Premier Barry O'Farrell told the assembled worthies of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and pollywaffles from both sides of the Knesset that the Hebrew word baruch, which means 'blessed', is "the first word you will hear when the menorah is lit."

He then went on, or so the Australian Jewish News reports, to inform his audience that "baruch... is Hebrew for Barry," and joked that it "has a wonderful ring to it because it means I'm blessed." (Barry's our 'blessed Premier, 16/11/12)

Blessed indeed are the people of NSW to have Baruch O'Farrell, as he will henceforth be referred to in this blog, presiding over the affairs of their state.

And blessed too are the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth because Baruch O'Farrell has given the Shooters & Fishers Party dominion over them (or at least those in NSW national parks and coastal waters) to protect and - ahem - conserve, much as Lord Balfour of yore gave Chaim Weizmann's Zionist Organisation dominion over Palestine, "it... ahem... being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities" there.

So please join with me in congratulating Baruch O'Farrell on the occasion of the presentation to him, by The Zionist Council of NSW, The Zionist Federation of Australia and The World Zionist Organisation, of The Jerusalem Prize, a truly blessed event scheduled to take place in Sydney on December 10.

While You Weren't Looking

A 29 November report by the Australian's Troy Bramston, The day Carr won Mid-East conflict, tells the incredible story of how Australia's sitting prime minister came close to becoming a political casualty of the world's longest-running colonial saga, the Middle East conflict.

While the pundits and the public have been lately diverted by allegations stemming from Julia Gillard's past associations and dealings with the Australian Workers Union, something more subterranean, maybe even seismic, was taking place inside her party.

Bramston's report tells a number of stories.

There's the story of how an Australian prime minister's blind devotion to the state of Israel almost cost her the prime ministership.

There's the story of how her party, hitherto seemingly just as blindly devoted as their leader to the apartheid state, seems (apart from the diehards listed in my previous post) to have finally lost patience with it and revolted at the acutely embarrassing prospect of being seen on the international stage in the company of Israel and its gang of eight - the United States, Stephen Harper's seriously weird Canada, a collection of coconut palms, a clapped-out phosphate mine-cum prison camp for refugees, and two insignificant others.* Or, as ex-Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans put it pithily and persuasively, being seen 'on the wrong side of history'.

There's the story of how Foreign Minister Bob Carr, aided by party elders Evans and Hawke (a story in itself), managed at long last to loosen the Israel lobby's grip on the party's balls and, in doing so, wipe the smug grin off its face.**

And there's the story of how, just maybe, second generation Arab constituents are at last making their views known to the politicians who ostensibly represent them at a time when no Australian politician dares risk taking his constituents for granted.

Given that all the data is not yet in, one hesitates to draw too long a bow here. However, one thing seems certain, namely that something rather unusual has just occurred in the ranks of the ruling Labor government: a recognition, albeit hesitant, that Australia's and USrael's interests are not one and the same, the relentless propaganda of the Israel lobby to the contrary notwithstanding.

Given its importance, I've decided to reproduce Bramston's report in full. The highlights are, of course, my own:

"Julia Gillard's prime ministership must have flashed before her eyes in the early hours of Tuesday morning. In a night of high drama, she came dangerously close to precipitating a full-blown crisis that could have brought her leadership to a premature end.

"The Gillard government was pushed to the brink over the Prime Minister's insistence that Australia vote against Palestine's bid to upgrade its status at the UN. Just minutes before the caucus meeting, Foreign Minister Bob Carr stood in Gillard's office and told her, eyeball to eyeball, to change her mind or she faced a humiliating defeat. He pleaded with her to back an abstention on the UNGA motion to recognise Palestine as a non-member state observer. In the end, Gillard relented and a crisis was averted, but only narrowly. 

"It came after a series of dramatic meetings that tested loyalties and long-standing fealty to Gillard's embattled leadership. At one point, sources suggest, Gillard considered the unprecedented step of calling a meeting of the full ministry and parliamentary secretaries - 42 MPs and Senators - to bind them to her position in a full meeting of 102 caucus members. Even the attempt to coral [sic] the executive into supporting a view an overwhelming number of the cabinet and caucus opposed would have finished Gillard's prime ministership.

"Several ministers and backbenchers had been warning Gillard for weeks that the position on the UN vote, slated for Friday, needed to be finalised in order to instruct the ambassador to the UN, Gary Quinlan, on what to do. They were seized by the dramatic change in the caucus on the Israel-Palestine issue, with several factors that had been slowly building within Labor - Israel's settlement policy, increasing violence by settlers against Palestinians, and a right-wing Israeli prime minister who backed Mitt Romney over Barack Obama. There is concern both Israel and the Palestinian Authority are stalling on a two-state solution and that the outcome of the UN vote could positively energise those discussions. And, critically, there is the growing Muslim and Christian make-up of several key Western Sydney seats which have exposed MPs to different points of view on the Middle East. Some sections of the party suggest Victorian Labor is too close to the Israel lobby and does not fully understand the underlying changes in Sydney's outer suburbs. However, one Victorian minister said: 'How are we going to solve Labor's challenges in western Sydney by the way we vote at the UN?'

"Before the cabinet meeting late on Monday, Gillard met with senior ministers for two hours to discuss the UN vote. Carr sketched out the foreign policy argument for not opposing the Palestinian motion that he believed was in Australia's interests. Environment Minister Tony Burke, holding a seat in southwest Sydney, explained the shift in the community he had been feeling on this issue for a long time. Wayne Swan, Defence Minister Stephen Smith, Communications Minister Steven Conroy and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese also attended.

"Before this meeting, Gillard made an extraordinary request to the NSW Right faction convener and chief government whip, Joel Fitzgibbon. She wanted him to bind the Right behind her position. Fitzgibbon refused.

"Meanwhile, former prime minister Bob Hawke, a long-time ardent supporter of Israel, was arguing behind the scenes for Australia not to oppose the motion on Palestine. So had his foreign minister, Gareth Evans, who warned Labor MPs and senators not to be 'on the wrong side of history'.

"In cabinet, Gillard introduced the topic and stated her position. Albanese, Burke, Trade Minister Craig Emerson, Arts Minister Simon Crean, Resources Minister Martin Ferguson, Industry Minister Greg Combet, School Eduction Minister Peter Garrett and Immigration Minister Chris Bowen all spoke against it. Conroy and Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten, both of the Victorian Right, indicated support for Gillard's position. Carr also spoke, and made the case for not opposing the UN motion. Some ministers regard this as breaking his word to Gillard not to speak. Others say he had no choice but to offer his view, given the spirited debate.

"At the end of the meeting, Gillard summed up the debate and cabinet agreed to back her judgement, given she is Prime Minister. After what one minister described as 'a barrage of opposition', the meeting broke up in stunned amazement. Gillard remained steadfast. Few can understand why she so trenchantly held the view that it must be a no vote. Even her closest supporters were telling her it was a lost cause in caucus.

"After cabinet finished, a cabal of ministers met to discuss strategy and started contacting caucus members. The details of the cabinet meeting quickly reverberated around Parliament House. A motion to support the Palestinian bid was on the agenda for caucus the next morning and was likely to be supported. Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change Mark Dreyfus, from the Victorian Right, urged Fitzgibbon to have the national Right bind its MPs and senators in support of Gillard's position. Fitzgibbon rebuffed Dreyfus several times on Monday and again on Tuesday.

"Gillard met with key members of the left and right separately before the caucus meeting on Tuesday morning. She also met again with several ministers. The Treasurer alerted her to the dangers that lay ahead. Sources say it was not until then that Gillard was fully cognisant of the weight of numbers against her. Until then, one observer says, 'Gillard was all at sea'.

"Backbench MP Andrew Leigh had before parliament a motion urging a yes vote, to recognise Palestine as a non-member state observer at the UN. Leigh was reluctant to back away from it. Part of the deal reached with Gillard to support an abstention vote required Leigh to withdraw the motion, which he did. This was not a secret back-door attempt to white-ant a prime minister, it was conducted in full view to get Gillard to make what MPs believe is the right policy decision in Australia's interests. Carr worked as craftily as he had ever done as NSW premier to see his view prevail. Some say the vigour with which he pursued this has put him offside with some in the party. Others say it marks his arrival as a serious political player in Canberra. Carr will not be critical of Gillard's leadership. He believes she made the right call in the end. Moreover, along with eight other ministers, he saved Gillard's neck. As one familiar with the discussion said yesterday: 'If the caucus resolution on abstention didn't go under her feet, she would have gone under the ice'."

Watch this space!

[*Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Nauru, Czech Republic, Panama; **The front page of this week's Australian Jewish News, for example, features a photo of Carr and Defence Minister Stephen Smith with the header You've let us down and the following text: "Bob Carr and Stephen Smith were among the senior ministers who this week forced Australia to abstain on a crucial UN vote that helps hand the Palestinians a state via the backdoor rather than through negotiations with Israel."]