Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.
(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Thursday 10 April 2014

Former Foreign Minister Bob Carr, The ABC, & "The Melbourne Jewish Lobby"

Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr was interviewed by ABC presenter Sarah Ferguson yesterday about his imminently-to-be-published memoirs, The Diary of a Foreign Minister, an interview aired on the ABC's "7.30" current affairs program last evening (Wednesday):

Here's part of the transcript, as provided here:
Ferguson: Bob Carr was Australia's Foreign minister for just a year and a half, but the Labor heavyweight found enough material to write a 500-page book on his time in the job. In The Diary of a Foreign Minister, Bob Carr details what he sees as some of the biggest problems in Australian politics. He's singled out the Israeli lobby, saying its influence on Australian politics has reached an unhealthy level.... [Emphasis added here and below]
To get the gossip and the geopolitics, I met up with Bob Carr earlier today in Sydney.Bob Carr, welcome to 7.30.
Carr: Pleasure to be with you.
Ferguson: .... Let's go to the book. The strongest criticism of all in the book is aimed at the Melbourne Jewish lobby. Now, there are lobby groups for every cause under the sun. What's wrong with the way that group operates?
Carr: Well the important point about a diary of a foreign minister is that you shine light on areas of government that are otherwise in darkness and the influence of lobby groups is one of those areas. And what I've done is to spell out how the extremely conservative instincts of the pro-Israel lobby in Melbourne was exercised through the then-Prime Minister's office. And I speak as someone who was in agreement with Julia Gillard's agenda on everything else. But I've got to say, on this one, I found it very frustrating that we couldn't issue, for example, a routine expression of concern about the spread of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Great blocks of housing for Israeli citizens going up on land that everyone regards as part of a future Palestinian state, if there is to be a two-state solution resolving the standoff between Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East.
Ferguson: You're saying that the Melbourne Jewish lobby had a direct impact on foreign policy as it was operated from inside Julia Gillard's cabinet?
Carr: Yeah, I would call it the Israeli lobby I think that's important. But certainly they enjoyed extraordinary influence. I had to resist it and my book tells the story of that resistance coming to a climax when there was a dispute on the floor of caucus about my recommendation that we don't block the Palestinian bid for increased non-state status at the United Nations.
Ferguson: They're still a very small group of people. How do you account for them wielding so much power?
Carr: I think party donations and a program of giving trips to MPs and journalists to Israel. But that's not to condemn them. I mean, other interest groups do the same thing. But it needs to be highlighted because I think it reached a very unhealthy level. I think the great mistake of the pro-Israel lobby in Melbourne is to express an extreme right-wing Israeli view rather than a more tolerant liberal Israeli view, and in addition to that, to seek to win on everything, to block the Foreign Minister of Australia through their influence with the Prime Minister's office, from even making the most routine criticism of Israeli settlement policy using the kind of language that a Conservative Foreign secretary from the UK would use in a comparable statement at the same time.
Ferguson: Now, in that period, you give a very frank account of cabinet discussions - the cabinet discussions about a vote on the status of Palestine in the UN. Now during those cabinet discussions, you effectively rolled Julia Gillard. Do you have any qualms about revealing the details of those cabinet discussions?
I didn't see the program, but I have just watched the ABC News at 8 a.m. (it's Thursday morning here at the time of writing) which led with Carr's criticism.

Presenter Virginia Trioli, in introducing more on the story, which included input from two pro-Israel stalwarts, AIJAC head Mark Leibler and Labor MP Michael Danby (both of whom scoffed at Carr's remarks, with Danby using the word "bigot")  twice referred to "the pro-Israel Jewish lobby".  Half an hour later, in referring to the story, she modified that to "the pro-Israel lobby".  After all, in the 8 a.m. bulletin there was a passing reference to the pro-Israel stance of the now leader of the Opposition ALP, Bill Shorten, who is certainly not Jewish.  But was Ms Trioli earlier making a Freudian slip, or her own dig at "the lobby"
or at Carr?  I guess we'll never know.

But Carr's remarks constitute the big Aussie news story of the day.

Update: see pro-Israel Melbourne columnist Andrew Bolt's take here

21 comments:

  1. http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.584898

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    1. Carr has been talking further to the Aussie media in a press conference, in which he has suggested how the "Lobby" might conduct itself! I lack the precise details as yet.

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  2. Dear Daphne, you do have a stronger stomach than I, to watch la Trioli. I dont (even though my taxes pay for her and her husband*] since her racist comments in the wake of the Boston Bombing, where she commented: "...they [bombing victims] were mere rich white folk.." Trioli does not do Freudian slips, as you so generously give her the benefit of the doubt.

    As to the 7.30 report: I watched it like I would watch a car accident in slow motion and had to reach for the vomit bucket. If I may be teutonically blunt: Bob Carr is nothing less than a Jew Hater. "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are probably among his favorites. Although he stopped short before accusing the "Jewish" Lobby of murdering little children and drink their blood, his assertion that the "Jewish" lobby greased politicians' hands with money-money-money is a standard device of Jew Haters, to keep the stereo type alive.

    (*) The (ironically imo) named "Fact Finder" at "our" ABC.

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    1. Crumbs, Rita, like Empress Trudy (a much-appreciated frequent commenter on here whom I reckon sometimes goes a tad OTT) you don't believe in pulling punches!

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  3. May I declare that I have not made a single donation to the ALP in nearly forty years. Not so much as a cent.

    I think it is important to put this on the record in the current climate. . As I am not a donor to the ALP, Carr could not possibly have any problem with me. It's only the donors who this creepy ugly little man sees as a threat to the party and apparently to him.

    But only if they are Jewish of course. Far and away the biggest donors to the ALP, the trade unions, and big business, obviously have no pernicious influence on party policy at all.

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  4. Bob Carr is a nasty little pin headed bigot and ignoramus which with all due modesty I have been pointing out at every opportunity for some considerable time now. Ever since his grubby little whine about being left lost for words on the steps of the mosque in Lakemba a few days before the Mufti of Australia flew off to Gaza to express his solidarity, and that of Australian Muslims, with Hamas.

    It's good to see that he has now gained international attention for this.

    .http://cifwatch.com/2014/04/09/does-the-guardian-object-to-bob-carrs-antisemitic-insinuation/#comments

    What a sleazebag.

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  5. Carr is a traitor and back-stabber.

    He got to where he was thanks to Gillard Now he is rubbishng her.

    She put him in the position of Foreign Minister to watch her back and instead he stabbed her in it.

    This book has gained him no friends, other maybe than the odious 'Friends of Palestine' groups.

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  6. I just sent BC the following tweet

    ‏16 min
    @bobjcarr http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/179474#.U0ZlnZuKC0 … …
    Is Australia at war with Israel? You say yes, I say no. Who's right? Ask The Beatles. Or @LeiblerMark

    Well, to him Australia is indeed at war with Israel!

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  7. Replies
    1. Yes, I tend to think that the worst Liberal government is better than the best Labor government...

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  8. The problem with dealing with hate filled paranoids is that they're impervious to all thoughts but their own. Here in the states, if you point out to one of these loons that 'the lobby' such as it is, doesn't even rank in the top 50 or 75 in the US in terms of money or staffing when compared to a laundry list of other special interests from oil and gas to cars to telecom to airlines to rail and trucking to health care to pharma, home building, banking, finance, commercial real estate, aerospace, tv radio and movies, computers and consumer electronics, power companies, agribusiness, the retired, unions, the chamber of commerce, state and local government and foreign nations and THEIR economic interests they just stare at you for a second and say "Well that's just what THEY want you to believe - and THEY control all of those other things anyway!!!"

    It's almost as if every ex-FM in the Anglosphere world finally lets loose their inner Mel Gibson crackpot.

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  9. Bolt's article is good.

    I believe the community did this brave friend a grave disservice by not speaking out in his defence against even the most vile attacks on his integrity and reputation during the 18C case no matter what you might think about the underlying issue.

    The treatment of "light skinned" aborigines who identify as aboriginal is one thing Bolt was just plain wrong and offensive and he deserved to be told and why. He deserved to be told comprehensively and in detail.

    But I don't recall that happening. Instead we got this 18 C prosecution that was allowed to carry the perception at least of being very much a Jewish affair.

    I still recall the shock at the shrillness and the severity of the attack on Bolt and what he said in the opening address. Almost hysterical. I honestly remember thinking that at least the judge is Jewish too.. He will know that this is way over the top and even more offensive than what Bolt said. He will throw this thing out.

    Not a bit of it as we now know.

    These guys must really hate Bolt. The Green/Commo/Left has always hated Bolt that again borders on hysteria and a large part of the reason for that is that Bolt is a friend of Israel and the Jews

    How much of this attack on Bolt was politically motivated any way? The Left hates Bolt and really really hates Murdoch and News Limited and here was an opportunity to ping the bastards big time? All of it?

    And so now the communal leadership is about to lose 18 C for the Jews and all the others who need it and it will be replaced with something that is deigned to ensure that a Bolt prosecution will never happen again

    These things depend on perceptions. You can be certain there is little sympathy in conservative circles for a community asking for protection against even the most sinister Holocaust deniers when there is a perception that this is a community does not even stand by its own mates one of whom had just been vilified in open court in an attack that itself bordered on Holocaust denial

    Especially when there is a perception in some places that it was mainly a Jewish driven thing anyway

    Now a certain creepy former politician with an unsavoury reputation has just alleged that when he was foreign minister, Middle East foreign policy was sub-contracted to parties acting for the Jews who controlled the party when it come to issues about Israel and "Palestine"

    Not a great era in the history of the Melbourne community in particular. After all this is the city of the Melbourne Age which is not past publishing antisemitic cartoons. Friends like Bolt are not as common on the ground as you might wish. That is because it takes courage.

    So as Bolt has suggested there are lessons to be learnt by Australian Jews and their leadership from this affair. And one them surely is that if your mates are under attack then you stick by them. Especially if he is being vindictively attacked with real malice at least in part by a a political class that seriously hates Bolt in large measure because he is such a good friend of Israel and the Jews.

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    1. It's a good thing the community has such an all powerful far reaching "Lobby" to protect its interests. It would be in real shtuck without it.

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  10. More re this odious man (hear him on the video interview here):
    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bob-carrs-texts-to-gillard-reveal--extraordinary-influence-proisrael-lobby-had-on-former-pm-20140410-36dys.html

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  11. An old Aussie Labor historian adds his ten-cents worth, with references to "the Jewish Lobby" - http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/11/the-zionist-lobby-under-fire-in-oz/

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  12. Daphne. Today's Bolt Report should be on line. It was good.

    Geoff you need to read the Judgement in Bolt's case.

    http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/FCA/2011/1103.html?stem=0&synonyms=0&query=andrew%20bolt

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