A tragedy foretold – a reader’s letter
This week’s decision of the National Labor conference calling on the next Labor Government to recognize Palestine as a state marks the end of bipartisanship on support for Israel in Australia. Its genesis firstly reflects the progressive Left’s repudiation of liberal values and ideals and with the false identification of liberal values with an “oppressive West “ and moral blindness toward contemporary expressions of antisemitism. That leads to by extension to the proposition that Israel as a country can do no right, and is therefore blamed for a large share of the ills that beset the Middle East On the other hand there is a total blindness about realities on the ground such as non-existence of a Palestinian State under the most minimal of preconditions as outlined in Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention the Rights and Duties of States, 1933.
In the words of Peter Wertheim, the Co-CEO of ECAJ in an article published by Jerusalem Center For Public Affairs in 2017 http://www.ecaj.org.au/2017/wertheim-jcpa/ “the four criteria of that Montevideo Convention are widely accepted as the minimum required by customary international law for the creation of a new State. Two of the criteria – a single, centralized government and the capacity to enter into relations with other states – are manifestly not satisfied by any Palestinian entity.”
On the other hand, there is a collective amnesia about the genocidal intent of Hamas foundational document. How on earth can Hamas be recognized by Israel and thus the West as a legitimate partner in a Peace process?
Secondly, another antecedent to the ALP Palestine resolution is the ineptitude of the Morrison government in recognizing “West Jerusalem “ as the legitimate capital of Israel a change of policy which in the words of Israel’s Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi “to our regret, within this positive news they made a mistake.”
Sam Salcman
Melbourne
Undoubtedly the Morrison move to recognize West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital exposed the hypocrisy of both major parties two state policy to resolve the Israel-Palestinian imbroglio. Nevertheless, any academic study of recent successive Labor Party national conferences indicates the affirmation of a Palestinian state was the trajectory to which it was quickly moving. A combination of its Left with rigorous anti-Zionists on its Right more than guaranteed that outcome. It was this result which I was suggesting in a piece in the Australian Jewish News, “Will she be Right” as long ago of June 21, 1989. The growing influence over time in inner city electorates of particularly Sydney and Melbourne traditionally represented by the Australian Labor Party has guaranteed this.