The Greens shifts its Middle East policy
AIJAC National Chairman Mark Leibler has questioned The Greens’ credibility following the political party’s Middle Eastern policy announced on Sunday.
Greens leader Adam Bandt
Leibler said, “The enormous gap between reality and the Greens Party Middle East policies must raise questions about other Greens’ positions and will severely dent their credibility in the eyes of informed observers.”
The co-CEO of The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Peter Wertheim, said: “No Jewish Australian with any self-respect could possibly vote for the Greens after its recent policy decisions against Israel and the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.”
ZFA president Jeremy Leibler told J-Wire: “Their portrayal of Israel doesn’t reflect reality and their suggestion that Israel is a colonialist country is a bigoted attempt to reject Jewish indigeneity to the land. This position places the Greens in the company of the most extreme antisemitic groups.”
AIJAC Executive Director Dr Colin Rubenstein added, “The Greens kept silent about the merits of Israel’s last government – its most diverse ever – and their cynical attempt to exploit concern with the democratically elected Israeli government is part of their bullying attitude to the world’s only Jewish-majority state. The Middle East policies adopted by the Greens, quite simply, bring that party into disrepute.”
AIJAC Director of Community and International Affairs Jeremy Jones added: “The Greens Party decision reflects ignorance and arrogance. The rejection of the Gold Standard definition of Antisemitism, the IHRA Working Definition, exposes the Greens as having contempt for Jewish Australians and strips away any veneer that they are in any way a genuinely anti-racist party.
Further, the Greens Party’s new Middle East policy does nothing to promote peace between Palestinians and Israelis and should be irrelevant to Australian foreign policy development, but it potentially will contribute to facilitating more antisemitism in Australia.”
In a media release, The Greens state they are targeting Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli Minister for National Security, and Bezalel Smotrich, the Minister for Finance, describing them as “far-right figures who have in recent months been the subject of escalating international criticism for their role in increasing violence against Palestinians”.
It stated: “The shift does not endorse the official ‘Boycott Divestment Sanctions’ movement but does back the use of targeted boycotts, divestments and sanctions that are human-rights aligned.
This call by the Greens is underpinned by the Party’s position on upholding Justice and Human Rights in Palestine and Israel, updated across the weekend’s National Conference, reflecting months of worsening oppression against Palestinians by the Israeli government.”
Leader Adam Bandt said: “Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is increasingly a threat to both Palestinian self-determination and Israeli democracy, with far-right nationalist Ministers terrifyingly committed to violence against Palestinians.
Far-right Ministers are making justice and peace impossible, and it’s time Australia refused to meet with these Ministers and redoubled the push for peace.”
It’s time for the government to finally join the progressive Palestinian and Jewish communities of Australia in calling out these far-right ministers and speaking up for human rights.”
Greens Foreign Relations Spokesperson, Senator Jordon Steele-John, said: “The state of Israel continues to deny the right of self-determination to Palestinians and continues to dispossess them of their land. This injustice must be resolved in ways that will allow both Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace, security and equality, exercising self-determination as described by the United Nations Charter.”
He added: “Two of the most extreme figures in the government are Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bazalel Smotrich and it’s time for the Australian Government to join the increasing chorus of voices calling them out for their hate.
These two right-wing extremists are being rejected not only by foreign governments but by progressive Jewish people across the world, who see that their actions and language are further pushing the Israeli government to the far-right and rendering a two-state solution unachievable.”
The Zionist Federation of Australia condemned the one-sided and ahistorical policy adopted by the Australian Greens in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
ZFA President Jeremy Leibler said, “With the adoption of this extreme position, the Greens have dealt themselves out of any serious engagement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Mr Leibler continued, “The Greens’ statement blames only Israel for the lack of peace. The Greens’ apparent position that Israel is solely to blame for the Israeli-Palestinian impasse is undergraduate, at best, but speaks to a darker agenda. Let’s remember that in January this year, the Greens’ foreign affairs spokesperson, Senator Steele-John, expressed condolences for eight Palestinian terrorists killed by Israel, but was silent when seven Israeli civilians were murdered the following day.”
Mr Leibler concluded, “The Greens make sweeping statements about antisemitism but don’t actually talk to the community that antisemitism impacts. If you refuse to talk to the representative Jewish communities but insist on making statements about antisemitism, your views on that matter should be disregarded.”
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s co-VCEO Peter Wertheim told J-Wire: “The Greens have accused Israel alone of making a two-State outcome of the conflict with the Palestinians “unachievable”, thereby betraying wilful ideological blindness to more than a century of violent rejection of that outcome by successive Palestinian leaders. The IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism has the overwhelming support of Jewish communities around the world, as well as governments and civil society. The Greens’ rejection of IHRA is an insult to our intelligence and a transparently self-serving attempt to create as much space as possible for anti-Zionist forms of antisemitism.
Shocking in its extreme, the Greens’ new Middle East policies are at least now transparent. Peter Wertheim’s last comment regarding the two-state outcome of the conflict not being achievable due to violent Palestinian rejection of it over all these years, hits the nail on the head. It really is as simple as that, and yet the Greens and all the vehemently wailing Palestinian crusaders keep on looking past it as if it didn’t exist.
If one wishes to be critical of the Greens’ critique of the Occupation and the conduct of Israeli politics, then Colin Rubenstein might as well make accusations against a considerable number of Israelis as well who oppose what has happened to the country, most of them Zionists. And as he knows, the political mess in Israel is paralled by the mess in other states that have slid down the democratic scale, such as Poland or Hungary. And of course, millions of people under Israeli control have no vote.
Jeremy Jones is also very wrong. The IHRA is not a legal definition with any “Gold standard status” . It is draft, advisory, and flawed. As much has been argued by many Jewish groups internationally and here. In particular, the attempt to impose it on Australian Universities has failed. The majority of Australian universities have either rejected it or buried it under other policies dealing with racism and campus behaviour, or they have referred to other less politicized documents such as the Jerusalem Declaration.
Thus the attempt to tar the Greens, including Jewish Greens as antisemitic is irresponsible. A huge amount of work was put into developing this statement, including a clear acknowledgement of antisemitism.
Larry Stillman, it’s more than obvious where you’re coming from, repeating the same old mantra which if it wasn’t so damaging, would be simply tiresome.
1. ‘Occupation’ isn’t ‘Occupation’ in a formally recognised sovereign State, which Israel is. The land under discussion is disputed land due to the Palestinians never accepting the UN partition of it in 1947 and refusing all offers in regard to it ever since.
And ‘… millions of people under Israeli control have no vote’: both the Palestinians in the West Bank and those in Gaza have their own autonomous governments, for which they vote. The Israeli Arabs vote in the same way as do Israeli Jews in Israel’s elections.
Why do people such as yourself keep spouting untruths of this kind or using words such as ‘occupation’, ‘apartheid’, ‘genocide’, etc. etc.? Because as Goebbels once said if you use words often enough they become ‘truth’, and why is that, because people don’t bother to think. So, the war using rhetoric as a weapon does very well indeed.
2. Easy generalities such as those you make about Zionists have no premise to stand upon and are mere malicious snipes.
3. Turning to Jews who support the kinds of policy the Greens espouse is simply a pathetic ploy. There are all kinds of Jews, even Jews who hate their own identity, and these are used time and again by those who are antisemitic and anti-Israel to further their cause. In the main the Western world is not interested in talking to or listening to Jews who support Israel and are comfortable with the word Zionist, as I most certainly am. In context, it means simply a return to homeland, and as Jews were indigenous to the land of Israel, that other word tossed around so easily, ‘colonialism’, is also a misnomer.
3. There are a number of universities who have accepted the IHRA definition of racism, which you neglect to mention.
4. Nobody disputes, I’m sure, the amount of work put into the Greens’ drafting of this statement, however, it is destructive in nature for the State of Israel and for the possibility of any future rapport or negotiation with the Palestinians.
Surely there is enough going on in the world to warrant the kind of intensely motivated interest and action you and so many others show Israel and the Jewish people (world population .02%!, and not yet up to pre-Holocaust statistics). That in itself speaks of antisemitism.