ALP resolution analysed
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has analysed the resolution passed at the ALP conference in Melbourne dealing with the Israel-Palestine conflict.
In a joint statement, ECAJ president Robert Goot and executive director Peter Wertheim have clearly set out their analysis of the resolution.
Robert Goot
“The resolution passed by the ALP at its 2015 National Conference is a substantially modified and more balanced resolution than the motion moved by Bob Carr at the NSW State ALP conference in 2014.
The first paragraph of the resolution restates the current ALP policy platform without change.
The resolution also recognises for the first time that Labor is committed to the principle of ‘two States for two peoples’. The goal stated by many anti-Israel activists that Israel will eventually become another Arab state is thus ruled out.
Further, the resolution commits Labor explicitly to continuing to support for the time being a ‘negotiated settlement’. This is contrary to the current Palestinian strategy of unilateralism and refusal to negotiate.
Unlike the Carr motion, the national conference resolution does not blame Israel for “the deaths of innocent civilians” in Gaza or call for an end to Israeli incursions into Gaza. The resolution expressly acknowledges that Israel’s actions are a “response” to Hamas rocket attacks, and are therefore defensive, and calls instead for “maximum restraint” in carrying out that response.
The re-statement of positions which the ALP adopted while in government on the question of borders, land swaps, the illegality of settlements, refugees and Jerusalem is nothing new. The criticism of statements made by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in the run-up to the Israeli elections earlier this year is new, but does not come as a surprise.
Peter Wertheim
Significantly, the national resolution rejects outright the ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel’. There was nothing similar in the Carr motion.
Finally, the resolution commits a future ALP government to ‘discuss’ taking certain steps if ‘there is no progress in the next round of the peace process’. It would always be open to a future Labor government, or indeed any government, to ‘discuss’ what steps to take in response to international developments. It does not require a formal resolution to do so.
The worst part of the proceedings was not the resolution itself but the speech by its seconder, Wendy Turner from Queensland. Many of her comments were an insufferable marriage of self-righteousness and ignorance. For example, she asserted that Australia should recognise a State of Palestine now “just in the same way that in 1947 the international community determined through the UN to provide a homeland for the Jewish people. That was when Australia recognised Israel”. This is a glaring error. Australia’s support at the UN General Assembly in 1947 for the partition of the country into a Jewish state and an Arab state was in no way a recognition of the State of Israel. Australia only recognised Israel in January 1949, that is after the State was established, had successfully resisted a military invasion from five neighbouring countries and proved its viability. The only accurate part of her speech was the acknowledgement that the UN endorsed the establishment of Israel as a homeland for ‘the Jewish people’.”
Australia’s B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) has today welcomed part of the resolution passed at the ALP National Conference which rejects the “boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel”.
Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the ADC, issued the following statement:“This public repudiation by the ALP National Conference of the pernicious and divisive BDS movement is to be welcomed. This principled statement makes it unequivocally clear that hateful double standards, antisemitism and the delegitimisation of Israel have no place in the ALP.
The conference did the right thing, and we are heartened that the delegates understood that waging an economic war against Israel and unfairly maligning the Jewish state will not bring Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table and will not promote dialogue and peace between the two parties. In fact, The BDS deepens divisions between Israelis and Palestinians and makes the possibility of reconciliation less likely.”
Maximum restraint. Are you mad??? So the bastards can continue killing innocent Israeli’s. Whats wrong with everybody, go back to your history books and see/read who was/is and always will be the rightful owners of the land of Israel. Not just what is now considered Israel.
And even prior to the invasion by SIX Arab armies, the Arabs of the Land of Israel had initiated aggression against the Jews, inspired by the racist ideology of Hitler’s Palestinian Arab adviser on Jewish affairs, Haj Amin al-Husseini.
The bulk of the ALP lusts for the phased extinction of Jewish national self-determination. In pursuit of that quest they fraudulently misrepresent Yitzhak Rabin’s recipe for a resolution of the conflict; they wilfully and arrogantly flout international law, custom and convention.
Some of their leading lights’ rhetoric is calculated to incite antisemitism as a bludgeon with which to intimidate supporters of Israel’s rights under law.
Some ALP extremists go so far as to implicitly advocate disenfranchising Jews, when they decry Jewish representations on behalf of Israel and on behalf of genuine peace rather than capitulation.
“It can’t happen here,” eh?