NSW Labor group vows to oppose Bob Carr on Israel
The NSW Labor Israel Action Committee (LIAC) has vowed to continue to oppose former NSW Premier Bob Carr’s continued activity on Israel – after successfully forcing him to recognise Israel’s right to exist within secure and recognised borders”.
Bob Carr addresses supporters at the conference
LIAC said it would continue to strongly advocate for a more balanced position on Israel and pledged to continue to challenge Mr Carr who has conducted what some have described as “obsessive campaign” for the last three years.
LIAC said it was pleased that it was successful in forcing Mr Carr to pull back the hostile Israel motion by recognising Israel’s right to “exist within secure and recognised borders”.
Walt Secord
LIAC patron and NSW Parliamentary Friends of Israel deputy chair Walt Secord said: “There was considerable discussion within the ALP since LIAC met on July 2 to find a balanced and sensible position on Israel.”
Mr Secord said: “This was a tough battle and involved hours of internal debate and discussion, but it was important to restore balance and to fight for a two-State solution and Israel’s right to exist within safe and secure borders.”
“No one should forget that the original motion was deeply offensive to those who want a just and peaceful settlement; the Labor Israel Action Committee could not allow the unamended motion to go ahead unchecked and unfettered.”
“The Labor Israel Action Committee was re-assured by the support from the Israeli Labor Party, Jewish community, the union movement and rank-and-file Labor members, who wanted to see a peaceful resolution to the Middle East conflict, but also wanted to see an appropriate recognition of Israel,” Mr Secord said.
Mr Secord added that LIAC would continue to meet and respond when appropriate.
In a joint statement Anton Block, the president of The Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the organisations executive director Peter Wertheim said: “Clearly, Israel still has many friends within the ALP and they are to be applauded for ensuring that Bob Carr’s original motion was significantly amended before it was passed. The amendment expressly recognises Israel’s right to exist within secure borders. It is disturbing that the original motion moved by a former Foreign Minister of Australia was so manifestly one-sided and unfair.
Although it was a significant improvement upon the original Carr motion, the final resolution urges the next Labor government to “recognise Palestine”. If acted upon, this would open the door to a grave weakening of Australia’s traditional bipartisan consensus in favour of, and the ALP’s commitment to, a just and peaceful resolution of the conflict.
No fair-minded person would place the entire blame for the absence of a peace agreement on Israel. Since 2000, Israel has made at least three peace offers to the Palestinians which included the establishment of a Palestinian State over territory equivalent in area to 100% of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has repeatedly called on the Palestinians to return to negotiations without preconditions. The Palestinians have refused.
Labor leaders Bill Shorten, Penny Wong, Chris Bowen and Tanya Plibersek have all confirmed that a future Labor government will not be bound by the NSW ALP Branch resolution, and will act independently in the light of legal and other expert advice. Nevertheless, the one-sided and doctrinaire language and motivation behind the original Bob Carr motion,and similar resolutions passed by other State branches, does the ALP a disservice.
Recognition of a state is supposed to be an acknowledgement of an existing reality, not an act of wishful thinking. No Palestinian entity currently exists which satisfies the universally accepted criteria for statehood under international law. There is no provisional Palestinian government that controls both the West Bank and Gaza, and thus no Palestinian state to recognise.
Further, by requiring nothing of the Palestinians in return for recognition, the ALP resolution seeks to pressure only one side, Israel, to make unilateral concessions, without requiring the Palestinians to accept reciprocal obligations as a condition of statehood. This can only serve to discourage both peoples against making the hard compromises that will be essential for a just and lasting peace.”
So which ‘Palestine’ and ‘Palestinians’ are you so steadfastly supporting, Adrian?!! Methinks you are somewhat confused now that you have been presented with the facts and don’t know quite how to extract yourself from the argument you’ve got yourself into. ‘Groups of Arabs’ here and there, etc., it’s all making less and less sense.
Otto is quite right. 1, you are useful by way of your outrageous statements for Zionists (and others interested in truth and history) to clarify the matters so that all who happen to read will understand, and 2, responding in specific detail to your assertions would go beyond respect for one’s own expertise and, additionally, sense of integrity. Time to stop the games.
Your response to David Singer, ‘In Palestine’, doesn’t even make sense, Adrian Jackson. As David says, there were no Arabs in the region at the time, not until 600 years later. Time for you to bow out, unless you have the courage to admit the inaccuracy of your statements.
It is quite obvious that historical accuracy, rational analysis are not the reasons Adrian Jackson is dwelling merrily on this topic. He is intent on provoking cum annoy. He is, however, useful in as much as aiding dedicated Zionists in the articulation of responses to outrageous statements, not that their range of inane, irritating ideas is that vast nor that they would be difficult at all to demolish.
To mine, responding in detail to specific claims made by Adrian is well beyond/bellow the self respect I have for my training as a historian.
No need to attack the messenger.
Adrian, in the words of Graucho ” that’s what you thought “, re not shooting the “messenger”…
( “A Night at the Opera” Graucho insults man in restaurant. Man says: “I didn’t come here to be insulted !!”, Graucho replies: “That’s what you thought !”. )
Now you know, Adrian Jackson, and there is plenty more where that came from.
The Marx brothers are all dead but I remember when Graucho had a show on Australian TV decades ago.
Far too tempting to let this quip re Messenger Adrian survive without belting it for all it is worth -actually very little-.
Once claiming one is just a mere conduit, a messenger, we must accept that the “medium” is devoid of any responsibility for the contents of the “message”, that the mere “presenter” of whatever is stated is not involved in the construction of the notions introduced, hence not considered sufficiently endowed to contribute to the contents of the message , a mere servant incapable to conceive anything apart from the route that must be taken to the destination of the message, not unlike, to be nice, a carrier pigeon, although there are quite a few other reliable domesticated beasts trusted with similar jobs. I did say “domesticated” and that is awfully civil of me !
At long last, I agree with Adrian.
There were people in the region and the invasion Israelite killed some like at the siege of Jericho were we are told ever man, woman, child and animal in the city who survived were sacrificed to God. The people who foundered Carthage in North Africa came from present day Palestine too.
The Palestinians have always been in the region before, during and after the Israelite era until the Romans eliminated them culminating in the Masada siege were the remaining Jewish defenders killed themselves rather that be captured.
The Palestinians were not Arabs. The Muslim religion followed hundreds of years later and its followers came from present day Saudi Arabia who were another group the Arabs.
Adrian
Thank you for finally agreeing that the “Palestinians” invented by the PLO in their 1964 Charter have no association with or connection to the people living in Eretz Israel or Palestina as it was renamed by the Romans six hundred years earlier.
It took a while for you to come to this admission but as they say – better late than never.
When delving into matters historical it like NOT being an amateur dentist or gynaecologist, Just because you have teeth it does not make you a dentist etc. Just because one can read , even some books on history, one is not a historian. Same with Adrian Jackson.
True, Cartagians by the year 100 b.c.e. known by the Romans a Puni, is believed to be the good ol’ Philistines. They were found in Cartage PRECISELY because they all left the same region where our Jews have been living for centuries. The Philistines were Semites, indeed, and they lived by the Mediterranean shores whereas the Jews on the higher, hilly regions. We know hat simply because pig bones were discovered in the areas where the Philistines resided, unlike the regions populated by Jews.
Here is the crux of the argument.
Semitic Philistines, LEFT OUR ISRAEL completely and their spaces were also completely occupied by the Jews. Of course there were wars and, yes, those bloody aggressive, domineering Jews took over the ENTIRE land. Nobody else, let alone any arab, set up tent there.
What followed in Cartage, Northern Africa, was the attack by the Puni under Hannibal upon Rome and the subsequent Punic Wars by Scipio etc. which OBLITERATED Cartage and cleared up Cartage of Puni/Philistens. NONE of them returned – in Zionist manner – to Israel, but, remnants found their new home in…..Malta. That is why and how the Maltese are Semites etc. The rest were assimilated mostly as slaves within Rome.
So, Adrian, when you want to impress with accurate knowledge, just do it the accurate, knowledgeable way, particularly as you attempt to teach as, Jews, how to cook gefilte fish, or suck eggs, for “that” matter !!!
Which came first the chicken or the egg?
Sorry, Adrian, to impose on you the yo(l)ke of a relevant/intelligent retort…..
Why do you call presenting you with historical facts ‘getting personal’, Adrian? It’s already obvious there won’t be an intelligent, objective answer coming from you to this question, so I’ll answer it myself. You’re game-playing and you have an agenda against Israel and Jews. No amount of conversation with you, or reasoning, will change one iota what you think because it’s what you want to think. And it’s that that can be called ‘personal’.
Why do you bother contributing to this forum under such circumstances? Ask yourself that question.
Just presenting points that some may not agree with.
Carr is only voicing the views of others…irrespective of what side of the political fence they are.
Tim Fisher off the top of my head after reading his book had his sixth pennith worth on record, retired bishop Pat Power another.
Of course both influenced by Rome already setting a precedent signing up with the PLO to get a foot in…..
Before Bob Carr starts to badmouth Israel and to speak of the rights of the Palestinians, perhaps he should consider restoring to the Australian aborigines the land taken from them by the white man.
Despite ongoing acts of terrorism against Israel, many Israelis are in favor of the two state solution even though the Palestinians did not actually have a recognized state of their own before the establishment of the State of Israel. The British Mandate was in force for three decades and before that the Ottoman Empire ruled the country for 400 years. What were the Palestinians doing in all that time? Why did they not attempt to establish a sovereign state of their own?
How would Australians and particularly Bob Carr react if aborigines launched a campaign for a two state solution to the island continent so that they could regain their honor, their dignity and their pride?
Perhaps Bob Carr would do better to look in his own back yard before he looks across the sea.
What an extraordinary statement, Adrian Jackson. No. 1, there is currently no Palestine, and No. 2, it is most certainly about two peoples and the land on which they shall live separately.
Yes there is, its been their since the Roman era.
When most of the Jews were killed or driven out by the Romans and others the Palestinians remained.
Jews were encouraged to immigrate to Europe in medieval times to establish a middle class of traders, merchants and tinkers by the Teutonic knights in places like present day Poland.
Msny Jews in Spain too until they, the Muslims (Moors) and non RC Chrisitans were expelled to North Africa and other places like The Ottoman capital and Italy.
It therefore could be argued that the Palestinians have more long term right to the land than immigrants from Europe in the 19th century and post WW2.
What absolute rubbish you speak, Adrian. I know Jewish history well, and your truncated, selective version only speaks to your own preferred idea of it.
The thing for you to bear in mind is that the area designated Palestina (from the original Judea) by the Roman occupiers and destroyers all that time ago, under the reign of Titus, has never been a sovereign state under that name in all its long history since then. Never. Always been disputed territory due to many different occupations, the latter being the Ottomans for 400 years, after which the British Mandate, post-World War I, held until the modern State of Israel was declared.
The people who presently call themselves Palestinians do not, ancestrally, necessarily come from that region at all, and in fact in an historic time line do not go back as far as the Jews. Ask yourself why under Jordanian rule between 1948 and 1967 (as a result of the armistice lines that came from the mass Arab war against the newly declared State of Israel in 1948, which the Arabs lost definitively), there was no call for a Palestinian State, none at all. There was no ‘Palestinian’ identity as you speak of it today. That came later, after the 1967 war, instigated by the Arabs, enabled Israel access to Jerusalem from which they’d been barred by the Jordanians, their synagogues in the Old City demolished and ancient Jewish graves desecrated on the Mount of Olives.
If you are really interested in this subject, do your research. There’s mammoth reading to do. Search for truths as best you can instead of reading to bolster views so obviously already held.
Now dont get personal.
Actually its all about West Asian (so called Middle Eastern) history not just one ethnic groups history.
Adrian:
You state:
“When most of the Jews were killed or driven out by the Romans and others the Palestinians remained.”
Absolute nonsense.
The Palestinians are Arabs – not Moabites, Jebusites or Canaanites – as the PLO Charter makes clear:
Article 1: “Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.”
Article 5: “The Palestinians are those Arab nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or have stayed there. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father – whether inside Palestine or outside it – is also a Palestinian.”
The Arabs invaded, conquered and occupied Jerusalem in 637 – some 500 years after the vast majority of the Jews had been killed or driven out by the Romans.
The Arabs are “johnny come latelies” who occupied someone else’s land by force and now falsely claim to be the indigenous people of Palestine.
You are a fine example of a person competely brainwashed by Arab propaganda.
I hope you are man enough to retract your above comment.
Why do some here get personal if they disagree with a point of view?
I read widely and watch TV documentaries and I am never wrong when I am right.
Adrian
Stop crying on your own shoulder and justify the correctness of your following unsubstantiated statement – which I have rejected with cold hard facts:
“When most of the Jews were killed or driven out by the Romans and others the Palestinians remained.”
What facts have I presented in answer to your claim do you dispute?
What facts do you wish to present to support your claim?
You made the claim.
Substantiate it.
I speak the truth.
Adrian
So please provide the facts for your making this statement:
“When most of the Jews were killed or driven out by the Romans and others the Palestinians remained.”
I have pointed out in chapter and verse why I don’t believe you are telling the truth. It is now incumbent on you to prove you are telling the truth.
Facts please … not crocodile tears
What, you dont know about the Roman conquests from Britain to West Asia to North Africa?
Being facetious will get you nowhere.
I want you to tell me who were the “Palestinians” who remained after the Jews were driven out by the Romans.
They certainly weren’t Arabs – who only came to the area as invaders and occupiers some 600 years later.
Do you have any evidence to the contrary? Please supply that evidence with the link to your source.
In Palestine.
It is incredibly obvious that Adrian Jackson is intent on provoking all manner of conflicts based on utterly false assumption, creating outrageous “scenarios”, all intentionally conceived to upset, deter from truth while inciting through falsehoods the nerve of his respondents. He is doing it out of a pathological desire to upset the Jew, simply to HURT.
What he does not realise is that, although he errs intentionally, he is, in fact, representing quite truthfully (sic) the fairly precise manner in which genuine anti Zionists express themselves in similar circumstances, while arguing with dedicated Zionists in open fora. Subliminally Adrian recants more or less the same cerebral waives emanating from the sincere block-heads on the “other” side. This is why, I am sure, all experienced, highly skilled hands at opposing the Adrian type trolls cum deficients , find it easy and even necessary to object to his kind of utter rubbish. So, Adrian is getting nowhere in as far as upsetting the Zionsit lot, but, he is providing us the triumphant satisfaction of realising time and again that, beyond the obvious ineptitudes, crass absurdities and, mainly, highly entertaining outrageous bellow ZERO brains, our dialectical foes have got a GROISSE GURNISCHT. Adrian, mate, you are as precious as you are a nuisance.
Stuff the ALP changing its position on Israel. More important is the Carr shift, which is utterly nonsensical, malicious and counter productive in reaching a resolution to the conflict. Carr has obviously an unhealthy obsession with Israel. Perhaps, if he’s invited to the next UIA function as main speaker, it could calm him down.
Carr has obviously an unhealthy obsession with Israel. Perhaps, if he’s invited to the next UIA function as main speaker, it could calm him down.
Reply
My view exactly but didn’t like to say in fear of insulting the Jewish community……what sort of friend is he that you have to buy?
It wouldn’t do me.
A brilliant idea to invite our Bob to the UIA and I’d go a few better, make Bob ben Zion Carr the honorary President of the UIA and also, if that South Head shule needs a fresh new Rabi……….
Could we not start a petition to send to Bill Shorten? I realise the agenda item was from NSW Labor, but what matters is whether FEDERAL Labor cave to pressure and unilaterally acknowledge “Palestine”. If we can get enough signatures we can demonstrate to the ALP that there is a strong proportion of voters who would disagree with such a stance…
The issue is about Palestine not Israel.
A bit confusing. Where does Peter Wertheim’s statement end in the text above !
If ECAJ, through Peter , only refers to the milder, non Carr, Labor resolution that’s not good enough for the ECAJ. Labor is determined to recognise a palestinian state and that known policy must be addressed in no neutral terms by the ECAJ, Peter Wertheim included.
The Australian Jewish community is not a branch of the ALP.
Spot on, the Jewish community vote just like other Australians – Lib, ALP Greens, Nats, Independent etc.
In Melbourne Ports Jews make up about 10% of the voters so the ALP vote would be about 4% or less as most Jews live in the state seat of Caulfield which is Liberal.