654 Bob Carr: Australia's foreign policy was "subcontracted" to Jewish donors

Bob Carr: Australia's foreign policy was "subcontracted" to Jewish donors

Newsletter published on 24-04-2014

(1) Bob Carr: Australia's foreign policy was "subcontracted" to Jewish
donors
(2) Bob Carr reveals former Attorney General Mark Dreyfus' "umbilical
attachment" to Israel
(3) Carr reveals Gillard cabinet's subservience to Lobby over Palestine
policy
(4) Carr revelations helpful to US resistance against Zionist Lobby -
Mycatbirdseat
(5) Gillard "cloth-eared" on Israel - Gareth Evans, foreign minister in
1990s
(6) Australian Jews bash former FM over Lobby claims - Jerusalem Post
(7) Bob Carr's 'Israel lobby' claims inaccurate, bizarre - Mark Leibler

(1) Bob Carr: Australia's foreign policy was "subcontracted" to Jewish
donors

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/09/bob-carr--gillard-foreign-policy-jewish-donors

Bob Carr diaries: foreign policy was subcontracted to Jewish donors

Ex-foreign minister casts light on support for Israel - and his
obsession with diet and the indignities of businesss class travel

Lenore Taylor, political editor theguardian.com, Wednesday 9 April 2014
19.16 AEST

Former foreign minister Bob Carr has suggested Julia Gillard's dogged
insistence on supporting Israel in a controversial United Nations vote
was because Australian foreign policy had been "subcontracted" to Jewish
donors.

In a new biography about his 18 months as foreign minister, Carr reveals
deep tensions within Labor over foreign policy and intimate details of
his conversations with foreign leaders - including an April 2012 meeting
with David Miliband who was "pessimistic about British Labour being led
by 'brother' Ed".

In more unusual territory for a political memoir, he reveals a
near-obsessive preoccupation with his diet and exercise regime, and
complains about being "reduced" to business class travel.

Bob Carr: Diary of a Foreign Minister includes a detailed account of a
period in October and November 2012 when Carr campaigned against
Gillard's insistence that Australia should support Israel and vote
against Palestinian observer status in the United Nations.

The bitter fight became entwined in the leadership tensions that were
reaching a crescendo at the time.

As it reached its height, he describes Kevin Rudd arriving at his
parliament house office "purse-lipped, choirboy hair, speaking in that
sinister monotone. A chilling monotone".

Rudd's had a "morbid interest" in the issue which had the potential to
impact both on Australia's fate in the upcoming vote for a seat on the
UN security council and on his own chances to return to the prime
ministership.

"How much of this is about money, I asked him," Carr writes. "He said
about one-fifth of the money he had raised in the 2007 election campaign
had come from the Jewish community."

Carr concludes that "subcontracting our foreign policy to party donors
is what this involves. Or appears to involve."

He describes how nine ministers spoke against Gillard when the issue was
discussed by cabinet, and only two in favour of her position.

But she remained unmoved and said it was a "prime minister's call". She
only changed her mind when she realised she was set to be overruled by
the caucus - which would have ended her already tenuous hold on the
leadership.

He also describes his rigorous personal regimen. One passage reads: "I
did two hours of Pilates, then to Double Bay for my third meditation
lesson; then to the office to read cables; to the gym ...".

Or, "travel devastates my diet...none of the official meals have serious
protein content ... I've got to order two main courses to come close to
my protein targets. I've been wolfing down whey protein powder (cross
flow, micro-filtered and hydrolysed) and branch-chain amino acid tablets".

He also casts light on his struggle to "eliminate" sugar and flour and
his penchant for "organic steel cut oats".

Politics is never far away though. Australia's ambassador to the United
States, Kim Beazley, suggested to Carr, and to "a few people" in
Washington that Carr - a long-serving former NSW premier - was a "viable
alternative" as Labor leader as the tensions between Rudd and Gillard
dragged on.

"This is fantasy, a bit of flattery. And who would want it, in these
circumstances," he concludes.

He also describes deliberately courting media attention, being "in and
out of the TV studios in parliament house like a fiddler's elbow"
because the publicity would "ensure that Rudd can't dump me (as foreign
minister) if he takes over."

And he reveals deep differences within the government about how tightly
Australia should walk in lock step with the United States and bemoans
that his short tenure in the job limits his options to change things.

"I would like to make us a little less craven, to correct the recent
tilt away from China and the too-desperate embrace of the US, symbolised
in last year's announcement of a rotating marine presence in Darwin and
Obama's criticism of China in our parliament," he writes.

He relates a cabinet meeting in August 2012 when then defence minister
Stephen Smith proposed "pumping up" an announcement about the troops
rotation during the high level bilateral meeting later in the year with
then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and then defense secretary
Leon Panetta.

"I said my concern was the announcement - beaten up and embellished -
would make us look like a continental US aircraft carrier with B52s
roaring out of our airstrips, headed in all directions north," he writes.

But he says "none of my colleagues seemed to understand what a strategic
decision we were being asked to make here and this surprised me. I was
somewhat surprised too that the prime minister didn't express a view."

The jet-setting former foreign minister also complained at having to do
all his travel business class.

On a trans-Atlantic flight to meet Hillary Clinton he complains;
"Business class. No edible food. No airline pyjamas....I lie in my
tailored suit" and on another long haul flight he writes: "Eating
plastic -- no ceramic -- food, passengers lying in cribs, packed in
business class, a design that owes a lot to the trans-Atlantic slave
trade ..."

And when he and his wife Helena, who regularly travelled with him, were
upgraded to first class flights he writes "Pathetic that the public
service rules reduce me to that, an upgrade for a middle-power foreign
minister."

He also comments on the prevalence of obesity in the United States and
questions whether republican John McCain and other senior figures had
had plastic surgery.

And he has colourful descriptions for his counterparts, including "...
the super-urbane (Indonesian) foreign minister Marty Natalegawa who,
Julia Gillard says, reminds her of Johnny Depp..."

Foreign minister Julie Bishop has claimed Carr would be "breaching
confidences" f in the book and former foreign minister Alexander Downer
told Guardian Australia the project was "inappropriate", "embarrassing"
and "wrong".

Carr responded that every US secretary of state has written a memoir.

When it was reported in November 2012 that Carr was keeping a diary of
his time as foreign minister with the intent of publishing it - based on
the accounts of numerous sources - Carr immediately issued a statement
denying he was writing a book.

Carr, who served as NSW premier for 10 years, entered the Senate and
became foreign minister at the request of former prime minister Julia
Gillard in March 2012, when Kevin Rudd returned to the backbench after
losing a leadership challenge. He stood for another six-year term in the
number one position on the NSW Senate ticket, but announced his
resignation a few weeks after the election.

(2) Bob Carr reveals former Attorney General Mark Dreyfus' "umbilical
attachment" to Israel

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/falafel-factions-likudniks-and-bob-carr-inside-the-battle-for-israeli-influence/story-fn59nm2j-1226880446699

Falafel factions, Likudniks and Bob Carr: inside the battle for Israeli
influence

CHIP LE GRAND, JOHN FERGUSON AND TROY BRAMSTON

THE AUSTRALIAN

APRIL 11, 2014 12:00AM

ACCORDING to Bob Carr, this was the falafel faction laid bare. Mark
Dreyfus, with an "umbilical attachment" to the cause of Israel. Stephen
Conroy, disturbed at the turn of events, signalling to ally Bill Shorten
to join the fray, "as if he was in a Kingsville branch meeting itching
to do in the local lefties". Julia Gillard, prime minister, determined
to vote no, putting Australia "in lock-step with the Likud".

Was this high-level evidence of the Melbourne Jewish lobby unduly
shaping Australian foreign policy or worse -- "subcontracting out
foreign policy to party donors?" Or was it something less sinister; a
robust debate over one of history's most fraught questions: how best to
advance peace in the Middle East?

(3) Carr reveals Gillard cabinet's subservience to Lobby over Palestine
policy

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: Thu, 10 Apr
2014 00:19:30 -0400

From: Fredrick Toben <<mailto:toben@toben.biz>toben@toben.biz> Date:
Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 11:13 PM

Carr targets Gillard over ‘shameful’ Palestine policy

Tony Walker - 09 Apr 2014 21:31:07

http://www.afr.com/p/national/carr_targets_gillard_over_shameful_9ghuVg3FArOC9CmCnRBXOM

Tony Walker

Australian Financial Review

Published: 09 Apr 2014 21:31:07 | Updated: 10 Apr 2014 19:08:21

Former foreign minister Bob Carr has launched a withering denunciation
of ex prime minister Julia Gillard and Victorian allies, including Bill
Shorten, over their attempts to stymie an Australian vote at the United
Nations to elevate Palestine’s status.

Carr also heaps scorn on Gillard staff-member Bruce Wolpe, whom he
portrays as a tool of a Melbourne-based pro-Israel lobby, for his
efforts to ensure Australia maintained an uncritical view of Israel’s
settlements policy.

In his new book, Diary of a Foreign Minister, Carr provides a detailed
account of the most contentious foreign policy issue of the Gillard
prime ministership, and one that threatened to splinter the cabinet.

Carr’s battles with Gillard and her close advisers, including Wolpe and
then cabinet secretary, Victorian MP Mark Dreyfus, over Israel, mark
sour component of his term in office.

“Our stance on the Middle East is shameful,” he writes in his diary of
November 10, 2012.

“In lockstep with the Likud, designed to feed the worst instincts of
Israel, and encourage it to self-destruct.’’

In the same diary entry Carr complains bitterly he was prevented from
using the word “condemn’’ to characterise Australia’s reaction to
Benjamin Netanyahu government’s continuing settlement activity.

Carr laments that “all statements on the Middle East’’ had to be drawn
to the attention of Wolpe and Dreyfus in the PM’s office.

He was told by Wolpe and/or Dreyfus “we don’t use the word condemn”, and
“whatever we do, advise the Israeli ambassador first”.

American-born Wolpe is a former US Congressional staff member. He was
director of corporate affairs at Fairfax Media from 1999 - 2009.

Carr’s detailed account of the intense argument in cabinet that preceded
Australia’s decision to abstain on a vote elevating Palestine’s status
to observer at the UN provides an extraordinary insight into the extent
to which Gillard identified herself with Israel’s interests.

Outnumbered 10-2 in cabinet on the Palestine question (only
communications minister Stephen Conroy and workplace relations minister
Bill Shorten supported her), Gillard insisted it was her prerogative to
say “no” in defiance of a cabinet consensus.

“Her brisk efficiency descended into a style that was icy and robotic,”
Carr writes in a November 27 entry.

In the end, a weakened prime minister changed her stance and agreed that
Australia would abstain on the Palestine vote in recognition that her
own cabinet had abandoned her.

Carr had prevailed over those he refers to in his book contemptuously as
the “falafel faction”.

(4) Carr revelations helpful to US resistance against Zionist Lobby -
Mycatbirdseat

http://mycatbirdseat.com/2014/04/former-australian-foreign-minister-exposes-zionist-lobby-power/

Former Australian foreign minister exposes Zionist lobby power

Brandon Martinez

Mycatbirdseat

April 22, 2014 1

A controversy is swirling in Australia involving a former foreign
minister and the country’s influential Zionist lobby.  by Brandon Martinez

Bob Carr, who served as Australia’s foreign minister in the
administration of former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, recently
published a memoir detailing his experiences on the job. In the book
Carr hones in on the Israeli lobby, which he says has “extraordinary”
and “unhealthy” influence in Australian politics and had a “direct line”
into the decision-making processes of the Gillard administration. Not
only is Organized Zionism’s grip on Australia unhealthy, it is dangerous
and corrosive.

In recent media interviews Carr has said that Gillard overruled his
suggestion that Australia not block the Palestinian bid to attain
upgraded ‘non-member observer state’ status at the United Nations in
2012 and that this was a direct result of the Zionist lobby’s pull on
the former prime minister. Carr also revealed that Gillard was so
immovable in her pro-Israel partisanship that she impeded him from
making routine statements of concern about the growth and expansion of
illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank because it would upset the
Zionist lobby.

When asked by ABC (Australia) reporter Sarah Ferguson how such a small
group of people could wield so much power, Carr mentioned the
significant amount of political campaign donations stemming from Zionist
sources as well as the Zionist lobby’s courting of Australian
politicians and journalists by sponsoring all-expenses-paid-for trips to
Israel. Carr accused Gillard of “subcontracting” Australia’s foreign
policy vis-à-vis the Middle East to her wealthy Jewish backers.

In 2013 Gillard received the Jerusalem Prize for her unwavering support
of the Zionist apartheid state and its terroristic policies. Members of
Australia’s main Zionist groups praised Gillard for her “ongoing support
of the aspirations of Israel’s people” and noted that she “empathises
with the Jewish people and our connection with the land of Israel.”
“[T]he Zionist movement of Australia are honoured to be able to
demonstrate our gratitude and respect for Ms Gillard’s many years as an
unstinting supporter of the Jewish and Zionist cause,” said Sam Tatarka,
president of the Zionist Council of Victoria.

Gillard unveiled her brazen Jewish exceptionalist mentality during a
visit to the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne in 2012, where she
stated that the holocaust was “the greatest crime humanity has ever
known.” It is unlikely that Gillard is unaware of the more than 60
million non-Jews who perished during the Second World War, or of the
millions of Russian and Ukrainian Christians killed by Jewish Bolsheviks
throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Revealing her callous and cold-blooded
outlook, Gillard ignores those victims because recognizing their
suffering would undermine the racist Talmudic myth that Jews are the
world’s ultimate and perennial victims.

The reaction of Australia’s Zionist lobby to Bob Carr’s revelations has
been predictably lame. The Zionist kingpin Mark Leibler of the Australia
Israel & Jewish Affairs Council dismissed Carr’s exposition about “The
Lobby” as a “figment of his imagination.” When faced with truths about
their undue influence, the Zionists merely sneer at and heap ridicule
upon those like Carr who are brave enough to state the obvious.

Former American politicians have expressed similar sentiments to Carr’s.
Cynthia McKinney, a former congresswoman from Georgia, said that she was
ousted from congress by the Israeli lobby because of her outspoken
support of the Palestinians. She once told an interviewer that 99 per
cent of members of the US congress are veritable servants of Zionist
interests. Former congressman Paul Findley wrote a book about the
enormous power of Israel’s lobby in the US entitled They Dare to Speak
Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby.

Another former congressman, James Traficant, told Greta van Susteren of
Fox News that Israel and its supporters in the US have “a powerful
stranglehold” over the American government. “We’re conducting the
expansionist policy of Israel and everyone’s too afraid to say it,”
remarked Traficant in reference to the disastrous Iraq war.

The Zionists, said Traficant, “control both members of the House… and
the Senate. They have us involved in wars in which we have little or no
interest.” These Zionist elements “control much of the media [and]
control much of the commerce of the country,” Traficant stressed. The
late Helen Thomas, a renowned American journalist and White House
correspondent, echoed Traficant’s perspective, telling an audience in
Detroit that “congress, the White House, Hollywood, and Wall Street are
owned by Zionists. No question in my opinion.”

The credible assertions of these Washington insiders have been validated
by a number of boastful Jewish writers themselves. One such braggart was
Elad Nehorai who penned an op-ed for the Times of Israel wherein he
implored his fellow Zionists to be more honest about their influence as
a point of pride. “Let’s be honest with ourselves, here, fellow Jews. We
do control the media. We’ve got so many dudes up in the executive
offices in all the big movie production companies it’s almost obscene,”
wrote Nehorai. The pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC, observed Nehorai, “was
essentially constructed just to drive agenda in Washington DC. And it
succeeds admirably.” That organization is “practically the equivalent of
the Elders of Zion” he added. “The truth is,” Nehorai conceded, “the
anti-Semites got it right… We own a whole freaking country.”

Nehorai’s supremacist musings seem to have been inspired by a 2008 Los
Angeles Times article authored by Joel Stein. In that piece, titled “Who
Controls Hollywood? C'mon,” Stein bragged candidly about Jewish power in
Hollywood, stating that “Jews totally run Hollywood” and calling
Americans “dumb” for not recognizing that fact. “As a proud Jew, I want
America to know about our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood,”
Stein gloated. “But I don't care if Americans think we're running the
news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that
we get to keep running them.”

The very fact that discussing Zionist influence is taboo in Western
societies is in and of itself an indication of their pervasive power.
“To find out where the power lies, ask whom you cannot criticize,” as
the wise credo goes. The unusual dichotomy that Zionists like Stein and
Nehorai are able to say the things quoted above without any
repercussions, while non-Jews who have made comparable assertions are
castigated as anti-Semites, haters and conspiracy theorists, underscores
the Talmudic double standard that permeates much of public discourse on
this important issue.

However, the tide is slowly but surely turning, and it is becoming
increasingly apparent that the Zionists cannot keep a lid on their
intrigues any longer.

(5) Gillard "cloth-eared" on Israel - Gareth Evans, foreign minister in
1990s

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/gillard-clotheared-on-israel-says-evans/story-fn59nm2j-1226884302874

Gillard cloth-eared on Israel, says Evans

by BRAD NORINGTON

The Australian

April 15, 2014 12:00AM

JULIA Gillard was a "cloth-eared" prime minister promoting the worst
Australian foreign policy decision for a generation when she refused to
accept views about Israel outside those of the influential Victorian
Jewish lobby, according to former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans.

Mr Evans said yesterday his foreign minister successor Bob Carr had
ensured Australia was "not seen internationally as being on the wrong
side of history" when he successfully forced Ms Gillard to drop her
demand that Australia vote "no" to a resolution giving Palestine the
status of a UN observer.

Speaking at the Sydney launch of Mr Carr's book Diary of a Foreign
Minister, Mr Evans rated Mr Carr's leadership role on the UN vote in
November 2012 as the "signature achievement" of his 18-month tenure as
Australia's top diplomat.

Claims by Mr Carr in his book that Ms Gillard's office sub--contracted
out Australia's Middle East policymaking to the Israel lobby in
Melbourne and took a "shameful, in lock-step" stance with the Likud
party have enraged sections of the local Jewish lobby, even prompting
accusations of bigotry from pro-Israel Labor MP Michael Danby.

Mr Carr succeeded in pushing a cabinet and partyroom rebellion against
Ms Gillard -- at a cost of deep embarrassment to her -- to abandon her
intended "no" vote on Palestinian observer status, in favour of abstaining.

Mr Evans said he was sure Ms Gillard believed the judgments she made
were based on principle, but the "no" vote she supported would have been
the worst Australian foreign policy for a generation, as Mr Carr had
recorded him saying at the time.

Voting no, the Hawke government foreign minister said, would have been
wrong in principle for Australia and left " us totally isolated from
every friend we had in the world apart from the US and Israel".

It would have also "mortally wounded our credibility and effectiveness
on the UN security council to which Australia had just been elected".

Mr Evans, an informal sounding board for Mr Carr during his stint as
foreign minister, headed the Brussels-based International Crisis Group
after leaving politics in 2000 and is now chancellor of Australian
National University.

He said lobbyists from the Victorian Jewish community had influenced him
to campaign against the "Zionism as Racism" resolution when he was
foreign minister -- and he was proud to do so because the cause was just.

"But it also lost me -- and my fellow Victorian Bob Hawke -- when it
lost its way, as it continued to do to this day, on the larger
Palestinian issue.

"It certainly very strongly influenced Gillard, but I am sure she made
the judgments she did, cloth-eared they may have been, on what she
believed to be a principled basis."

(6) Australian Jews bash former FM over Lobby claims - Jerusalem Post

http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Australian-Jews-bash-former-FM-for-claims-Israel-lobby-holds-unhealthy-sway-348204

Australian Jews bash former FM for claims 'Israel lobby' holds
'unhealthy' sway

Jerusalem Post

April 10, 2014

In new book, Bob Carr alleges pro-Israel lobby in Melbourne wields
"unhealthy" hold over Australia's foreign policy.

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who wrote a 2007 book alleging that
the “Israel lobby” has a stranglehold on US Foreign policy, have an
Australian cousin: former foreign minister Bob Carr.

Carr, in a new book, Diary of a Foreign Minister, and in interviews
promoting the memoir, slammed what he called the “unhealthy” hold the
pro-Israel lobby in Melbourne wields over Australia’s foreign policy.

Carr, Australia’s Labor Party foreign minister from March 2012 to
September 2013, chronicled a bitter political fight in late 2012 with
then-prime minister Julia Gillard over how Australia would vote in the
2012 UN General Assembly vote to recognize the Palestinians as a
non-member state.

Gillard opposed, while her political rival at the time Kevin Rudd, and
Carr himself, were in favor. Rudd, according to a report of the book in
The Guardian, went to Carr to talk about the vote.

“How much of this is about money, I asked him,” Carr wrote. “He said
about one-fifth of the money he had raised in the 2007 election campaign
had come from the Jewish community.”

Carr concluded that “subcontracting our foreign policy to party donors
is what this involves. Or appears to involve.”

In the end, Australia abstained in the vote, surprising Jerusalem, which
expected that it would vote against the move.

Speaking Thursday to the Australian Broadcasting Company, Carr took the
charges even further, saying that “extreme right wing” pro-Israel
lobbyists held an “unhealthy “ influence over Australia’s policy toward
Israel.

“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 blocs of housing for Israeli citizens going up on
land that everyone regards as part of the future Palestinian state if
there is to be a two-state solution,” he said.

“The important point about a Diary of a Foreign Minister is you shine
light on areas of government that are otherwise in darkness, and the
influence of lobby groups is one of those areas.

“What I’ve done is to spell out how the extremely conservative instincts
of the pro-Israel lobby in Melbourne were exercised through the
then-prime minister’s office,” he said.

Colin Rubenstein, the executive director of the Australia/ Israel &
Jewish Affairs Council, slammed Carr for his comments, saying his
organization was “puzzled and disappointed” by his “strange claims” that
Australian foreign policy was under the sway of the pro-Israel lobby,
apparently a reference to AIJAC.

“It is frankly sad when an elected official imagines that disagreement
with their policy position must stem from malicious influences,” he said.

Rubenstein said the allegations that the lobby held unhealthy sway over
Gillard “show her a distinct lack of respect.”

“Ms. Gillard was an independent- thinking prime minister who is fully as
capable of coming to her own conclusions about optimum Australian
foreign policies, as is Mr.

Carr,” he said. “The fact that some of her conclusions on promoting
Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation were different from Carr’s is no more
evidence that she was under the influence of ‘unhealthy’ pro-Israeli
lobbying than Carr’s views are evidence that he is under the ‘sway’ of
Australia’s several pro-Palestinian lobby groups.”

(7) Bob Carr's 'Israel lobby' claims inaccurate, bizarre - Mark Leibler

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: Fri, 11 Apr
2014 11:59:29 -0400 Subject: Bob Carr's 'Israel lobby' claims
inaccurate, bizarre

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/bob-carrs-israel-lobby-claims-inaccurate-bizarre-20140410-zqt5m.html

Bob Carr's 'Israel lobby' claims inaccurate, bizarre

Mark Leibler

Sydney Morning Herald

April 11, 2014

Bob Carr’s interviews on Wednesday on the ABC's 7.30 and Lateline,
spruiking the publication of his The Diary of a Foreign Minister, make
various claims about what he refers to as the Melbourne "Israel lobby"
exercising extraordinary influence over the office of prime minister
Julia Gillard.

Referring to a meeting in April 2013, Carr says that I adopted a
"how-dare-you" tone. For a former foreign minister to characterise a
normal, cordial and frank exchange as potentially intimidatory is not
only inaccurate but a little bizarre.

Strangely enough, he said nothing at the time or in the following months
that would indicate that I had earned his displeasure. Perhaps Carr has
a problem with anyone disagreeing with him: Such extraordinary thin skin
has Carr. Such a delicate disposition from a man who sees himself as an
energetic "gladiator" and describes himself as the "best chairman" he
knows, is surprising.

Carr has now publicly criticised the approach of what he calls the
“Israel lobby” in its dealings with government. At the breakfast that
followed my April 2013 meeting with Carr, where I hosted more than 40
Jewish community leaders, Carr openly praised the manner and tone in
which views were exchanged and described them as a model of effective
engagement with government. Advertisement

Carr now claims he was frustrated that he couldn't express his concern
about Israeli settlements. Nevertheless, he managed to do so at every
opportunity, loudly and clearly. What he is really upset about is that
his view did not always prevail. The person he needed to convince was
the prime minister. Much to his chagrin, the prime minister exercised
independent judgment in relation to this as well as all other issues.

Were anyone to claim that Carr's excessive emphasis on settlements was
due to anything other than his own independent judgment, he would be
outraged, and rightly so. He would say, no doubt, that he is more than
capable of making up his own mind. On what basis does he presume that
the then prime minister had less capacity to exercise similar judgment?

Carr’s claim that Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council and the
Jewish community take an extreme right-wing view on Israel is
disingenuous. Carr knows that there are quite a range of different views
in Israel and within the Australian Jewish community in relation to
settlements. The vast majority of the Jewish community, including the
AIJAC, support a negotiated two-state solution, as does Carr.

This is the position that has been shared by all Australian governments
since the 1993 Oslo Accords. It has also been the position of all US and
European Union governments. Thus Carr would also categorise all
successive Australian, US and European Union governments over the past
21 years as “extreme right-wing”.

What makes Carr the odd one out is his obsessive focus on settlements to
the exclusion of everything else - settlements as the sole obstacle to
peace. On this point, he is wrong and we make no apologies for saying
so. The real obstacles to peace include the ongoing incitement to hatred
of Israel, and the Palestinian refusal to accept Israel as a reality in
the Middle East.

Carr, attending Holocaust remembrance commemorations and naming Primo
Levi’s book as the most important book of the past 100 years does not
make you a supporter of Israel or the Jewish people. It makes you a
human being.

Bob Carr is a very human, human being.
Bob Carr is not a bigot.
Bob Carr is not an anti-Semite.
Bob Carr is a prime minister that never was, making the best of a lost
opportunity.
No doubt he will sell books.
Mark Leibler is National Chairman of the Australia/Israel & Jewish
Affairs Council.