Bob Carr Again.
What An Intellectually Courageous Man
Big Brave Bob was Premier of NSW for quite a spell and as executive power in Australia vests in the ruling party in the lower house and Bob was boss of the ruling faction of that party, that made him boss of Sydney as well.
The rest of the state was just icing.
He was kind of the Binyamin Netanyahu of New South Wales politics and Sydney was his Jerusalem. Except Bibi is a brave and honest man. His courage is on the record. I've never liked the man. Carr I mean. Bibi is a matter for the Israelis of course and you would hope that a decent respect for the liberal democratic process would also respect that.
Bob Carr on the other hand is a matter for Australians
He was an unelected foreign minister in the dying months of Australia's last Labor government and was most notable for white anting the PM who appointed him and changing Australian foreign policy on Israel where he spent enormous amounts of time, effort and political capital.
Enormous.
Quite disproportionate if you ask me but then again it always is.
The only way to influence policy in Israel, if that is what he was trying to do, is through the Israeli public and government. Israelis happen to think they have interests and rights in this as well. You can't be sure about these things but Carr must think that he is making some kind of an effective appeal to Israeli public opinion perhaps through Australian Jews. If he doesn't think that then what does he think he is doing?
Carr, Hawke and Evans must know they have no audience at all in Jerusalem, the seat of Israel's capital. That is because Israel is a liberal secular democracy beholden only to the welfare of her people and not at all to the grisly internal affairs of another out of whack former social democratic party in the West about which no one has any interest at all.
Not even most Australians.
From where they stand Carr, Hawke and Evans carry as much weight in Jerusalem from here as a possum fart at sunset. They must know this. They couldn't be that egomaniacal not to. Not even them. So if they know they are not talking to the Israelis, who do they think they are talking to and what are they trying to say?
Add Graham Richardson , another old macher from the NSW right with a focus and concentration disability when it comes to the Middle East, and you could have the fourth wise monkey of the gang. The one who should have kept his hands behind his back for decency's sake.
This from a report by Christian Kerr in the Australian of 4 December 2015.
"Former foreign minister Bob Carr has lashed out at Israel accusing it of fabricating history and bribing Australian politicians ....
"The one time titan of the Labor right let loose at a dinner in Sydney late last month at an International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People function in a speech that has appeared online, accusing Israel of eliminating the Arab character of Israel.
"Mr Carr praised Greens senator Lee Rhiannon, the leader of the party's so called "watermelon faction" and an arch foe of his old NSW Labor colleagues. "The people of Palestine are seeing street by street the character, the nomenclature, of Jerusalem being changed " ... "The story of Jerusalem is now being fabricated. Judaising and eliminating the Arab character of this great Arab city is a shocking thing to take place".
"Judaising" . He actually used that word.
He said "parliamentarians are being seduced and bribed with paid overseas trips to Israel, describing offers of such study tours as "disgraceful".
He condemned an ALP federal frontbencher for not being an Israel hater like him and lauded Senator Watermelon Brown for her work on the issues, saying "she's been very strong and very brave on this over many years. " .
Watermelon Brown. Or if you prefer, Senator Rhiannon, is the political heir of Stalinist ideology that was absorbed amoeba like, into the Greens on dissolution of the Soviet aligned Australian communist party when the USSR fell apart. She was loyal to the end. Even Honeker jumped before her.
As you would expect, she was up to her elbows in BDS from the start. To give her credit at least her political pedigree is there to see. An ideology that drips with old style leftist antizionism/ antisemitism with roots in Marx, Trotsky, Lenin and of course Stalin.
It is astonishing how obsessed the hard left are with Israel and Jews. The obsession anywhere is always astounding.
Someone like Rhiannon would have been completely unelectable anywhere in Australia but for the Greens. She would have to have sailed under her own banners. Instead she changed her name and party.
There's courage for you. But nothing compared to the courage of the Greens. It is no wonder the Greens are such a strange and secretive party. Quite sinister in a democracy that respects and expects transparency and free expression.
It's hard to pinpoint what is most disgusting about this born again Bill Hartley style ideologue but surely a tipping point must be when they start congratulating themselves on their courage.
Carr claims that a small group of Melbourne Jewish businessmen control Australian foreign policy on the Middle East, infers that if Israel transferred the "illegal" Jewish population from beyond the 1949 armistice line with Jordan as if it was Poland 1941, stopped permitting people move to, live in or being born in "illegal" neighbourhoods and towns that all rational parties know and say will always be part of Israel, then there will be peace.
That's brave.
Bob Carr fancies himself as an intellectual so I'm guessing he is congratulating himself and his brave little band on their intellectual courage. Because as sure as the sun rises he can't mean physical courage. Nearly all Australian Jewish schools have hired armed guards to protect the kids and that doesn't happen without the advice of the police and security agencies. Melbourne held out as long as it could.
Taking your kids to schools that need armed guards. That is what I call courage. Carr, Hawke and Evans are irrelevant old men who were never much in the first place and who have chosen to spend a portion of their twilights betraying the principles that sustained them. They did that at the first show of real resistance from the people who hate those principles most of all. They abandoned Israel and the human rights of the Israelis as soon as there was any pain in it.
You could only call that intellectual courage I suppose.
These guys are swimming in intellectual courage.
