As an American who is married to an Australian, whose children are Australian citizens, and who visits this beautiful country annually, I care deeply when the decency of Australia is maligned by the likes of Bob Carr, Australia’s former Minister for Foreign Affairs. His vicious assault on Israel demands a response.
In April of this year Carr made his bid for continued relevance by signing on to a version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in a bizarre claim that Melbourne’s Jewish lobby controls Australia’s Middle East foreign policy. To be sure, a distressed former political figure scapegoating the Jews with claims of Jewish control of governments to get into the news is nothing new. And it usually works. Carr’s book, Diary of a Foreign Minister which, like himself, would have been relegated to obscurity, sold a couple more copies through the press coverage he received with his claims of a Jewish conspiracy. Still, it’s sad to see a once-influential man reduced to crude anti-Semitism to remain relevant.
But not content to impugn the Jews of Melbourne with the scandalous charge of dual loyalty, Carr has just come out with his newest allegation. Israel is an apartheid state committed to disenfranchising the Palestinians, as evidenced by their expansion of settlements. It is for this reason, Carr claims, that he is turning on Israel and becoming a supporter of Palestine instead.
In this too Carr is wholly unoriginal. If you’re going to savage the Jewish state surely you can do so by saying something novel? But is this all we get, the over-roasted chestnut of Israel as pre-Mandela South Africa?
But in his obsession with Jewish world domination there are things that Carr omits.
He omits the fact that the land ceded by Israel to the Palestinians in peace deals has been transformed every time into terrorist enclaves. He omits the fact that Hamas is a genocidal organization committed in its charter to Israel’s destruction and the murder of Jews worldwide. He omits the fact that the Palestinian Authority is now a dictatorship run by Mahmoud Abbas who has not gone to elections in more than a decade. He omits the fact that Abbas runs a kleptocracy enriching his sons Tarik and Yasser who illegally control the construction and cigarette trade, among other lucrative industries. He omits the fact that Nelson Mandela was a true apostle of peace who languished in jail for 27 years while Yasser Arafat is the father of international terrorism who made his name by blowing up children. He omits the fact that Arab citizens of Israel enjoy more rights than Arabs anywhere in the Middle East. In his charges of Jewish racism he omits the fact that Arabs serve at the highest levels of Israeli officialdom, including the Supreme Court, something unthinkable in an apartheid regime. He omits the fact that Israeli hospitals treated Abbas’ wife and the daughter of the current Hamas leader. He omits the fact that the single greatest threat to world civilization today is not the Jews and the puny State of Israel but radical Islamic terrorism which is producing monsters like ISIS, Hamas, and Boko Haram.
Oh, were it so, Bob, that Australia’s biggest worry was Melbourne’s Jews, a community famous for its philanthropy, civic responsibilities, and patriotism.
All this Carr omits as he assails the Jews as apartheid racists. And in so doing Carr not only shows his cards but offends the brave black population of South Africa who are models of reconciliation and forgiveness.
Sorry, Mr. Carr, but the Jews are the indigenous people of Israel. It is not I who says it but your own Christian Bible. Read the New Testament and try and find mention of a single Arab resident of ancient Israel. The Jews were the land’s inhabitants and they were displaced by a European colonial occupier named Rome. They were forcibly removed from their land and displaced for 2000 years, while a small remnant always remained. The Jews prayed thrice daily to return to their land. And when finally granted the political opportunity, they came and drained the swamps, irrigated the sands and made the land so much more inhabitable for Arab brethren that had migrated in the interim.
The Jews were happy to share the land but it was a sentiment that was sadly rejected by the Arabs. They rejected the 1936 Peel Commission Partition. The rejected the 1947 UN partition plan. They rejected Israel’s offers to return all conquered 1967 lands with their famous three “No’s” in Khartoum: No peace, No recognition, No negotiation. And they turned the Oslo peace accords – which granted Arafat political autonomy over 95% of the Palestinian population – into a murder-fest by launching a never-ending terror war against Israel’s buses, schools, and cafes.
Rather than Western statesmen like Carr demanding from the Palestinians to stop the never-ending incitement against the Jews and the promises to push them into the sea, rather than calling out Mahmoud Abbas for his monstrous lies about an Israeli genocide in Gaza, rather than objecting to the rampant assassination of Palestinian gay men by Hamas and the honor killings of innocent women, Carr would defend this barbarity by pointing the finger at the Middle East’s only democracy.
Indeed, Mr. Carr should be forced to publicly defend his allegations against Israel and if there were a sincere conviction in his body he would accept my challenge to debate the issue before an audience of peers at a reasonable time and place of his choosing.
Australians are some of the warmest, tolerant, and peace-loving people on earth. Australia is a model of social harmony and ethnic integration. Australia took in scores of holocaust survivors who fled Hitler’s ovens after World War II. Australians love and support Israel. I know that they will reject pathetic attempts at Jewish character assassination leveled by desperate former politicos like Bob Carr.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” is the international best-selling author of 30 books, winner of The London Times Preacher of the Year Competition, and recipient of the American Jewish Press Association’s Highest Award for Excellence in Commentary. He has just published Kosher Lust: Love is Not the Answer. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
