BOB Carr becoming a friend of Palestinians is noble; his judgment of Israel is not and is faulty (“Why I’m now a friend of Palestine”, 8/11). It is true the Palestinians deserve a home, that there is a fanatical element in Israel — whose behaviour is often not acceptable — and that settlements around Jerusalem have grown, and that the occupation outlasted its welcome on both sides.
Yet his judgment is based on hearsay and fragments of the whole truth. Carr judges Israel by a small, largely controlled element, but ignores the large fanatical element among Palestinians. He assumes 30 religious MPs to be fanatical as if being religious equals fanaticism and concludes that Israel is a fanatical religious state, not a secular state. He’s wrong.
He judges the Israeli government for refusing to forcibly evacuate settlements, yet forgets it did so in 2005 in Gaza resulting in increased terror and war. He empathises with (as he claims) the Palestinian long search for peace, yet ignores their longer quest to destroy the state of Israel. Only a few days ago, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas openly declared (again) that Israel must go. Carr would better serve peace if he stood for the whole truth and not just its fragments.
Rachel Sussman,
Brighton-Le-Sands, NSW
Brighton-Le-Sands, NSW
IN his criticisms of Israel developing as an “apartheid” state, Bob Carr seems to forget that the Israeli government did what he recommends in regard to settlers in Gaza. It uprooted them, using the Israeli army to compel them to leave the strip, and handed Gaza to the Palestinians.
Instead of further developing Gaza and enjoying the villas, gardens and orchards the settlers left behind, Hamas spent its time fruitlessly firing rockets into Israel.
Carr may wax enthusiastic about a two-state solution, but he has yet to find a credible Palestinian entity that genuinely wants such a solution rather than the total elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.
Babette Francis, Toorak, Vic
THE reaction to Bob Carr’s announcement that he has accepted an appointment as patron of the Friends of Palestine has been as predictable as it has been misguided. Why is being a friend of Palestine inconsistent with being a friend of Israel?
Australian bipartisan politics supposedly supports a state of Palestine alongside a state of Israel. In a recent opinion poll, a majority of Australians indicated they support the immediate granting of Palestinian statehood. The same poll indicated that Australians believe that the federal government is biased in support of Israel at the expense of Palestine.
It is a matter of fact that Israel continues to confiscate more and more Palestinian land, to build more settlements on Palestinian soil and to avoid its obligations under international law to withdraw from land it has occupied. If Carr is to be condemned simply for stating facts, then what is at stake here is not his performance as foreign minister, but truth itself.
George Browning, president,
Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, Long Beach, NSW
Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, Long Beach, NSW
BOB Carr’s dislike of the Jewish lobby has now morphed into his propaganda war at the behest of the Palestinian lobby. With not a Jewish citizen alive among the Arabs in their nations or administered territories, he has the chutzpah to call Israel, with its 20 per cent Arabic citizens, as being an “apartheid” state.
Malvina Malinek, South Yarra, Vic
BOB Carr might congratulate himself on his conversion from supporting Israel to supporting those who would destroy it. Hamas is behind all terror attacks against Israel, because its charter is to destroy the state.
What happened 40 years ago, was the rise of Arab power after the 1973 Arab oil embargo. The Arab oil-producing countries punished any country that was on the side of Israel, and began to intimidate other countries in the UN to vote with them or suffer the economic consequences.
Then Western media began to tell the story that Israel’s Arab enemies wanted it to tell — to malign the Jewish state in any way possible. Palestinians became victims, even when murdering Israeli children. And Israel’s left wing began to blame its own country for Palestinian rejectionism.
The lack of peace has nothing to do with settlers. Ask the settlers of Tel Aviv, who have just spent the past summer in bomb shelters.
Ruth Rosenberg, Caulfield, Vic
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