Labor pains

How can any social democrat ignore such barbarism? Fortunately, there are Labor parliamentarians who are vigorous supporters of Israel but their numbers are diminishing and they are being drowned out by the more vociferous members of Labor’s hard left.

When Australian Jews, including those such as myself who are members of the Labor Party, respond to the grotesque exaggeration about Israel, we are accused of being part of the “Jewish lobby”.

Israel’s opponents in Australia now include those who support the Palestinians not for ideological reasons but because of the increased number of Arab voters in their electorates.

This trend reached a crescendo in the immediate aftermath of September 11. For me 9/11 was the clearest demarcation ever between good and evil. Many Australians could not contain their glee that at last the “Yanks had got their just desserts”.

I have never been able to fathom the vicious anti-Americanism that permeates so much of western society. Despite all their faults, Americans have been the one constant bastion against totalitarianism of the right and left. Does anyone doubt that fascism and communism would have been defeated without the United States? From the left’s point of view America’s triumph over communism has been their greatest crime.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the revelation that matters were far worse than even the Americans had claimed forced the left to face up to the fact that for decades their defence of tyrants such as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro et al was inexcusable.

There were no apologies, however. Being on the left means never having to say you’re sorry or admit you’re wrong. It goes a long way to explaining their attacks on George W Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard, while ignoring the monstrous crimes of the Assads, Husseins, Gadhafis and other Arab despots. The war on terrorism and the war on Iraq have given them a new lease of life.

But this time it has a new twist - a distinctly anti-Semitic one. It surfaced in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and was summed up in the comments by Sydney Morning Herald columnist Alan Ramsey who wrote that the cause of September 11 was America’s Middle East policies and their failure to rein in the Israelis.

This has been repeated ad nauseum by one left or liberal commentator after another. Israeli scientist Haim Harari nailed this nonsense in a speech earlier this year:

The millions who died in the Iraq-Iran war had nothing to do with Israel. The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Muslim regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel. The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilians in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel. Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endanger Saudi Arabia and butcher his own people because of Israel... The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with Israel, I could go on and on.

Anyone who believes that “reining in the Israelis” will bring peace and prosperity to the Middle East should change their medication. The ranting and raving, common among the extreme right wing, has been taken up with gusto by the left. When it started to infect the social democratic wing of the Labor Party I became extremely worried.

There will be those in the Labor Party who will say “Our policies support Israel’s right to exist, so what are you complaining about?”