Has The Pro-Israel Lobby Subverted Australian Democracy?
TMS PEACE JOURNALISM, 14 Feb 2011
Jake Lynch – TRANSCEND Media Service
When Julia Gillard bundled Kevin Rudd unceremoniously out of the Lodge, the media response was predictable. Editors and producers creamed themselves over the clash of “personalities” (proving how loosely some of these words can be applied) while the more enterprising Pol Corrs blagged an extra 20 seconds on a live “two-way”, or an additional 100 words, to make fleeting reference to some of the policy implications of Labor’s switch of leadership.
In case you missed them – Rudd could have been pushing at an open door with his mining tax, but lacked the political skills, and the party support, to push it through. His nerve failed over an emissions trading scheme, and he lacked the courage of his “convictions” (loosely, again) on asylum, by suspending the processing of claims from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. All grievances effectively fixed by the promotion of his erstwhile deputy, pushed through by the party’s Right faction, with potential opposition either disaffected, demoralised or both.
A little-noticed casualty of the coup was the modest progress made under Rudd’s ministrations on fashioning a “principled” (OK I’ll stop now) position on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Pro-Palestinian groups were enraged by the vote in the House of Representatives, congratulating Israel on turning 60, because nothing was said about al-Nakba, the violent expulsion of thousands of Palestinians whose anniversary comes around, by uncanny coincidence, at the same time. Look closer, though, and Australia under Kevin Rudd was making a series of baby-steps away from its reflex pro-Israel position under John Howard, and – significantly, therefore – away from the Washington line.
Labor on taking office had the political savvy to get controversial decisions made quickly, while its reputation was still unsullied and before resolve could crumble under Canberra’s lobbying system (signing Kyoto, apologising to the Stolen Generations, moving to abolish Work Choices). And at the UN, it seized an early opportunity to send a signal that foreign policy was now under new management, supporting a resolution calling on Israel to stop establishing settlements in the Palestinian territories and a resolution calling for the Geneva Conventions to apply there.
These basic tenets of international law and humanitarian law are accepted, notionally, by the entire international community, but a vote is held annually at the General Assembly (GA), if only to isolate and attempt to embarrass those countries sufficiently brazen to make what is, in effect, a public declaration that Israel should be exempt. In 2003, Australia joined the “hard core” of those voting against: Israel itself, the United States and four Pacific micro-states whose votes have essentially been bought – the US Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau and Micronesia.
Australian officials told the UN the Government had changed its position because it supported a two-state resolution of the conflict to deliver a secure Israel living beside a viable Palestinian state and that Australia believed both sides should abide by their obligations under the Road Map for Peace. Australia said it was concerned that continued settlement-building activity would undermine confidence in the negotiations.
Ominously – in light of the sequence of events that was to follow – the president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Robert Goot, was quoted in the Fairfax media as being “concerned” over the switch. “We are concerned that the vote has changed, we do not understand the basis for the change”, he said.
Those concerns, we may assume, would only have intensified with the publication of the Goldstone report, with its detailed consideration of evidence that both Israel and Hamas broke international humanitarian law during “Operation Cast Lead”, Israel’s attack on Gaza which started at the very end of 2008.
Initially, Australia voted at the GA against referring the report to the UN Security Council. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith complained about Goldstone’s “unbalanced focus on Israel [and] insufficient attention to Hamas’ actions prior to the conflict, especially rocket attacks”.
This was a “holding position”: a line hastily lashed together on the assumption – justified, as it turned out – that Canberra would not have to undergo any serious media scrutiny on the issue. (In fact, Goldstone investigated and dismissed the Israeli propaganda claim that Hamas rockets were responsible for breaking the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. The truce had held successfully for six months until a raid in the Strip by Israeli commandoes, in November 2008, brought it to breaking point).
Events took a novel twist when a second resolution, amended to demand that Israel and the Palestinians follow up Goldstone’s evidence to investigate possible war crimes in the attack, was tabled at the GA. Now, Australia switched its vote, from a “no” to an “abstain”.
This was shortly after the “fake passports affair”, when a Hamas military commander, Mahmoud al-Mabouh, was killed in a Dubai hotel room apparently by a team of Mossad agents, using counterfeit travel documents including three forged Australian passports. “Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend”, Smith said, and later, Canberra expelled an Israeli diplomat in retaliation. This was the “harder” of the two “lines” adopted by the countries concerned: in France and Germany, for instance – countries whose passports were also faked for the exercise – the local Israeli Ambassador was called in by the foreign ministry for a “dressing-down”.
Any one of these steps was small in itself, but, added together, seemed to send a clear signal in the highly coded language of diplomacy. Meanwhile, however, Australia’s pro-Israel lobby had begun to mobilise. Peter Hartcher, the Sydney Morning Herald’s well-connected political editor, recounted how the Jewish community was now declaring itself “too busy” to join in fundraising for Labor’s re-election campaign, whereas, in the heady days of Kevin ’07, “a single lunch in Sydney raised $100,000. A Toorak tennis court party, attended by Rudd and Julia Gillard, raised more”.
A meeting over dinner at the Lodge, intended to smooth relations with Jewish leaders, was brokered by Michael Danby and Mark Dreyfus – leading parliamentary supporters of Israel and luminaries of the Labor Right.
Why risk this cosy relationship? Rudd, as he sat down to his chicken soup, had other fish to fry. Australia had set its cap at winning a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The first attempt had attracted a solitary vote (our own, we must assume) but, undeterred, DFAT pressed on with its campaign for a place at the semi-circular top table of global governance for the session in 2013-14. Indeed, it recently sent round a leaflet, extolling Australia’s virtues, to other foreign ministries appealing for support.
Shortly before the Lodge dinner, Ambassador Hesham Youssef, chef de cabinet to the Secretary-General of the Arab League at its office in Washington, DC, made a visit to Australia. After meeting with MPs and officials, he came to the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, DFAT minder in tow, for a chat with me, and my colleague, Professor Stuart Rees, Director of the Sydney Peace Foundation. He had informed everyone he met in Canberra, Ambassador Youssef explained, that Australia could look to the Arab countries to support its Security Council bid only if it took steps to distance itself from Washington on issues arising from the Israel-Palestine conflict.
All in all, then, these were optimistic days, for those wishing for a more even-handed line from Australia on this litmus-test issue of international affairs. And the steady accretion of infinitesimal gradations seemed to be in line with public opinion. A poll by Roy Morgan research, conducted for the pressure group, the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine, found that Australians felt more sympathy for the Palestinians, and expressed more support for their position, over the attack on Gaza, than for the Israelis or their position.
But for those opposed to such developments, an alternative strategy was taking shape. At the time of “Cast Lead”, Australia’s response was given, not by Rudd himself – who was taking a short break between Christmas and New Year – but by Gillard, standing in for him. She characterised the onslaught as no more than Israel exercising its “right to defend itself”.
Weeks later, she became the first world leader since the attack to make an official visit to Israel, at the head of a bipartisan political and business deputation (accompanied by former Treasurer Peter Costello for the Opposition), to fulsome thanks from her hosts for having been “almost alone in sticking by us”. A study of the transcripts of her speeches and press conferences revealed that the word, Gaza, never once passed her lips.
And we now know – thanks to Wikileaks – that at the same time in Canberra, another key figure on the Labor Right, NSW Senator Mark Arbib, was briefing his handlers at the US embassy on Rudd’s travails, and the credentials of his deputy to take over. Leaked cables reveal Arbib to be a longstanding American intelligence asset. And at some point in this period, the wish became father to the deed: Arbib was not merely discussing the possibility of Rudd’s ouster, but playing a leading role in organising it. By the time Labor’s leadership spill brought the underlying tensions into the open, Rudd’s fate was already sealed by the numbers Arbib had stacked up behind the scenes: encouraged, perhaps, by his talks with the Americans.
So, was there an elaborate plot, involving the active connivance of pro-Israel groups, the US embassy, the mining industry and the Right faction of the ALP, and kept successfully secret, to bring Rudd down and install Gillard in his place? To pose the question in those terms is to stretch credulity, but of course there is a way to answer it, which resonates with abundant life experience, and is encapsulated in another question: cui bono? (Or perhaps we could simply say: Go Figure).
Under Gillard, after all, Australia has reverted to its previous type. At the UN vote last November, we were back with the not-so-magnificent seven, voting against a resolution which “reaffirmed the illegality of Israeli actions intended to change the status of Jerusalem… Reaffirming its commitment to the two-State solution of Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security within recognized borders, the Assembly also stressed the need for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem”.
It’s the kind of change, and these are the kind of cause-and-effect relationships, over which academics like me expend a good deal of effort, trying to understand (or explain – a difference obscure to the uninitiated, but crucial in social science) how they come to be.
To quote the most-quoted author in published social science research, Michel Foucault, “power is the strategic situation in society”. Nothing like this happens without someone, somewhere, “doing the deed”, which is where the Mark Arbibs of this world come in: an example of – in Foucault’s words – “the local cynicism of power”.
But the French philosopher cautions against looking for “the headquarters that presides over its rationality”. Another writer, Manuel Castells, popularised the concept of the “network society”, where “the power of flows” is more influential than “flows of power”. It’s not what you know, in plain terms, that counts, but who you know: and the most useful way to understand this aspect of the collocation of forces that successfully brought down Kevin Rudd may be to chart the machinations of key networks in and around Australian politics. Once you’re in, you’re in – until, that is, you’re out.
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Jake Lynch is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. The views expressed are his own. Jake is a peace journalism advisor for TMS.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 14 Feb 2011.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: Has The Pro-Israel Lobby Subverted Australian Democracy?, is included. Thank you.
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6 Responses to “Has The Pro-Israel Lobby Subverted Australian Democracy?”
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After thirty years of studying violence & nonviolence, I find myself wondering how “peace journalism” of this kind can advance the cause of peace, of positive peace I mean. The description of the intricacies of party politics and international relations provides the daily bread for well-connected academics in political science departments. From peace research one would hope creative (possibly radical) propositions about alternative ways of handling international relations, not just a description of the status quo and a transparent support for the Palestinian cause.
So Piero P Georgi cannot understand how Professor Lynch’s peace journalism can advance the cause of positive peace? He should reflect that there is no peace without justice – and justice is served by exposing the truth to the light of day.
Lynch showed some restraint. He might, had we wished, have referred to Julia Gillard’s common-law husband’s employment with Albert Dadon’s real estate firm, a job for which he had no previous experience, as far as I am aware. Was this a reward to Julia for past and future services to the cause of Zionism? It’s a question that has to be asked.
Jake Lynch’s argument about the all-powerful Jewish lobby would perhaps be taken seriously if he actually named the specific “Jewish” leaders who donated money to the ALP, and demonstrated their actual links with the Jewish community. He might have some credibility if he also discussed the active and aggressive pro-Palestinian lobby groups in Australia such as Australians for Palestine, and the various strategies they use to lobby political parties. Sorry Jake, but this article suggests you are still just a simple journalist who is out of his depth in academia. Start with politics 101 or have a talk with Professor John Warhurst from ANU who is Australia’s strongest authority on lobby/interest groups. He might be able to assist you to write a paper that goes beyond Year 12 standard.
Lev Bronstein
Ah! An ad hominem attack in response to an article criticising Israel! I’ll add it to my collection.
Jake Lynch seems to forget he is a guest in this country. We are no longer a British colony, and his British background gives him no greater credibility here than someone from Outer Mongolia. Perhaps in 15 years when he has earnt his stripes and shown his knowledge of indigenous football he can talk. Until then Jake you need to earn respect.
bronstein excelling in the low end of rebuttal – weak on counters and heavy on chutzpah. we are all guests in this country, bar a few of the vanquished traditional owners. moreover, the article brings to (obscured) light a few truths most with their heads in the sand in this country ought think about. i hasten to add that those with their heads in unmitigated zionism ought to stretch their necks now and then and stop knee-jerk reactions to any perceived critical readings of phenomena that question / unpack the more cynical brand of pro-Israeli behaviour in this country.