I used to feel scared and guilty when I wrote about Jewish donors. But other journalists recognize the importance of the issue. “Jewish donors” is in the headline of a report in the Guardian on a memoir by a former foreign minister. Writes Lenore Taylor:
Former [Australian] foreign minister Bob Carr has suggested [Australia Prime Minister] Julia Gillard’s dogged insistence on supporting Israel in a controversial United Nations vote was because Australian foreign policy had been “subcontracted” to Jewish donors….
Bob Carr: Diary of a Foreign Minister includes a detailed account of a period in October and November 2012 when Carr campaigned against Gillard’s insistence that Australia should support Israel and vote against Palestinian observer status in the United Nations.
[Former Australian PM Kevin] Rudd’s had a “morbid interest” in the issue which had the potential to impact both on Australia’s fate in the upcoming vote for a seat on the UN security council and on his own chances to return to the prime ministership.
“How much of this is about money, I asked him,” Carr writes. “He said about one-fifth of the money he had raised in the 2007 election campaign had come from the Jewish community.”
Carr concludes that “subcontracting our foreign policy to party donors is what this involves. Or appears to involve.”
He describes how nine ministers spoke against Gillard when the issue was discussed by cabinet, and only two in favour of her position.
“Jewish donors” of course doesn’t discriminate between Zionist ones and non-Zionist ones; but the fact is that the Jewish community has been so homogeneous on this issue till lately that the politicians didn’t have time to discriminate on that basis. That’s why former Congressman Barney Frank said to Jeff Halper, You’ve convinced me; I’m against settlements, but I won’t come out against them till you find 5,000 Jews in my district who will come out against them too. Otherwise it’s political suicide.
This is also the importance of John Judis’s book on Truman. He reports similar division inside Truman’s braintrust as there was in Gillard’s cabinet –overwhelming majorities against Partition. And he says domestic political concerns drove policymaking in ’46 and ’48, and in 2011, too: Truman deferred to Abe Feinberg on foreign policy, as Obama later deferred to Haim Saban. So long as journalists won’t talk about a real effect in our politics, then these rich rightwingers and politicians won’t be embarrassed, the public remains uninformed, and nothing changes.
The fact is that this brand of rhetoric is the definition of antisemitism.
Australian recognition of Israel 28 January 1949 “… on the basis of the resolution of the United Nations Assembly of November 29, 1947…” Australia has never recognized any further territories as Israeli.
Hi Phil,
Bob Carr is actually the ex-Foreign Minister for Australia under the Gillard government (so not an ex-Foreign Minister for Britain/UK). He is a member of the Labor Right faction of the Australian Labor Party, the same party as former Australian Prime Ministers, Gillard and Rudd (Gillard is supposedly a member of the Left faction and Rudd was not in either faction, one of the things that contributed to his political demise).
Prior to becoming Australian Foreign Minister, Carr had been the New South Wales (NSW) State Premier for 10 years from 1995 until 2005.
The 7.30 program on the ABC (Australian Broadcast Corporation) -one of Australia’s public broadcaster did an interview with him where he discuss in detail his criticism of the Israel lobby (see link below)
The ABC had also run a online report on their website of his criticisms last night (Australian time) which carried the headline: Bob Carr lashes out at Melbourne ‘pro-Israel lobby’. However, the headline has now changed and the online report now covers a range of issues, not just his criticism of the Melbourne Israel lobby. It also has an embedded video with the 7.30 Report interview.
The current version of the article on the ABC website now gives much more space and weight to the response from the Israel lobby, than the original version did (unfortunately, I can’t find a cache copy of the original article).
As a result, it is better to watch/listen to the video embedded in the page as it contains his full comments on the issue of the Israel lobby, which had originally been given more prominence in the first version of the report.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-09/bob-carr-lashes-out-at-melbourne-pro-israel-lobby/5379074
“This is also the importance of John Judis’s book on Truman. He reports similar division inside Truman’s braintrust as there was in Gillard’s cabinet –overwhelming majorities against Partition.”
Truman was over half a century ago.
Nobody dares write about Jewish money in DC today.
Important article. It appears well understood in the US, Great Britain and Australia
that with acceptance of Jewish politically-directed financial contributions, comes
the expectation that the candidate will adhere at above 100% fidelity to Israeli
expectations as regards foreign policy, particularly as it impacts Israeli security,
financial and political interests. However, could it be the case, that those
candidates who choose to side step such heavy handed directives, supporting the
needs of their own country first, experience the political analogue of the well
known “Dahiya doctrine” – notably experiencing disproportionate push back (force), inflicting widespread damage (think about smears, lawfare, rumor campaigns, outright sabotage) and punishment to the extent that addressing all of it will demand long (ideally well beyond the election date) and expensive reconstructive processes which may or may no be effective, given the remarkable low level or non existence of investigative journalism in any of the above countries. If this were true, the percentage of money which is relatively low (20%) would not be nearly as persuasive, as the implicit threat of well-funded multi media, McCarthy level tactics, with all those bought and paid for politicos pushed to use the full range of their powers to extend the smears and the punishment.