Carr does a u-turn
FORMER foreign minister Bob Carr has withdrawn from an event billed as "The right of return … commemoration of 70th anniversary of Al Nakbah".
FORMER foreign minister Bob Carr has withdrawn from an event billed as “The right of return … commemoration of 70th anniversary of Al Nakbah”.
The one-time NSW Premier, who has in recent years become increasingly hostile to Israel, was to appear at the Al Quds Community Centre event on May 12, alongside Kuwaiti poet and Hamas supporter Ahmad Al-Kandari.
Carr confirmed his withdrawal on Tuesday night, tweeting: “It is now clear it is not what they presented to me in the invitation. If the event is endorsed by people without a commitment to a peaceful path to Palestinian nationhood I won’t be part of it.
“I have proudly accepted an invitation to address an alternative function marking the 70th anniversary of Palestinian dispossession and the case for a Palestinian state as envisaged in Oslo Accords.”
Al-Kandari, in a 2010 sermon translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, sang: “We are the soldiers of Hamas, and jihad is our path … Kill them, inflict endless wounds upon them. Say to Zion: We have brought slaughter upon you, and we shall watch you dying.”
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim welcomed Carr’s withdrawal from the event, but qualified, “What he continues to miss is that his reference to the ’70th anniversary of Palestinian dispossession’ implies that Israel’s establishment in 1948 itself created the Palestinian refugees, and that Israel is therefore an illegitimate state.
“This is not consistent with the Oslo Accords and promotion of the internationally endorsed principle of two states for two peoples. It is also historically false.”
Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council director of international affairs Jeremy Jones said publicity for the event “bemoaning Israel’s existence and advocating its destruction” had been circulating for some time prior to Carr’s assertion that he had been misled as to its nature.
He added, “Taking a one-sided and jaundiced view of the historic events around the creation of Israel is disappointing but predictable.
“It indicates a desperation to find a platform on which to continue his negative contributions to the development of trust and goodwill in the Middle East.”
GARETH NARUNSKY
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