Cold comfort from Labor
Labor's conference rejected the worst amendments, but its platform still weakens support for Israel.
It could have been worse. That is how some are framing the outcome from Labor’s national conference vis-a-vis the Israeli/Palestinian issue.
It is little consolation.
Yes, maverick MP Ed Husic’s highly inflammatory and divisive amendments were rightly struck down. But that fact does not mean that what was left in the platform is any good.
On the contrary, it places undue blame and expectation on Israel, while excusing the corrupt and authoritarian Palestinian Authority (PA) of responsibility and reducing condemnation of Hamas to a mere slap on the wrist.
There is within Labor’s grassroots an unhealthy obsession with Israel; a gravely misinformed chorus of feigned moral superiority that casts only the Jewish state as an oppressor and raises the importance of punishing it above real day-to-day issues faced by Australians.
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