No friend of ours

EDITORIAL

On Monday afternoon, an IDF soldier, Almog Shiloni, aged just 20, was fatally stabbed outside a train station in Tel Aviv. Just a few hours later, on Monday evening, a young woman, 26-year-old Dalia Lemkus, was stabbed to death at the Alon Shvut junction in the West Bank.

While the Jewish world mourns the latest victims of the recent spate of Palestinian terror attacks, here in Australia the grief strikes at the heart of our community as Dalia’s uncles and cousins live in Melbourne.At this terrible time, our thoughts and prayers are with them.

With fears of a third intifada proving increasingly founded, as violence escalates and the death toll mounts, it is with a sense of disbelief that we read of former foreign minister Bob Carr’s latest foray into the headlines. Railing against an Israel that he depicts as pandering to fanatics intent on an indefinite occupation, maintained through a system of apartheid, the erstwhile president of Labor Friends of Israel has now become patron of Labor Friends of Palestine.

Which Palestine is he a friend of? The Palestine that lauds the slaughter of innocents and hails those killed pursuing that goal as martyrs? The Palestine Israel withdrew from in 2005 that instead of pursuing peace chooses to rain rockets down on its neighbour and build terror tunnels from which it can launch further deadly attacks? The Palestine that has continually rejected every offer of a deal from a country that has shown its willingness to evacuate settlements? The Palestine that teaches its children that ultimately there can only be a one-state solution, one state known as Palestine with no state known as Israel? The Palestine that kidnapped Gilad Shalit, that murdered Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach and, in the past few weeks, has left the Jewish world weeping for Chaya Zissel Braun, Karen Mosquera, Almog Shiloni and Dalia Lemkus?

Violence rages across the Middle East, religious minorities are being massacred in their thousands, but who does Carr choose to focus his ire on and tarnish with the apartheid slur? A country that has voting rights for all, that has Arab members of parliament, Arab members of the judiciary, Arab doctors in hospitals, Arab professors lecturing in universities. A country that doesn’t just treat Arab patients in the same wards as Jewish patients, it treats the children of its sworn enemies in those wards.

Yes, there are issues that need to be resolved. And God willing they will be.

In the meantime, we’re just glad Bob Carr has new friends to talk to. Because we’re fed up with listening to him.