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Fed­er­al Oppo­si­tion Leader Antho­ny Albanese has denounced the use of the apartheid anal­o­gy to demonise Israel.

“The use of terms like apartheid not only is not appro­pri­ate to describe the Israeli polit­i­cal sys­tem and struc­ture, it also cheap­ens the strug­gle against apartheid that occurred in South Africa led by Man­dela and oth­ers. It’s a dan­ger­ous thing when peo­ple look for sim­plis­tic terms that are ahis­tor­i­cal. They are not only offen­sive to the peo­ple and struc­tures to which they are direct­ed but they are also offen­sive to where the term orig­i­nat­ed.”

Albanese was address­ing Aus­tralian Jew­ish lead­ers from around the coun­try in a zoom meet­ing organ­ised by the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry, and chaired by ECAJ pres­i­dent Jil­lian Segal.

With ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim mod­er­at­ing the event, Albanese also con­demned the Boy­cott, Divest­ment, Sanc­tions (BDS) cam­paign, and recalled his active oppo­si­tion to Mar­rickville Coun­cil’s 2011 res­o­lu­tion endors­ing BDS – which he described at the time as “coun­ter­pro­duc­tive self-indul­gence.”

In rela­tion to recent attempts to gain accep­tance for BDS, Mr Albanese said: “I pledge my ongo­ing oppo­si­tion to BDS” and to recog­nise the rise of anti­semitism both from the extreme right and extreme left.

He fur­ther endorsed Shad­ow For­eign Min­is­ter Pen­ny Wong’s rejec­tion of the recent Queens­land Labor con­fer­ence res­o­lu­tion which accused Israel of “eth­nic cleans­ing” and “apartheid”.

Antho­ny Albanese added that if some­thing along the lines of the Queens­land res­o­lu­tion or a res­o­lu­tion sup­port­ing BDS were to be moved at a future State or Fed­er­al con­fer­ence he would be opposed to it, as would his senior col­leagues.

Re-affirm­ing his and Labor’s sup­port for a two-State res­o­lu­tion of the Israel-Pales­tin­ian con­flict, Antho­ny Albanese said “I have always been very con­cerned about those who argue, includ­ing some on the Left as well, that we can have a one-State solu­tion. A sin­gle, sec­u­lar, demo­c­ra­t­ic State is in my view just a recipe for ongo­ing con­flict.”  Refer­ring to the UN’s his­toric endorse­ment of the two-State prin­ci­ple, he said “It has to be recog­nised why the Jew­ish State of Israel arose.”

He added that he looks for­ward to engag­ing with the new Israeli gov­ern­ment, espe­cial­ly over “issues we have in com­mon” such as “scarci­ty of water”, and “new tech­nol­o­gy”.

He read­i­ly acknowl­edged that he would be crit­i­cal of the actions of both Israel and the Pales­tin­ian lead­er­ship where and when he felt it appro­pri­ate. How­ev­er, “where it goes into anti­semitism – attacks on stu­dents, tar­get­ing Jew­ish schools and syn­a­gogues – there is a respon­si­bil­i­ty by polit­i­cal lead­ers to be aware of it and to speak about it.”

Repeat­ed­ly express­ing con­cern at the rise of anti­semitism Antho­ny Albanese, when asked whether a future Labor gov­ern­ment would fol­low the UK and oth­er coun­tries in endors­ing the IHRA work­ing def­i­n­i­tion of anti­semitism, replied “Yes, is the very clear answer. The Labor par­ty has done that [in state­ments in 2016 and 2019], and that is our view. It is crit­i­cal that there is lead­er­ship on those issues, lead­er­ship against any form of racism”.

He also said that, although this is under review, he was “absolute­ly” in favour of align­ing spe­cif­ic ele­ments of the Aus­tralian cur­ricu­lum with broad­er gov­ern­ment poli­cies to com­bat spe­cif­ic forms of racism and oth­er forms of prej­u­dice in order to pro­mote social cohe­sion.  He expressed sup­port for edu­cat­ing stu­dents not only about pos­i­tive val­ues but also to recog­nise and chal­lenge spe­cif­ic forms of prej­u­dice, includ­ing anti­semitism.

Not­ing that he hopes “to lead a Labor gov­ern­ment in the next 12 months”, he empha­sised that “we would­n’t take any action (to recog­nise a Pales­tin­ian State) with­out con­sult­ing rel­e­vant organ­i­sa­tions and nations, includ­ing the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, Israel and the Pales­tin­ian com­mu­ni­ty.”

Con­tact
Peter Wertheim | Co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8505 | m: 0408 160 904 | fax 02 9361 588
e: pwertheim@ecaj.org.au| www.ecaj.org.au