The following article has been published in The Mercury by Peter Wertheim.

Greg Barns’s diatribe against Israel and his apologia for dumped ALP candidate Melissa Parke (Talking Point, April 22) are sadly typical of the way the facts can get lost when it comes to much com­ment­ary about the Middle East. 

Barns accuses Israel of foreign inter­fer­ence in Australia’s domestic politics and asserts the ALP has been “captured by the Israel lobby”. The claim would be laughable if it were not so insidious.

As recently as December, the ALP National Con­fer­ence passed a res­ol­u­tion, supported by Labor foreign affairs spokes­wo­man Penny Wong, calling on the next Labor gov­ern­ment, as “an important priority”, to recognise “Palestine” as a state.

Penny Wong also announced that an ALP gov­ern­ment will reverse, not merely review, the present government’s recog­ni­tion of west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and spend an extra $20 million of Aus­trali­an taxpayers’ dollars to support the Palestini­ans through UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the near east), which has been accused of allowing aid money to be diverted for terrorism.

The ALP lead­er­ship was fully aware aspects of these announce­ments would be cri­ti­cised by most Jewish organ­isa­tions in Australia. But the ALP made them regard­less, making a nonsense of Barns’s claims about the Israel lobby having captured the ALP.

So what is really behind these false claims? My organ­isa­tion consists of elected rep­res­ent­at­ives of Jewish com­munit­ies across Australia, with some 200 organ­isa­tions under its umbrella. Like other organ­isa­tions rep­res­ent­ing the many ethnic and religious com­munit­ies, we seek to artic­u­late the interests and main­stream views of our community on policy including education, welfare, aged care and security.

We also speak up to defend Israel whenever it is smeared because, as a recent survey showed, 88 per cent of Aus­trali­an Jews say they feel a sense of respons­ib­il­ity to ensure the State of Israel continues to exist. Many of us have family there. This is no different to, say, the Aus­trali­an Greek community speaking up about the Cyprus issue.

Yet whenever our organ­isa­tion responds to false or mis­lead­ing comments about Israel, we receive harassing messages warning us to stop “inter­fer­ing in domestic politics”. Whether from people describ­ing them­selves as white suprem­acists or defenders of Palestini­an human rights, the intent, and often the words, are the same. They want to intim­id­ate us into silence. It’s despic­able to suggest Jewish Aus­trali­ans don’t have the same rights as other citizens to par­ti­cip­ate in the political process and support or criticise foreign policy state­ments of our political parties and politi­cians. The altern­at­ive would be political cen­sor­ship.

Barns cri­ti­cises the Israeli ambas­sad­or for defending his country from being unfairly maligned. The ambas­sad­or of any country would surely do the same.

Emulating Parke, Barns smears and del­e­git­im­ises Israel by falsely comparing it to apartheid South Africa, citing several dis­cred­ited anti-Israel writers. He omits to mention that Israel just had an election in which all of its citizens, Jews, Arabs and others, had the right to vote. Ten Arab can­did­ates were elected as members of Israel’s Par­lia­ment, the Knesset.

Some 20 per cent of Israel’s pop­u­la­tion identify as Arabs. They are fully fledged citizens of Israel with equal voting, civil and religious rights, as enshrined in Israel’s Basic Law and Declar­a­tion of Inde­pend­ence. The recent Nation State law has not changed that. Arabs serve in the upper echelons of the military, police, courts (including the Supreme Court) and Par­lia­ment. There have been Israeli Arab members of the Knesset since the first Israeli elections in 1949.

The Supreme Court has an Arab judge, the head of surgery in a leading hospital is Arab and Arabs head uni­ver­sity depart­ments. Jewish and Arab doctors and nurses work together, giving care equally to Jewish and Arab patients — unthink­able under apartheid. Israel’s Jews and Arabs use the same public transport, eat in the same res­taur­ants, share the same beaches, theatres and cinemas, shop at the same malls, attend the same public schools and uni­ver­sit­ies and work side by side in many occu­pa­tions.

Immense resources have been invested to address remaining areas of inequal­ity and dis­crim­in­a­tion. Dis­crim­in­a­tion exists every­where, including in Australia, but dis­crim­in­a­tion is not apartheid.

Melissa Parke has been at odds with her party’s policies on immig­ra­tion and asylum seekers and her support of a boycott of Israel. She does not advocate a boycott of Iran, China, Cuba or any other country, just Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. The ALP has condemned any boycott of Israel. Even the Greens have rejected it as a policy.

Parke claims to support Israel’s right to exist side by side with a Palestini­an state, but sim­ul­tan­eously calls for a “right of return” to Israel of 5 million so-called Palestini­an refugees, 99 per cent of whom are not refugees and have never fled from anywhere. This is an openly declared aim of the campaign to boycott Israel, to which Melissa Parke has lent her support. It is tan­tamount to a call for Israel’s destruc­tion, not its right to exist.

As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, modern antisemitism often expresses itself “in attempts to del­e­git­im­ise the right of Israel to exist, including calls for its destruc­tion”.

Peter Wertheim AM is co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry.