Parties wrestle over ‘pro-Israel’ label in Australia campaign

Thursday, August 19, 2010 | by dan goldberg

As the two major parties in Australia’s national election vie for the title of Israel’s most ardent backer, most Jewish leaders believe that the country’s longstanding, strong bilateral support for the Jewish state will not be jeopardized regardless of the outcome.

Along with support for Israel, Australia’s 110,000-strong Jewish community will consider perennial issues such as the economy, refugees and Aboriginal affairs in the Saturday, Aug. 21 contest pitting Prime Minister Julia Gillard of the Labor Party against Tony Abbott of the Liberal Party.

Because voting is mandatory in Australia, Sabbath-observing Jews used early polling booths to cast their ballots this week.

Polls show a tight race between Gillard, whose backroom leadership coup two months ago toppled Labor leader Kevin Rudd, and Abbott, the conservative Liberal leader once known as the “Mad Monk” for making some brutishly candid remarks.

The Liberals have been trying to drive a wedge between Labor and the Jewish community, according to Philip Mendes, a Melbourne-based academic.

During the campaign, Abbott has described the Liberal Party’s bond with Israel as “unshakable.” Abbott, 52, a London native who was educated at Oxford, charged Labor with occasionally abandoning the Jewish state at the United Nations and pledged to take action against the “vicious anti-Semitic message” of Hizb-ut Tahrir, a radical Islamist group banned in the United States.

But Mendes, co-editor of “Jews & Australian Politics,” described Labor’s record on Israel as “superior to virtually every other Western social democratic government, including the recently deposed New Labor in the U.K.”

In Labor’s first term in office, the party proposed a bipartisan resolution on Israel’s 60th anniversary in 2008, supported Israel during its showdown with Hamas in 2009, boycotted the Durban II U.N. anti-racism conference, opposed the Goldstone report on the Gaza war and ramped up sanctions against Iran.

Michael Danby, a Jewish lawmaker and perhaps the most ardent Israel backer in the government, said Gillard “stood like a rock” during the Gaza incursion and that Labor “will not shirk its historic responsibility” to defend Israel against Iran.

But a diplomatic meltdown in relations with Jerusalem took place in May following an inquiry finding that there was “no doubt” Israel forged four Australian passports used in the assassination of a Hamas leader. In response, Rudd ordered an official from the Israeli Embassy in Canberra to leave the country.

Many Jews were “taken aback at how vehement Rudd was in his handling of the affair,” said a senior Jewish leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In an attempt to heal the rift, Rudd hosted a kosher dinner with senior Jewish leaders at the prime minister’s residence in June. And Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told the Australian Jewish News last week that it was “business as usual” between Canberra and Jerusalem.

The Liberals have focused on Labor’s record at the United Nations during the campaign. Since coming to office in 2007, the Labor government has supported three controversial U.N. resolutions against Israel, prompting Jewish leaders to write to the prime minister last year expressing their disappointment.

Deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop said this week that a Liberal government would return to the U.N. voting pattern of former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard, whose government was staunchly pro-Israel.

For her part Gillard, 48, ignored calls to boycott a visit to Israel in June 2009. In Jerusalem, Israeli leaders feted her for supporting the Jewish state during its Gaza military operation in the winter of 2008-09. Last December, she delivered a speech at a Jewish function in Melbourne and danced the hora.

But soon after she upstaged her boss and became Australia’s first female prime minister in late June, two former Australian ambassadors to Israel accused her of an unbalanced position on the Middle East, with Ross Burns, Australia’s envoy in Tel Aviv between 2001 and 2003, blasting her for being “remarkably taciturn on the excesses of Israeli actions.”

This weekend’s election will likely see two Jewish lawmakers, Danby and Mark Dreyfus, re-elected for Labor. Joshua Frydenberg, a former adviser to Howard, is set to become the first Jewish Liberal member of Parliament since Peter Baume in 1991.

The Liberals need to win 17 more seats in the 150-member House of Representatives to regain power after less than three years of Labor rule.