Falafel factions, Likudniks and Bob Carr: inside the battle for Israeli influence

ACCORDING to Bob Carr, this was the falafel faction laid bare. Mark Dreyfus, with an “umbilical attachment’’ to the cause of Israel. Stephen Conroy, disturbed at the turn of events, signalling to ally Bill Shorten to join the fray, “as if he was in a Kingsville branch meeting itching to do in the local lefties’’. Julia Gillard, prime minister, determined to vote no, putting Australia “in lock-step with the Likud’’.

Was this high-level evidence of the Melbourne Jewish lobby unduly shaping Australian foreign policy or worse — “subcontracting out foreign policy to party donors?’’ Or was it something less sinister; a robust debate over one of history’s most fraught questions: how best to advance peace in the Middle East?

Albert Dadon is a Melbourne Jewish lobbyist. He has sought to influence Australian prime ministers and cabinet ministers on both sides of politics. He counts Kevin Rudd as a friend and Tony Abbott as well. He briefly came to prominence for giving a job to Tim Mathieson, Gillard’s partner. For all these things he is unapologetic. And for Carr, he has polite yet powerful scorn. “What he is trying to do is limit the rights of any members of the Jewish community to have any influence on the political process,’’ Dadon told The Australian from France. “We have no apology to make to Mr Carr or to anyone for being part of the fabric of this society where we have a voice and influence in public debate. Everyone from car companies to cigarette companies to anything is trying to have some sort of influence and input in government. So why should we apologise for having a certain outcome by government?

“There are no apologies to be made and the fact he is singling us out with a finger is reminiscent of a certain era when Jews were limited in having a voice in political debate. On that side, I am very uncomfortable with what Mr Carr is saying.’’

Dadon says there is a pluralism of views within the Australian Jewish community and Israeli politics about Palestine. There is even disagreement about Carr. Where Danny Lamm, the president of Zionist Federation of Australia, believes Carr demonstrated anti-Israel views by agreeing to personally award the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize to Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi, Dadon supported that decision as encouraging moderate Palestinians to shape their future nation.

Yet as Carr’s reflections from Diary of a Foreign Minister gain circulation, there is near uniform condemnation of his accusation, repeatedly put throughout the book, that a particularly conservative Melbourne Jewish lobby had excessive influence over Gillard and “Likudniks’’ — named after Israel’s ruling centre-right Likud party — in her office, and the ALP Victorian Right faction led by Shorten and Conroy.

Most observers have interpreted Carr’s claims as aimed at the Australia-Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, which publishes the Australia Israel Review, and AIJAC chairman, Mark Leibler.

“He’s referring to me directly,’’ Mr Leibler told the ABC’s Lateline. “But, you know, as flattered as I am, this is really a figment of his imagination.’’

In a statement released yesterday, AIJAC said Carr’s comments were sad and

bizarre. “Mr Carr’s spurious allegations that the lobby held ‘extraordinary’ and ‘unhealthy’ sway over the views of former prime minister Julia Gillard and her office shows her a distinct lack of respect,’’ it read.

“Ms Gillard was an independent-thinking prime minister who is fully capable of coming to her own conclusions about optimum Australian foreign policies, as is Mr Carr.

“The fact that some of her conclusions on promoting Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation were different from Carr’s is no more evidence that she was under the influence of ‘unhealthy’ pro-Israeli lobbying than Carr’s views are evidence that he is under the ‘sway’ of Australia’s several pro-Palestinian lobby groups.”

The same point was made by Robert Goot, the president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. “These claims border on conspiracy theories which make for salacious gossip and help to sell books, but bear no relationship to reality,’’ he said.

“Bob Carr’s suggestion that there has been anything untoward in the way Jewish community organisations have conducted their advocacy, as we do openly in a democracy like many other organisations, including Palestinian advocacy groups, is as bizarre as it is misconceived.’’

Yet just as all sides in the Middle East debate attempt to influence government policy, there is no doubt that the Jewish lobby is able and prepared to employ resources and means that other groups cannot.

Carr estimates that about 20c of every dollar donated to the ALP comes from Jewish groups. AIJAC and Dadon’s Australia Israel Leadership Forum regularly fly politicians and journalists to Israel to better understand its strategic fragilities from the ground. When then opposition leader Tony Abbott was hit by a defamation suit by CFMEU boss John Setka, he received pro-bono legal advice from the normally high-priced firm Arnold Bloch Leibler. Leibler is a partner in the firm.

Lamm and other Jewish leaders dismiss the notion of a Melbourne-Sydney divide in Australia’s approach to Israel. Yet within the ALP, attitudes towards Israel and Palestine can be charted according to factional and state lines.

A senior Victorian Right source explained that in NSW, the political relationship with the Jewish community was limited by the perception there were few votes in it for Labor. This is because the Liberal Party has cornered the Jewish vote in safe inner-Sydney seats while, in the western suburbs, Labor’s priority is the fast-growing Islamic vote.

In Melbourne, the influx of Jewish migrants immediately before and after the Holocaust meant the interests of the community could not be ignored. The Melbourne Ports electorate, in inner Melbourne, is per capita one of the world’s most Jewish areas outside the Middle East or Europe. It is held by Labor’s Michael Danby, a member of Carr’s so-called falafel faction.

Carr says the position he pushed on Palestine as foreign minister had nothing to do with “some crude pursuit of votes from ethnic communities’’. Danby, who is Jewish and a strong supporter of Israel, agrees. He believes Carr’s views are less representative of political miscalculations than anti-Israel bigotry. “No lobby in Australia, I understand, has that kind of influence. It’s laughable,’’ he said yesterday.

In an account remarkable for it colourful turn of phrase and fragrant breach of confidences, Carr’s Diary of a Foreign Minister recalls how these divisions played out in November 2012, when the Australian government was confronted with how to vote on a UN resolution to elevate Palestine to observer state status.

Carr was frustrated and gloomy. Although he was foreign minister, he had little say on Israel policy — at least not publicly — with all official utterances vetted by Gillard’s foreign policy adviser Richard Maude, her staffer Bruce Wolpe and cabinet secretary Mark Dreyfus. Wolpe, who remains Gillard’s spokesman, and Dreyfus, who holds the outer-Melbourne seat of Isaacs, are Jewish. Carr was overruled on issuing a statement on “condemning” Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and Gillard rejected his idea of supporting an Egyptian proposal for a nuclear-free Middle East. And she was steadfast in rejecting Carr’s plea not to oppose the UN motion on Palestine status. Carr, having been NSW premier for a decade, opposition leader for seven years prior and schooled in the winner-take-all Tammany Hall-style NSW Right political machine, did what he had done all his life: the numbers. He decided to roll the prime minister. The culmination of the campaign came in the cabinet room on November 26, 2012. The day before, Conroy had told Carr, sitting next to him in the Senate, that his position on Palestine was “monstrous, a betrayal, a deceit”. There was talk of binding the national Right faction behind Gillard’s position. “I think you might find the NSW Right takes a different view,” Carr told Conroy.

Gillard opened the discussion in cabinet on Palestine observer status and asked Carr to “give an account of the pros and cons of the options”, he wrote in his diary. Gillard then asked for comments. One by one, ministers launched into Gillard and opposed her position. Nine in all spoke against Gillard.

It became a showdown between the Victorian Labor Right — critical to Gillard’s hold on the prime ministership — and the NSW Labor Right. These two groupings had rarely seen eye to eye, but on this occasion the NSW Right was joined by the Left’s Anthony Albanese, Martin Ferguson and Mark Butler, and the Right’s Simon Crean and Craig Emerson, the latter a staunch Gillard loyalist. “Moments like this — moments of clarity and outspokenness — make it possible to love the party,” Carr confided to his diary.

Only Shorten and Conroy spoke in support of Gillard.

The next morning, Carr woke just before dawn. As the Labor caucus swelled with speculation a vote against Gillard could precipitate a leadership crisis, they met in her office. He told her she faced defeat in caucus unless she supported the motion to abstain on the UN vote. “I saw fear dance in her eyes,” Carr wrote. Gillard relented, knowing he had arrayed the numbers against her, and backed a caucus motion to abstain the UN vote.

Whatever the influence of the Melbourne Jewish lobby, or any other on caucus at the time, the falafel faction folded.