GREG BARNS: “Gillard yanked into line” Hobart Mercury 24Aug09 August 24, 2009
by Greg Barns - Hobart Mercury – 24 August 2009
MARK Latham is nothing if not entertaining. And sometimes he is unerringly accurate.
His description of Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard having been brainwashed into supporting American foreign policy is spot-on, and her unstinting support for Israel, America’s favourite “client state”, is a case in point.
Mr Latham wrote in his Australian Financial Review column last Thursday that Ms Gillard used to send him tender messages, and one concerned her study tour of the US, sponsored by the American Government in 2006 — or, to use her moniker, “a CIA re-education course”.
“She promised `to catch up when I’m back from the US and I’ll show you my CIA-issued ankle holster’,” Mr Latham wrote.
“I never got to see her ankles or her holster, but I will say this: you have to hand it to those guys in Washington . . . within the space of two years they converted her from a highly cynical critic of all matters American into yet another policy sycophant.”
As an aside, Australian politicians and their staffers love collecting American secret service and security agency memorabilia. It makes them feel wanted and loved by the Yanks, one supposes.
Ms Gillard’s performance earlier this year over the issue of Israel and the Palestinians is a prime example of what Mr Latham is talking about.
Once upon a time, when she was a lawyer in Melbourne, Ms Gillard was a member of a socialist Left group in the ALP that would, on occasion, be outspoken in support of the rights of Palestinians. But not now, because she has fallen into line with the Australian-American official line on Israel, which involves turning a blind eye to its human rights abuses, or at the very most spewing out a few words about how Israel is being very naughty.
Two months ago Ms Gillard refused, despite pleas from within her own party, to cancel a trip to Israel. The trip was simply a junket, involving other MPs such as Peter Costello and Chris Pyne, and was organised by a group called the Australia-Israel Cultural Exchange.
Julia Irwin, a Labor backbencher, argued to Ms Gillard that when leaders and academics are distancing themselves from Israel following its attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, Australian politicians are taking part in this public relations exercise.
But to no avail. Ms Gillard and her mates from Canberra trotted off to Israel in June. Ms Gillard was keynote speaker on that trip at the pretentiously named Australia-Israel Leadership Dialogue, which is modelled on a similarly pompous venture that Australia runs with the US each year.
The speech provided an ideal opportunity for Ms Gillard to show some moral courage and criticise Israel for its appalling ongoing mistreatment of ordinary Palestinians, who face daily economic, social and security hardship and dangers. It could have been the sort of speech that someone such as outspoken Jewish human rights activist and conductor Daniel Barenboim gives in Israel and other countries on a regular basis.
Instead Ms Gillard improbably argued that Australia and Israel have been called upon to fight to ensure the integrity of our borders and the security of our people. And that both have built strategic relationships, which ensure influence and representation in the highest councils of the international community, by which one assumes she means both Australia and Israel are acolytes of the American sphere of influence.
Ms Gillard’s uncritical embrace of Israel is not new. She shamefully took a pro-American line back in December last year when Israel began shelling the Gaza Strip. Despite there being considerable evidence that Israel’s response to Hamas’ handful of rocket launchers and mortars was grossly disproportionate, Ms Gillard simply said on December 29 that: “Clearly the act of aggression was engaged in by Hamas, which commenced shelling with rockets and mortars into Israel.”
By contrast, across the Tasman, New Zealand’s former prime minister Helen Clark blasted Israel for its conduct.
When Ms Gillard undertook a brief journey into Palestinian territory during her Israel trip in June, she point-blank refused to condemn Israel for its ongoing abuse of Palestinians, even though she was standing shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Faayad.
At a media conference on June 25 with Mr Faayad, Ms Gillard had this exchange with a journalist:
Question: “Ms Gillard, from what you have seen and heard today, and from previous visits here, do you think that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is fair and just?”
Ms Gillard: “We’ve expressed humanitarian concerns on behalf of the Palestinian people and obviously, in the discussions that I’ve had with the Prime Minister today, relating to the aid announcement that we’re making today, that shows that we are concerned about the humanitarian situation of the Palestinian people.”
Julia Gillard is a case study in what happens when political ambition overrides a commitment to values. Mark Latham says Ms Gillard has been brainwashed by the Americans, but maybe she wanted to be because it’s much more politically convenient than standing up for oppressed stateless Palestinians.
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