Albanese on Israel
Before he was Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese was able to speak freely on foreign policy issues.
Over the years, Anthony Albanese has made the following claims about Israel, its leaders and the Israeli Defence Force.
He has repeated this misleading and offensive claim:
“it was Israel which first funded Hamas”
(Albanese, Hansard, 16 September 2002)
He repeated a misleading claim that former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon was directly responsible for a massacre of refugees:
“Mr Sharon has form. An Israeli official inquiry, the Kahan commission, found that as Minister for Defence he had responsibility for the massacre of more than 2,000 men, women and children that occurred in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in September 1982.”
(Albanese, Hansard, 16 September 2002)
A claim his Labor colleague Tanya Plibersek repeated the following day:
“I can think of a rogue state which consistently ignores UN resolutions, whose ruler is a war criminal responsible for the massacres of civilians in refugee camps outside its borders. The US supports and funds this country. This year it gave it a blank cheque to continue its repression of its enemies. It uses US military hardware to bulldoze homes and kill civilians. It is called Israel and the war criminal is Ariel Sharon.”
(Plibersek, Hansard, 17 September 2002)
He has been critical of US support for Israel:
“Israel receives about 80 per cent of the total US and Near East aid budget. In addition, there are various indirect ways in which aid is given, in the form of defence weaponry and vehicles. The IDF routinely uses tanks, Apache helicopter gunships and F16 fighter jets against a population that has no military whatsoever and none of the protective institutions of a modern state.”
(Albanese, Hansard, 16 September 2002)
He compared Saddam Hussein’s record on Human Rights to that of the Israeli Government:
“What is clear is that Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi regime engage in practices which democratic supporters of human rights find abhorrent. Their treatment of minorities within their country, and many of the philosophies that they put forward, we in the Australian parliament do find abhorrent.
“But they are not alone on that.
“There are many nations, including in that region, which ignore human rights, oppress minorities and ignore UN Security Council resolutions. In the grievance debate on Monday, I pointed out that it is now more than 35 years since UN Security Council resolution 242 was carried, on 22 November 1967, calling for Israel to remove its military from, and relinquish control of, the occupied territories. Since that time, the systematic repression of the occupied by the occupiers has been at the core of Middle East politics. Until we resolve the question of the rights of Palestinians to self-determination—which must be achieved in conjunction with the right of Israel to exist within secure borders—the international community's efforts to improve security in that region will be hindered.”
(Albanese, Hansard, 16 September 2002)
He has criticised the actions of the Israeli Defence Force:
“Armed attacks that aim to curb unseen terrorists result in the loss of innocent lives and the potential destruction of the matrices that knit societies together.”
(Albanese, Hansard, 16 September 2002)
He has rebuked what he terms “repressive policies of the Israeli government and its military” and believes “Security can only be achieved through negotiation”:
“It is up to all of us to try to see both sides of this conflict and to apply pressure where we can to try to redress the repressive policies of the Israeli government and its military and to oppose the extremists of the Palestinian side who engage in terrorism. Security can only be achieved through negotiation.”
(Albanese, Hansard, 16 September 2002)
He seemingly tried to equate West Bank and Gaza settlements with Islamic Fundamentalism:
“There is no doubt that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is a dangerous threat to our security; just as is the increasing number of fundamentalists occupying settlements in the West Bank and Gaza on the basis of a religious fundamentalist view of the world and their position in it.”
(Albanese, Hansard, 18 September 2002)