It could have been worse, much worse.That is probably the best that anyone concerned about the systematic demonisation of Israel in the media, the universities and much of the political class could say about the outcome of the Palestine recognition debate at the recent ALP National Conference.

After many hours of arduous negotiation between the factions the Conference was presented with a resolution that committed a future Labor government to ‘discuss joining like-minded nations’ in recognising a Palestinian state based on the 1967 boundaries with land swaps in the event that the ‘next round’ of negotiations failed to progress.

This fell short of the Left’s preference for unconditional recognition along the lines of the recent Swedish government decision and the non-binding vote of the UK House of Commons.

Just how much worse things could have been was made plain by the speech of the person selected by the Left to second the motion, Queensland union official and pro-Palestinian activist Wendy Turner (the motion was moved by the Right’s Tony Burke).

Turner’s speech was loudly cheered and clapped and I gather reflected the predominant sentiment of Conference delegates.

According to Ms Turner, all of the blame for the failure to achieve a settlement and the parlous situation of the Palestinians today is down to Israel. She said: ‘Israel has sadly continued to sabotage peace talks sponsored by the US.’ And, by implication, the Palestinian side is devoid of blame.

This is an extraordinary reading of the history of efforts to achieve a two-state solution since the 1993 Oslo accords. Take the Camp David negotiations sponsored by the Clinton administration in 2000. A proposal was on offer that would have given the Palestinians a state based on 97 per cent of the West Bank and all of Gaza with East Jerusalem as capital. There would be a right of return to the new state, but not Israel proper, with $30 billion in reparations in lieu of the latter.

President Clinton specifically blamed Arafat for the failure of the Camp David negotiations in statements at the time. According to Clinton’s chief negotiator Dennis Ross what Arafat wanted was: ‘a one-state solution. Not independent, adjacent Israeli and Palestinian states, but a single Arab state encompassing all of historic Palestine.’

The insistence on the right of return of both refugees displaced in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 (estimated at around 30,000 still alive today) and their descendants (estimated at 5 to 6 million) by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority remains a key sticking point to this day. If accepted, it would in due course reduce the Jews to a demographic minority within Israel.

What do the compassionistas of the Left suppose would be the fate of a Jewish minority in this scenario?

We don’t have to speculate too much about this given that the vast majority of the formerly substantial Jewish populations in the Middle East and North Africa have already been driven out, with most settling in Israel. This expulsion of around 800,000 Jews after 1948 is the refugee problem we never hear about. Every day there are more reports of other minorities, especially Christians, being subject to vicious persecution in the region. The pro-Palestinian Left’s notion of a ‘democratic secular state’ of Palestine is a chimera. Since Camp David the political situation in the region has become even more toxic with an explosion of religious extremism. Hamas is now a major and potentially dominant force in Palestinian politics, but is being challenged by even more extreme elements such as Isis.

This is the issue the pro-Palestinian Left is most reluctant to talk about and did not rate a mention in Wendy Turner’s speech to the National Conference.

The pro-Palestinian Left wants to believe Hamas (and also Hezbollah) can be treated as ordinary, legitimate parties in achieving a negotiated final settlement. The taboo topic is Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s openly stated genocidal agenda, set out in statements and especially in the notorious Hamas Charter of1988.

The Charter calls for the complete obliteration of Israel and looks forward (in Article 7) to the extermination of every last Jew on earth. In a similar vein Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, welcomed the prospect of all the Jews gathering in Israel so they would be saved the bother of ‘having to go the ends of the world’ to hunt them down.

The attitude to these organisations of the global pro-Palestinian Left, and especially the BDS brigade, is remarkable. You can search in vain the speeches or resolutions of the pro-Palestinian activists, whether they are in the ALP, the Greens, or any of the Trotskyite and other far Left groups for any suggestion that Hamas should rescind or even amend its foul, evil Charter.

This would complicate the narrative. After all, as Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon likes to put it, the Israel/Palestine issue is just a matter of ‘oppressor and oppressed’. Indeed leading figures in the global BDS movement such as the American ‘postmodern colossus’ Judith Butler, the movement’s leading theorist, even say Hamas and Hezbollah must be regarded as part of the ‘progressive left’.

So how do people who like to see themselves as left-wing and progressive justify their defence of ultra-reactionary outfits committed to the creation of a global Caliphate and to completing Adolf Hitler’s genocidal project?

One approach is to invoke the absurdly simplistic ‘oppressor and oppressed’ narrative favoured by Senator Rhiannon. Israel is seen as a colonialist interloper oppressing the indigenous Palestinians, with no legitimate status in the region, ignoring the millennia-old Jewish connection to the land.

Once the issue is framed this way, atrocious behaviour by those who claim to fight for the oppressed can be overlooked or minimised. This includes atrocities committed against the ‘oppressed’ themselves, such as the use of human shields in the Gaza conflict last year and the summary execution of Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel.

This is the dilemma that faces the Israelis. What to do when confronted by adversaries that openly aspire to destroy Israel completely – and are prepared to sacrifice large numbers of their own people to this end?This is the problem that the Wendy Turners of this world refuse to acknowledge, let alone address.

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