Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Malcolm the bigot

Last month former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser weighed in on the Dubai affair and was quoted as follows in the Australian - Fraser urges Rudd to take harder line on Israel
Mr Fraser said the worries of Australia's Jewish community were twofold. There were concerns about the actual misuse of Australian passports, and the tactics and policies of the Israeli government which cast the community in a bad light, he said.

Mr Fraser said the Jewish state could no longer use the Holocaust as an excuse to justify state-sanctioned murder, and criticism of its policies should not be dismissed as anti-Semitism.

"That happened 65-66 years ago and it cannot be used any longer to prevent proper discussion of Israel's policies when those policies are counter-productive to world peace," he said. "To suggest that those who are critical are anti-Semitic -- I reject that utterly."

Now here's the problem. Nowhere in all of the discussion of the Passportgate was the Holocaust raised by any Jewish supporters of Israel before Fraser himself raised it. So Fraser took it upon himself to provide the self-serving proof that he's not a bigot. This despite the fact that he time and again openly supports recognition of the Hamas regime which invokes the Holocaust and every anti-Semitic canard in the book. I attended a debate last year at Monash University in which Fraser was a participant. He certainly wasn't arguibg there that the world should play tough with Hamas because it has a charter that advocates genocide or that it openly supports "state-sanctioned murder" against Israelis and Palestinians who oppose it.

Fraser doesn't need to raise the Holocaust but if you want proof that the man is a bigot then his words give him away. By treating the Jewish State and its citizens differently to his Palestinian friends he openly demonstrates his antiSemitism.

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