Simon Benson
Albanese’s slapdown of Clare over ‘river to the sea’ anti-Israel chants at uni protests is true leadership.
Anthony Albanese’s unmistakable rebuke of Jason Clare is not only an embarrassment for the Education Minister but a humiliation for the once sensible and powerful NSW Right faction of the Labor Party.
That the leader of the Labor Left had to slap down a member of the Right over an issue that once defined the increasingly blurred ideological divisions of the Labor movement, demonstrates an up-ending of rationality.
Clare’s description of the “river to the sea” chant on Sunday as meaning different things to different people was either a reflection of a deep naivety or a deliberate expression of local politics from an experienced minister who should know better.
In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this phrase means only one thing to Jewish people: it is an unequivocal call for the destruction of Israel.
Fair questions have been asked of the Prime Minister and the strength of leadership he has shown during this conflict but there is no question that he demonstrated leadership on Monday morning at the expense of one of his own cabinet ministers.
Standing next to Clare at a press conference, Albanese was asked by The Australian’s political journalist, Sarah Ison, to offer his view on whether he thought the slogan was offensive in light of the pro-Palestinian protests occurring across university campuses.
The slap-down of Clare was swift as he stared straight ahead. “It is a slogan that calls for opposition to a two-state solution,” Albanese said.
“My position is very clear, and the government’s position is clear, and it has been a bipartisan position for a long period of time.
“These are complex, and require important considered responses. The government’s position is very clear.
“The Middle East is a complex issue, which is why you don’t make comments about things, whether you are supporting motions that you haven’t seen that haven’t been distributed yet.”
One can be left to their own conclusions as to why Clare indulged local political opportunism when he should have been speaking as the minister responsible for restoring calm and order to university campuses.
His western Sydney seat of Blaxland has one of the highest Muslim populations in the country but whether Clare realises it or not, he is also doing a disservice to the Palestinian cause with such an equivocation that only further stokes division.
One of the peak Jewish voices, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin, was clear about the dangers inherent in Clare’s language.
“It doesn’t envisage peaceful coexistence with Israel and its eight million Jews, it anticipates their destruction,” he said. “Those that ignore this reality are doing public relations services for violent extremists by laundering calls for violence into supposedly respectable political positions.”
Albanese has now put everyone in his cabinet on notice about the use of provocative and senseless commentary.
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