JULIA Gillard’s former foreign minister Bob Carr has agreed to be the patron of Labor Friends of Palestine after accusing fanatics in Israel’s government of promoting “apartheid” — a move likely to infuriate sections of Australia’s Jewish community.
The decision to take up a prominent role for a new ALP group pressing for Palestinian statehood comes almost 40 years after Mr Carr launched Labor Friends of Israel with Bob Hawke, believing then that “Arabs were terrorists”. Mr Carr, premier of NSW for a decade before his stint as a federal minister, said Israel had changed.
