It was perhaps the angriest personal exchange concerning the terrorist attack on the Australian Jewish community at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on December 14. And it took place between a former NSW Labor premier, Bob Carr, and a former Victorian Labor MP, Philip Dalidakis. The latter is a Jewish Australian.

Early in his public life, Carr was a strong supporter of the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state within secure borders.

However, in his latter years he has become a vehement critic of contemporary Israel, accusing it of genocide and apartheid.

On December 17, in the aftermath of the murder of 15 people at Bondi Beach, Carr posted on X a message that “Bondi’s horror was ISIS attack on Aus soil”. He added that this raised questions of surveillance of Middle East Islamists, access to guns and extremist influences from terrorist bases in the Philippines. Carr went on to state that the Bondi attack was not a failure of Australian democracy but, rather, a “foreign strike on our territory by murderous anti-Semitism of a cult founded in Iraq”. This overlooked the fact the deceased gunman was an Australian resident and the accused gunman is an Australian citizen.

Dalidakis was not impressed, responding: “As one former Labor MP to another, shut the f..k up”. He added: “You forfeited your right to give a shit since you have relentlessly encouraged and supported the normalisation of hate speech against Jews by cloaking it as antizionist rhetoric.”

Now, Carr is a highly intelligent and well-read individual. The accepted understanding of genocide is that it covers all attempts to destroy a national, racial or religious group. Until the current ceasefire, Israel was fighting a defensive war against Hamas in Gaza in response to its brutal attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

Certainly, Palestinian civilians in Gaza, along with Hamas fighters, have been killed in the conflict – as, sadly, happens in all wars. But there is no evidence that Israel has deliberately targeted civilians. On the contrary, it has given advanced notices of many of its attacks to prevent civilian casualties.

Carr well knows that this was not the case with the Royal Air Force Bomber Command’s attacks on Germany during World War II. Or the US Army Air Force’s fire and nuclear bombing of Japanese cities in the Pacific War. This was action in a defensive war and not regarded as genocide. As to apartheid, Carr knows there are Arab members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. That’s not the practice of an apartheid state.

How to explain Carr’s metamorphosis from the president of Labor’s Friends of Israel some decades ago to one of Israel’s most strident critics within the Australian labour movement?

As I wrote in this paper on April 18, 2014, in September 2001, in his capacity as NSW premier, Carr presided over the NSW Premier’s History Awards. It took place a week after al-Qa’ida’s terrorist attack on the US. It turned out that American documentary-maker Ken Burns had been scheduled to present the prize but had withdrawn at late notice because of his concern at travelling in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Carr, a history devotee, was understandably upset at the cancellation. In a private discussion, he told me that he had now come to the conclusion that the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, in which one-time Labor leader Bert Evatt was involved, was a mistake.

Carr said the Arab world would never accept the creation of a Jewish state and Islamist groups would continue to target Western nations.

From around this time, I noticed a change in Carr’s position on Israel. As foreign minister in the Gillard-Rudd Labor government in 2012-13, he was a critic of Israel as he documented in his Diary of a Foreign Minister, published in 2014.

During his book tour, Carr was asked to respond to my account of what he had said to me in 2001. The reply was to the effect that different people will have different recollections of what was said at the same event. That’s true. But Carr has never told me that my recollection was incorrect.

It was around this time that Carr began his criticism of what he terms the “Israel lobby” in Australia. This was the focus of Sarah Ferguson’s interview with him on the April 9, 2014, edition of ABC TV’s 7.30. In his diary, Carr also made references to the importance to Labor of the Arab Muslim vote, particularly in the western suburbs of Sydney. As was documented in this paper’s Margin Call column on November 12, 2025, in remarks to an Islamist media organisation, Carr referred to “the Israel Jewish lobby” which he declared was “a foreign influence operation designed to put the interests of Israel above the interests of Australia”.

This is a highly offensive comment implying that some Australians put the interests of a foreign country above their own.

I am a Zionist, of the gentile kind who happens to believe that support for Israel is in the interest of Australian foreign policy. So do most Jewish Australians, along with many Labor supporters – Jews and non-Jews alike.

Like Carr, ABC journalist John Lyons is one of Australia’s most influential commentators. In 2021, Monash University published his book Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment. The work is replete with exaggerations, as I documented in the October 15, 2021, issue of my Media Watch Dog blog. Lyons’ thesis is that Australia’s foreign policy in the Middle East is essentially run by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. This is a short step away from a Carr-like reference to an “Israeli Jewish lobby”.

Early last year, Lyons was moved from his position as the ABC’s global affairs editor to its Americas editor post. Both are influential positions.

Neither Carr nor Lyons is anti-Semitic. But unfounded criticisms of Israel along with references to an alleged hypothetical Israel lobby in Australia have the unintended consequences of adding to the cause of the anti-Semites in our midst.

Which, no doubt, motivated Dalidakis to his righteous anger.