By Daphne Anson
Israel-critical Australian former federal politician Melissa Parke sat from 2007 to 2013 as Labor (ALP) member for Fremantle and was briefly minister for international development. To quote Wikipedia, which provides footnotes for these statements,
‘On 22 January 2016, Parke announced her retirement at the next federal election, to spend more time with her family, following her marriage to Perth businessman and patron of the arts, Warwick Hemsley.
In April 2019, she was selected by the Australian Labor Party to contest the federal seat of Curtin in the 2019 federal election. This seat had been held by former Deputy Liberal Leader Julie Bishop since 1998. Parke withdrew her candidacy for the seat following negative media coverage after she was reported to have told a meeting that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians was “worse than the South African system of apartheid”. She said her views regarding Palestine-Israel were well known but that she did not want them to be a “distraction from electing a Labor government which will take urgent and strong action on climate change”.
In January 2020, Parke sued Liberal MP Dave Sharma for defamation over a tweet in which he accused her of anti-semitism and “trafficking in conspiracy theories”. She also sued Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, and the West Australian and Herald Sun newspapers, over a press release from Rubenstein and stories run in the West Australian and Herald Sun that she alleged defamed her.[23] On 8 January 2020 the West Australian published an apology and published an article by Parke.[24] On 26 March 2020, the Herald Sun printed an apology to Parke and published her op-ed entitled Criticism Not Same As Racism.’
Positive reaction to this development can be seen, as Ms Parke indicates in the above tweet, here, as well as here (in the comments to which I found the following charmer)
and, with images, here
Meanwhile, on the subject of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, here is an article that appeared in the British journal Patterns of Prejudice (volume 4, 1970, issue 4), and published online by publisher Taylor and Francis on 28 May 2010 (Download citation https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.1970.9968931).
I found it via a tweet by the estimable British scholar Dr James Vaughan (@EquusontheBuses)
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