Labor left faction founder Peter Baldwin says anti-Semitism is a problem within party

A Labor left faction founder says anti-Semitism is a problem in the party after ALP MPs joined a rally where the phrase “globalise the intifada” was chanted.

Peter Baldwin is a former Federal member for Sydney where 6000 protesters this week marched in violent clashes with police outside Town Hall during Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit.

He was also a co-founder of Labor’s soft left faction in NSW during the late 1970s, with then deputy premier Jack Ferguson.

At the time, he considered himself to be pro-Palestinian but now, as a supporter of Israel, was appalled at State Labor MPs Cameron Murphy, from his old soft left faction, and the right’s Stephen Lawrence and Sarah Kaine, pictured, joining an illegal rally with demonstrators accusing Israel of genocide.

Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame addressed the crowd at Town Hall by shouting the phrase, “From Gadigal to Gaza, globalise the intifada”.

“You go back to the early 2000s, the intifada was a succession of terrorist attacks on Jews,” Mr Baldwin told The Nightly.

“The Bondi massacre was globalising the intifada. It was replicating in Australia what was done during the intifada.”

Mr Baldwin said “yes” anti-Semitism was now a problem in Labor, because many of its university-educated MPs and members subscribed to the idea that Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, was “part of the imperialist bloc”.

“It’s an interesting question, how a particular position becomes embedded in the ideology of a political faction and I think the universities have a lot to do with it,” he said.

“People would say, ‘We’re not anti-Semitic, we’re anti-Zionist’, the absolute preoccupation with the actions of Israel to the total neglect of many other things going on in the world.”

Mr Baldwin blamed critical race theory for making racism against Jews acceptable for many people on the left of politics.

“The critical race theory framework and according to that, Israel fits into that paradigm of just another settler, colonialist state,” he said.

“The key shift has been the wholesale, invasion of identity politics - the left used to take the general stance that inherited characteristics like race should play no role in how you assess people.”

The left of politics, he argued, was increasingly forming a political alliance with Islamists, despite Iran executing gay men and forcing women to cover up, as it financed the Hamas terror attacks against Israel.

“The whole tendency to see radical Islamists as allies rather than people with a fundamentally different world view,” he said.

“There was a pro-Palestinian element on the left and I was part of it and I changed my view on the issue in recent years - it’s partly a response to events and partly a response to a better understanding of what motivates a lot of Israel’s actions.”

The march at Town Hall, in defiance of a protest ban in that part of the city, was held in Mr Baldwin’s former electorate of Sydney, which he said was “disturbing”.

Labor’s soft left faction MPs last year also joined a 90,000-strong march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza, including Lynda Voltz, Julia Finn and Anthony D’Adam.

Extremists hijacked that march, holding up an image of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

No one from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s hard left faction joined the Town Hall march but last year, NSW Environment Minister Penny Sharpe joined that anti-Israel walk across the Harbour Bridge.

She was there alongside Labor right faction figures including former NSW premier Bob Carr, Muslim Emergency Services Minister Jihad Dib, Senator Tony Sheldon and Federal backbencher Ed Husic, the first Muslim elected to the House of Representatives.

NSW Premier Chris Minns, from the right, opposed that March for Humanity walk along with Monday’s protests at Town Hall, that had breached his government’s ban on protests in the city outside Hyde Park.