BOMB-THROWER: Anti-Israel militant wants to launch attacks on Jewish state from Queensland Parliament

Queensland Labor operatives are worried the fanatic and incendiary Irish-born anti-Israel campaigner David Forde could embroil them in the same kind of carnage that has engulfed the militant NSW Greens party at the recent state election.

EXTREMIST REWARDED
VEXNEWS has learned that Forde is considered the Left faction’s front-runner preselection candidate for the state seat of Stretton. The plum seat of Stretton, on Brisbane’s southside, is up for grabs following the announced retirement of long-serving Labor Left MP and minister Stephen Robertson. The seat is held by around a 9% margin and is a must-hold for Premier Anna Bligh’s government.

Even those in Forde’s own Left faction have strategists who worry they could be blamed for losing the seat if LNP campaigners focus on Forde’s obsessive promotion of a boycott against the Jewish state. “He’s unelectable if given the same kind of scrutiny that (the Greens party’s) Fiona Byrne got. There’s just too much there, as you’ve no doubt uncovered,” one worried operative told VEXNEWS this morning. “He’s not a viable candidate in my opinion and I think many in the Left who want to back him have got their heads in the sand on this issue. He’s about to become political road-kill, given just how obsessive he is about Israel.”

HATES ISRAEL
Forde is considered the leading and most ferocious anti-Israel “boycott-divestment-sanctions” crusader in the country and has been described by leading members of the Jewish community who spoke with VEXNEWS as a “menace who would put (dumped Labor MP and anti-Israel bigot) Julia Irwin in the shade.” In an interview on ABC radio in February last year, as we will see, he foreshadowed what he called a “one-state solution” to Israel, in other words its obliteration. His views as such put him at the fanatical fringe of the Middle-East political debate. Forde has persistently advocated a boycott of Israel and other extremist views in violation of ALP policy.

The Irish-born militant is well-known in Brisbane Labor circles for peddling bizarre conspiracy theories about Israel including stupid and false claims that the Israeli army targetted the Republic of Ireland’s peace-keeping forces in Lebanon in the 1980s (in which Forde served). His extreme views about his military service appear to have fuelled a decades-long jihad against Israel that include weekly newsletters attacking Israel, stalking Jewish members of Parliament seeking “interviews”, regular media appearances excoriating the Jewish state and demanding boycotts of Jewish commerce and so on. He is bad news for Labor, which is often assumed to have triumphed over anti-Semitic extremists who express their hatred against the Jewish people by imposing standards on Israel they’d never seek to impose on its neighbours and demanding boycotts of the Jewish state that are calculated to undermine the viability of the country and put the lives of its six million Jews at risk.

DOUBLE STANDARDS HIGH RISK
Forde is a constant, strident critic of Israel but despite seeing the barbarity and brutality of terror groups like the drug-dealing and Iranian-financed Hezbollah who terrorised the people of Lebanon is eerily quiet about them, insiders tell VEXNEWS.

“There’s no question that Forde is high-risk. His fanatical campaigning against Israel opens himself to attack as someone obsessed with foreign and extremist issues that have no bearing on the daily lives of Queenslanders, some have spoken about whether there could be national intervention on this as Forde’s selection definitely undermines the party’s considered and much-debated position on the Middle-East” one Labor insider told VEXNEWS.

Forde is the self-appointed militant head of Labor For A Just Palestine, a loud anti-Israel ginger group that inundates Labor MPs and members with material attacking Israel. He has also worked for the notorious CFMEU and as an electorate officer and ministerial staffer to Labor Left identities. He is a prolific online campaigner against Israel and has been instrumental in pushing the Queensland Council of Unions to adopt the anti-Israel “boycott, divestment and sanctions” campaign.

ONE-STATE SOLUTION CHARMER
On February 26th 2010, Forde attacked the ALP’s position on the Middle East as “one-sided” (in favour of Israel) and admits that he joined Labor in order to influence its policy on Israel. Forde joined the ALP shortly after his arrival from Ireland. In that same interview he also demanded that Israel cease being a Jewish state and various other embarrassing, barely cloaked anti-Semitism and lunacy. Even the sympathetic ABC interviewer seemed troubled by this.

In that interview, at its conclusion, the pompous know-all alarmingly indicates that he is considering what he describes as a “one-state solution” to Israel, in other words, its obliteration and replacement by a “Palestine” state that would presumably be run on the same foul basis as the Palestinian Authority, where factions compete with each other in their anti-Jewish rhetoric and then once they achieve electoral success pilfer and pillage the meagre resources of the authority to line their pockets while its occupants do it tough.