Professor Rick Kuhn (an anti-racist Jewish Australian Marxian economist, political analyst and Reader (Associate Professor) at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, and a founder of Jews Against Occupation and Oppression) (2017): “There’s a fight going on inside the [pro-Zionist] Labor Party over the cosmetics of its position on Israel and Palestine. Currently, party leader Bill Shorten is sticking with the ALP’s longstanding policy [2-state solution and no recognition of a Palestinian state yet]. Whether Labor or the Coalition has been in office, Australian governments have been among the fiercest supporters of apartheid Israel since its creation. Unlike about 138 other countries, Australia has refused to recognise the Palestinian Authority [PA] as the government of a Palestinian state. Slavish backing of Israel is mainly a by-product of the Australia-US alliance, which has long benefited the ruling class here… The squabble in the Labor Party over how best to back Israel reflects growing sympathy, crucially from ordinary people rather than governments, for the Palestinians. Increased recognition of the repressive PA as a state is symbolic of this shift. But it won’t satisfy the aspirations of the Palestinians for freedom. Only a democratic state made up of all those now living within the borders of historic Palestine, together with the Palestinian diaspora, can achieve that goal” (Rick Kuhn, “Labor in a tizz over how to save an apartheid Israel”, Red Flag, 6 March 2017, page 25: https://redflag.org.au/node/5696 ).