The Israeli "study missions" for Australian union leaders

Peter Lerner is the Director General of International Relations for Histadrut, Israel’s national union peak body, and a retired lieutenant-colonel in the IDF, for which he has also acted as a spokesperson. In 2014, the British Sunday Express called Lerner “Israel’s other Iron Dome” for his work deflecting international criticism of Israel during its bombing campaign of Gaza in that year, a descriptor Lerner has included on his website.

For the last nine months, Lerner has given extensive media interviews to global news outlets in which he has consistently disputed the civilian death toll in Gaza and obfuscated about the massacres of Palestinian civilians. In April, Lerner was the Israeli government’s spokesperson of choice to defend the IDF airstrikes that killed Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and six others.

Lerner has just wrapped up a “whirlwind visit” to Sydney, where he had meetings with “labor officials, labor unions [and] the Jewish community” to discuss how the global labour movement can contribute to “peace and a two-state solution”.

Lerner’s visit has already generated controversy among local Jewish anti-Zionists. Sydney-based activist group the Tzedek Collective condemned Woollahra’s Emanuel Synagogue for hosting Lerner at a communal Shabbas dinner, calling it an “unholy blending of political propaganda and religious service” designed to “hide Zionist war crimes behind the veil of Judaism”.

But the main purpose of Lerner’s visit — to meet with like-minded trade union officials — has flown largely under the radar. In an interview on RN Breakfast with Patricia Karvelas last week, Lerner said the trip came together when he “got a phone call quite out of the blue a couple of weeks ago, saying ‘we would like you to come to Australia, we’ve put together a schedule’.”