Israel set to summon Aust Ambassador over recognition of nation’s capital

(Herald-Sun, 19/10/2022)

Israel will summon Australia’s Ambassador to explain the federal government’s decision to reverse its recognition of West Jerusalem as the country’s capital.

Israel’s embassy in Canberra was blindsided by the move, which prompted an angry response from Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who called into question Australia’s treatment of a close ally.

Jewish groups blindsided by Labor’s reversal of recognition of West Jerusalem as Israeli capital

Prominent Jewish community leaders in Australia say Albanese government’s withdrawal of recognition ‘a gratuitous insult’ – but criticism is not universal (The Guardian, 19/10/2022)

Several Jewish community leaders say they were blindsided by the Albanese government’s decision to reverse recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, describing the handling of the issue as “shoddy” and “a gratuitous insult”.

A Labor parliamentarian has also privately said the government “mishandled” the sensitive issue and should not be “making foreign policy on the fly” after Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the Australian ambassador to demand an explanation.

Jewish community representatives were surprised by a Guardian Australia report on Monday revealing the Morrison government-era decision was being reversed, and contacted the government seeking clarity.

It is understood a number of community representatives were informed on Monday that no decision had been made, only to be notified the following morning of the outcome of Tuesday’s cabinet meeting shortly before the public announcement.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) said it was “extremely disappointed” the government had made the decision in an “opaque manner” without public consultation or opportunity for public debate.

The group said stakeholders had “simply been presented with a fait accompli” and noted “with regret that this decision was communicated to us on the Jewish holyday of Simchat Torah, when we were precluded from making any public response”.

“There is a bitter irony in the fact that the government made its decision in the way that it did on a day when Jews celebrate receiving the Torah, the ethical basis of western civilisation,” it said.

The president of the ECAJ, Jillian Segal, together with co-chief executives Peter Wertheim and Alex Ryvchin, issued the scathing statement after sunset on Tuesday at the conclusion of the holy period.

They said the timing of the cabinet decision was “clearly media-driven” and said it was “demeaning for Australia to have its international position changed in such a shoddy manner”.

“Aside from being poor policy, the withdrawal of Australia’s recognition that Israel’s capital is in Jerusalem is a gratuitous insult to a key economic and strategic ally, with no countervailing benefit for Australians,” Segal, Wertheim and Ryvchin said.

“This is no way to treat an ally whose intelligence-sharing with Australia has prevented at least one terrorist attack against Australians that we know of.”

The executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (Aijac), Colin Rubenstein, also questioned the “odd” timing. He said the “deeply disappointing” decision appeared to be “a pointless own goal”.

But the announcement by the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, was not greeted with universal criticism.

The New Israel Fund Australia, which promotes a vision of Israel as both the Jewish homeland and a democracy for all its citizens, said the previous policy had placed Australia “firmly in the global minority”.

The group’s executive director, Liam Getreu, said the change suggested the Australian government would be “a balanced partner in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by forging policies which are more in line with our likeminded allies and partners around the world and support the advancement of a peaceful resolution”.

Antony Loewenstein, a journalist who co-founded Independent Australian Jewish Voices and lived in East Jerusalem between 2016 and 2020, welcomed Wong’s move to clarify Australia’s position.

“The problem really is this doesn’t change anything. It’s a continuation of a status quo that for decades has allowed Israel to not just expand its occupation but to make it permanent,” he said.

“We’re at a stage now where the two-state solution is a zombie phrase that people keep repeating but is out of step with the reality on the ground. This is a good minor change of language but the reality is that nothing is changing other than the occupation getting deeper.”

Israel’s prime minister, Yair Lapid, had earlier criticised the Australian government for what he called a “hasty” foreign policy shift.

Indonesia, however, welcomed the Albanese government’s decision, saying it hoped the new policy would “contribute positively to Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations”.

“Indonesia appreciates Australia’s reaffirmation of its commitment to support peaceful resolution to the conflict based on two-state solution, within internationally recognised borders,” the country’s foreign affairs ministry said.

A federal Labor parliamentarian from the right faction criticised the government’s handling of the issue.

“It’s really been mishandled,” said the parliamentarian, who asked for anonymity to discuss the topic openly. “I still can’t believe it’s happened.”

While the parliamentarian agreed with the claim that the former prime minister Scott Morrison had politicised the issue in the lead-up to the Wentworth byelection in 2018, they said the new government should have engaged in adequate consultation to maintain trust with the community.

Others within the government pointed to Morrison’s handling of the announcement of his own review in 2018, with the then foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, informed of the plans in a phone call only a day before media were briefed.

Wong declined to say whether the government had received any representations from Israel or community groups against proceeding with the change, arguing it would not be reasonable “to disclose all of the interactions I and my office might have with stakeholders”.

“This government will not waver in its support of Israel and the Jewish community in Australia,” she said.

Wong said the decision was made at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning. She said it was in line with her public comments in December 2018 that Labor would unwind Morrison’s stance.

Wong said the Morrison government’s decision to recognise West Jerusalem as the capital – rather than leaving it as a matter to be resolved in peace negotiations – “put Australia out of step with the majority of the international community”.

“This was a cynical play, unsuccessful, to win the seat of Wentworth in a byelection. And what the people saw was the prime minister of the day trying to play foreign policy in order to win votes in a seat.”

Like most countries, Australia has continued to maintain an embassy in Tel Aviv rather than Jerusalem.

Israel to summon Australian ambassador over capital reversal (Courier Mail, 18/10/2022, 5.39pm update)

The Australian ambassador to Israel will be summoned following Australia’s surprise decision to reverse the recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Hugo Timms

Israel will call the Australian ambassador to explain the government’s decision to reverse its recognition of West Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong announced the reversal on Tuesday, and said the decision made by Scott Morrison to recognise West Jerusalem instead of Tel Aviv in 2018 was a “cynical” and “unsuccessful” attempt to win the seat of Wentworth in a by-election.

“I think we all know the decision … put us out of step with the international community,” Ms Wong said on Tuesday.

She was not drawn on whether the Israeli government made any overtures to Australia to maintain its recognition of West Jerusalem.

Ms Wong, who led Labor’s domestic opposition to Mr Morrison’s decision, said it had long been Australia’s policy that the capital was a decision to be made between Israel and Palestine.

She said if you “believe as Julie Bishop did,” and as every Australian government had believed since 1948, then “you take the position I’ve taken today”.

Mr Morrison’s move followed an earlier decision by then US president Donald Trump to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to West Jerusalem.

Wentworth, the seat of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and currently held by independent Allegra Spender, has one of Australia’s largest Jewish population.

Following Mr Turnbull’s retirement from politics in 2018, the seat was won by independent candidate Karyn Phelps over Dave Sharma, Australia’s former ambassador to Israel.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton hit back at Ms Wong, saying he “won’t be taking lectures” from the Labor regarding Israel.

Mr Dutton said government front bencher Tanya Plibersek had once called Israel a “rogue state” and said members of the Labor Party had expressed views on the country “completely at odds” with what Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said publicly.

He said Australia had been a strong supporter of Israel for many decades; a partnership which had been led by the Liberal Party.

“They (Israel) are dear friends and allies in many ways against many enemies around the world,” Mr Dutton said.

Late on Tuesday, Indonesia’s foreign ministry released a statement in support of the change, and said the country hoped it was contribute positively to peace in the region.

Ms Wong’s announcement follows a slip-up on the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s website, which removed sentences relating to the 2018 decision on Monday.

Senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute Michael Rubin says it is difficult to understand why Australia would “so willingly haemorrhage its credibility … for essentially nothing” by no longer recognising West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“What Australia did was … ignored the last 10 years of the peace process and all the progress which has been made,” he told Sky News Australia.

“Labor may think this is about Jerusalem.

“But in the rest of the world, we’re seeing Australia pivot away from responsibility, from moral clarity, to become a real wildcard.”

FANATICS are like a chill wind. You open your back door a crack and then suddenly they’re all through the house.

The Australian Labor Party has learnt this lesson the hard way many times, each one harder than the last.

It spent more than two decades in opposition during the ’50s and ’60s when communists ran rampant through its ranks while saner souls fought valiantly to purge them.

Then, after the three-year wobble of the Whitlam years, it was back in opposition again for the best part of a decade, only rising to form anything resembling stable government under the Prime Ministership of Robert James Lee Hawke, ably assisted by a Sancho called Richo.

It was in this primordial soup that was formed the Labor Right, an initially amorphic but ultimately watertight coalition of lucid individuals, who reached the fairly commonsense conclusion that you couldn’t do much to improve the state of the nation if you couldn’t actually govern it.

Hawke won in 1983 and Paul Keating carried Labor through

until 1996, thanks almost entirely to the ability of the sensible heads of the ALP to suppress the idiocy of the dopey hippie baby boomers and unreconstructed commies in their midst.

Labor was at the time lauded as “the natural government of Australia”, while Whitlam’s reign was coined “a shining aberration”.

And yet in the three-quarters of a century since World War II, it is the Hawke-Keating government that has been a shining aberration while the Coalition has held the lion’s share.

Chifley’s government collapsed on the back of his radical plan to nationalise the banks, Whitlam’s collapsed after his government was embroiled in the Arab loans scandal and the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government is a byword for a basket case by most within the party, not to mention those outside it.

As of New Year’s Day 2022, Labor had managed stable government for only 13 of the 75 years since the old train driver won his last election.

This should be serious and indigestible food for thought.

That changed in May this year. Anthony Albanese, notwithstanding his leftist pedigree – in fact he has always been more of a pragmatic fixer – has been strong on national security, sensible on social policy and responsible economically.

The new government has shown all the hallmarks of recalling the Hawke-Keating golden age and then some. But Labor’s vulnerability to the lunar Left still remains and it needs a wall the size of China’s to resist it.

The first red flag was the party’s bizarre and ham-fisted reversal of Australia’s recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In Labor’s defence, the initial recognition of West Jerusalem by the Morrison government was just as bizarre and ham-fisted and clearly geared towards the Wentworth by-election in Sydney’s largely Jewish eastern suburbs.

A couple of quick points here: A) Don’t screw around with major geopolitical conflicts just to win a by-election; and B) If you do, don’t commit until after the by-election.

Otherwise you have merely – to use a phrase familiar to suicide bombers – blown your load.

But just because Morrison might have recognised West Jerusalem for the wrong reasons doesn’t make it wrong.

It is politically and historically absurd that after 3000 years of existential struggle any Israeli state would not eventually have Jerusalem as its capital.

Yet that has been the eggshell game that Australia and most other nations have played.

Then zooming in from the macro to the micro, we get the NSW Labor Party’s inadvertent – I hope –acceptance of a former Sydney University academic – aren’t they all? – who reportedly has worn jackets bearing slogans such as “Curse on the Jews” and “Death to Israel” and is a supporter both of Iran’s deranged theocracy and Bashar al Assad’s Syria.

Labor has already had its issues with links to China, which could tap-dance the Good Ship Lollipop, compared with these two countries.

It cannot possibly welcome the presence of someone who praises such hideous regimes while also defending both North Korea and Joseph Stalin, who is rivalled only by Hitler for his murderous reign. This is batsh-t crazy stuff.

A Victorian party official tells me his phone is running off the hook after the Jerusalem fiasco while NSW leader Chris Minns is silently seething over the membership snafu.

I would bet London to a brick that state secretary Bob Nanva is having a firm word to his left-wing underlings even as we speak.

But the fact that this is happening at all, let alone so soon after the ALP’s long-awaited ascendancy, is yet more hard proof of the hard Left’s toxicity to all it touches.

Labor is on the verge of another golden age, both nationally and in the nation’s oldest and largest state.

And yet the usual lunatics on the Left still try to besiege the party like the dead-eyed ideological lemmings they are.

Worse still, they are not just lemmings walking off a cliff – that would be a blessing – but also brainless barnacles, somehow pre-programmed to mindlessly infiltrate, corrupt, corrode and ultimately scuttle the ship upon which far better souls sail.

The sooner the party scrapes these parasites from its hull, the longer it will survive and thrive.

And it must, because the alternative is oblivion at the bottom of the deep blue sea.

The Albanese Labor government’s disgraceful withdrawal of Australia’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is an abject rejection of the historical, moral and cultural basis of our relationship with the Jewish state.

It represents the most disgusting concession to Islamist extremists, as exemplified by the enthusiastic support it received from Iran’s proxies in the West Bank and Gaza – Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad – which are recognised by the government as terrorist organisations.

Further, it repudiates Labor’s seminal role in the creation of the state of Israel and the formative decisions taken by Labor icon, the former prime minister Ben Chifley and his external affairs minister H.V. (Doc) Evatt. Without these two giants, it is debatable whether modern Israel would have come into existence.

Israel’s creation depended heavily on Evatt, who served as president of the UN General Assembly at the time of Israel’s admission to the United Nations and was an architect of the UN Charter at the 1945 San Francisco conference, which saw the world body established.

He then guided the 1947 Partition Plan for Palestine through the UN; in so doing, Evatt transformed the history of the modern Middle East.

That Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who has shown reasonable strength in dealing with China’s brutal totalitarian regime, have so cravenly backtracked on former prime minister Scott Morrison’s decision to move the Australian embassy to its rightful place in Jerusalem is a reprehensible act that belongs in the grubby realm of socialist-left student politics, not on the world stage.

Morrison’s decision to move the embassy in 2018 during the Wentworth by-election (an electorate with a high proportion of Jewish voters) may have been clumsy but it followed then-US president Donald Trump’s 2017 pronouncement which his Democrat successor Joe Biden has let stand.

Guatemala, Honduras and Kosovo followed suit, several other countries said they would do the same and, until last week, Australia took the same route as Russia, which recognised western Jerusalem as the capital but did not move its embassy from Tel Aviv.

The current US ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides recently reiterated: “As it relates to this office, the capital of Israel is Jerusalem. That is the position of this administration and it was the position even when the offices were in Tel Aviv.”

Wong’s announcement that the Australian government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is to be withdrawn during a Jewish High Holiday and in the midst of an Israeli election campaign destroyed any reputation she and her department may have had globally.

How about that, Australia interfering in the Israeli elections as both the Prime Minister Yair Lapid and challenger, the former PM Benjamin Netanyahu, have claimed.

On the face of it the Albanese government is pandering to a handful of MPs with heavily Muslim electorates, but apart from that parochialism this hypocrisy on steroids will do nothing to further the realisation of a ‘two-state solution’ between Israel and the Palestinians.

The capital of Israel is all of Jerusalem, not just the western part of the city, although that is where the Knesset, Supreme Court and several government ministries are located.

The Palestinians were first offered their own state alongside a Jewish state west of the Jordan River as a result of the 1937 Peel Commission, then the UN Partition Plan in 1947 and again following the Oslo Accords – in 2000, 2008 and 2009. They were offered at least 95 per cent of the territory they were officially demanding but constantly rejected the offer of their own state living in peace beside the Jewish state, always resorting to violence.

The mantra, heard on Australian university campuses as well as in the streets of Gaza, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is proof of the desire to eliminate Israel altogether. Any claims that today’s Palestinians have historic claims to Israel were eliminated by the 1917 Balfour Declaration, and ratified under the San Remo Resolution of 1920 and passed on to the UN (Article 80).

Now there are 150,000 rockets and missiles pointed at the state of Israel.

Culturally, where is Wong’s head at? As a prominent lesbian (albeit one who voted against gay marriage as recently as 2016) she should be aware that Iran and its proxies in the Palestinian Authority and the Islamist groups who cheered her decision on Jerusalem are violently opposed to homosexuality and celebrate the murder of homosexuals.

Arab nations are rejecting Palestinians as rapidly as Albanese and Wong are embracing their cause.

Under the Abraham Accords, Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan enjoy closer relations and Israel has struck peace deals with Jordan and Egypt. Saudi Arabia is opening up to Israel as are other Arab nations.

Israel is our only ally in the Middle East. With the support of its intelligence networks, terrorist acts targeting Australians have been thwarted.

The annual Beersheba defence dialogue between Israeli and Australian interests is scheduled next month at which cyber security, drones and missile defences will be discussed. The deputy chief of staff of the Israeli defence force is listed as a participant.

It is in our national interest to support Israel, not insult its right to nominate its own capital.

Australia has quietly dropped its recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, unwinding language adopted by Scott Morrison’s government after the US moved its own embassy from Tel Aviv.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has retained the bipartisan position that Australia “is committed to a two-state solution in which Israel and a future Palestinian state co‑exist, in peace and security, within internationally recognised borders”.

But in the past few days it has deleted two sentences from its website that were first added after then prime minister Morrison unveiled a new Australian policy four years ago.

The freshly deleted sentences said: “Consistent with this longstanding policy, in December 2018, Australia recognised West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, being the seat of the Knesset and many of the institutions of the Israeli government.

“Australia looks forward to moving its embassy to West Jerusalem when practical, in support of, and after the final status determination of, a two-state solution.”

The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, had said in 2018 that Labor “does not support unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and in government would reverse this decision” – but the language remained on the Dfat website as recently as last week.

The Israel section of the website was updated after Guardian Australia asked the government questions about the matter.

A spokesperson for Dfat said: “The Australian government continues to consider the final status of Jerusalem as a matter to be resolved as part of any peace negotiations.”

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in the long-running conflict, given that both Israelis and Palestinians claim it as their capital.

East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been considered occupied Palestinian territory under international law since the six-day war in 1967. Israeli leaders have repeatedly said Jerusalem is the “eternal, undivided” capital of Israel.

In 2017, then US president Donald Trump directed the state department to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as he “determined that it is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel”.

The following year, in the final week of the Wentworth byelection campaign, Morrison declared that he was “open-minded” about following the US move and promised an Australian government review.

At the time, Labor accused Morrison of playing “games with longstanding foreign policy positions five days out from a byelection”.

Australia’s spy agency warned ministers that the proposed move may “provoke protest, unrest and possibly some violence in Gaza and the West Bank”.

Later the Australian government settled on a fallback policy that did not go as far as Trump.

The December 2018 policy was to recognise West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital but not to move the Australian embassy there until after a peace agreement.

Morrison also acknowledged “the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a future state with its capital in East Jerusalem”, while saying “slavish adherence to the conventional wisdom over decades” would only entrench “a rancid stalemate”.

The head of the General Delegation of Palestine to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, Izzat Abdulhadi, said it was his “expectation and hope” that the new Labor government would change its policy in a number of areas.

“From our perspective, the issue of Jerusalem, East and West, is one of the final-status issues and should be resolved through negotiations and according to international law,” he said.

He said he hoped the new Australian government would proceed with “immediate recognition of the state of Palestine to adhere to ALP’s 2018 and 2021 legally binding resolution of ALP national conferences”.

In both 2018 and 2021, Labor’s national conference backed a resolution that “supports the recognition and right of Israel and Palestine to exist as two states within secure and recognised borders” and “calls on the next Labor government to recognise Palestine as a state”.

However, those resolutions did not set a specific deadline, saying only that the party expected “that this issue will be an important priority for the next Labor government”.

In June, Australia did not sign up to a US-led statement about Israel and the Palestinian territories, instead raising deep concerns about “human rights abuses and the lack of progress towards a just and enduring two-state solution”.

Australia’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Amanda Gorely, agreed with the US argument that the UN human rights council brings “disproportionate scrutiny to Israel” but she also indicated the Australian government would seek to take a balanced approach.

“Australia’s guiding principle will be advancing the cause for peace,” Gorely said in June. “Viewing any conflict from one perspective will not achieve that goal.”

Despite the recent deletion of language about West Jerusalem and the Australian embassy, Dfat’s Israel country brief still retains much of its original content.

The old and new versions both say Australia is “strongly opposed to unfair targeting of Israel in the United Nations and other multilateral institutions”.

“However, we make clear our concerns about Israeli actions that undermine the prospects of a two-state solution and continue to urge Israel and other actors to respect international law,” both versions say.

Israel’s embassy in Canberra was also contacted for comment.

The Albanese government has fulfilled a pre-election pledge to no longer recognise West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, reversing the Morrison government’s controversial endorsement.

Australia became one of only a few countries to recognise West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2018, after a decision by the Trump administration to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Former prime minister Scott Morrison publicly considered a similar move at the time, but instead chose a middle path of recognising West Jerusalem while leaving the Australian embassy in Tel Aviv.

Labor vowed to unwind the decision if elected.

In recent days, the Israel page of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website was quietly updated to remove reference to Australia recognising West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The deleted sentences read: ‘‘Consistent with this longstanding policy, in December 2018, Australia recognised West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, being the seat of the Knesset and many of the institutions of the Israeli government.

‘‘Australia looks forward to moving its embassy to West Jerusalem when practical, in support of, and after the final status determination of, a two-state solution.’’

DFAT has been contacted for comment on the website change, which was first reported by Guardian Australia.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has been contacted for comment.

In 2018 Wong criticised the decision to recognise West Jerusalem as a ‘‘unilateral, risky decision’’, describing it as ‘‘all risk for no gain’’.