Slouching Towards Jerusalem

“The Australian government has become an apologist for Israeli war crimes and a wrecker of sacred international humanitarian law principles.”

Professor Ben Saul,

Challis Chair of International Law,

University of Sydney, 2014¹

Australian governments have staunchly supported Israel since our Doc Evatt succeeded in his United Nations campaign to partition Palestine and create the state of Israel, but unconditional support needs a rethink. The above statement from Australia’s leading international law expert was a response to the Abbott government’s challenge to international law over the illegality of Israeli settlements. Abbott took Australian solidarity up a notch or two, but now the Morrison government has reached undreamt-of extremes.

Rawan Arraf, principal lawyer for the Australian Centre for International Justice, says that this is “the most pro-Israeli government that we have seen in Australian history.”²

Evidence came thick and fast, starting a few weeks after Morrison took office in August 2018, when he proclaimed that his government would now recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and that the Australian embassy would move there forthwith - blithely breaking 70 years of bipartisan agreement that Jerusalem’s status should be left to final peace agreements.

There was a religious dimension behind the astonishing move, together with the more obvious political motives. According to Morrison’s Pentecostal beliefs, God’s law trumps mere human law, and the Bible says that Jerusalem must be restored to the Jews as a prelude to the millennium and the Second Coming, when “the Jewish people would embrace Jesus as Israel’s King-Messiah.”³

To quote US televangelist Jerry Falwell, “There’s not going to