Farewelling ‘a sincere friend’
AS Tony Abbott’s tenure as prime minister drew to a close, community leaders paid tribute to the former Liberal leader as a strong friend of Israel and the Australian Jewish community.
AS Tony Abbott’s tenure as prime minister drew to a close, community leaders paid tribute to the former Liberal leader as a strong friend of Israel and the Australian Jewish community.
At his first appearance at a Jewish function in 2013 after he was elected PM – an event hosted by Mount Scopus Memorial College’s fundraising body, the Scopus Foundation – Abbott pledged that his government would “stand by the State of Israel”.
It did just that. In one of Australia’s first acts at the United Nations after Abbott became PM, Australia withdrew support for an order to stop “all Israeli settlement activities in all of the occupied territories”.
Last year, he wrote personally to Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu after three Israeli teenagers were abducted and then murdered, he decried anti-semitic attacks at the height of the Gaza war as “deplorable incidents”, and when Israel’s friends were falling away as the death toll mounted during the war he stood firm by his beliefs and Israel.
“We support Israel’s right to exist, we support Israel’s right to self-defence, we support the Palestinians’ right to a state of their own, but that’s got to go hand in hand with the recognition of Israel’s right to exist behind secure borders,” he said during the war.
This year on Holocaust Remembrance Day in January he became the first prime minster to hold a meeting with the national roof body of the Rabbis of Australasia, in February he said the murder of a Jewish security guard outside Copenhagen’s central Synagogue was “an affront to some of our most fundamental values”, and then more recently, at the Jewish Anzac Day service in May, he paid tribute to Jewish diggers – in particular Sir John Monash who he said was “Australia’s finest general” – at The Great Synagogue in Sydney.
“We all know the extraordinary sacrifice that Australians made in the Great War. From the Jewish population – then just 20,000 – some 2500 volunteered and 300 never returned,” he said.
Paying tribute, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said, “Tony Abbott did much to strengthen the security of all Australians, an issue of paramount concern to our community.
“We also commend him for his unerring support for the State of Israel, particularly in times of war and conflict when its duty to defend its citizens was fiercely challenged, and in the face of disgraceful prejudice and discrimination in international forums, not least the United Nations.
“The State of Israel has been blessed with many friends among international leaders, none of them more sincere than Mr Abbott.”
The sentiment was echoed by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).
“Former prime minister Abbott earned our profound admiration and gratitude for his sincere empathy and support for our community, and his principled and unstinting support for Israel throughout his political career,” AIJAC executive director Dr Colin Rubenstein said.
JOSHUA LEVI
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