Guilty unless proven innocent?

In the face of it, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s decision to voluntarily and proactively write to his British counterpart Sir Kier Starmer to “confirm” the Australian government’s support for the proposal to remove Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from the royal line of succession is not a Jewish issue.

Why then am I worked up enough to run to my keyboard and dash off an article for The AJN on this subject?

Certainly not because I believe Mountbatten-Windsor is any sort of role model to anybody following what has come to light regarding his salacious conduct in the Epstein files.

However, this is not the issue that has sparked the noise around the potential removal of Andrew from the royal line of succession. Rather, the very serious allegation confronting him is that of leaking confidential information while acting as trade envoy to the UK, a position he held between 2001 and 2011 after retiring from the navy.

As I have said, this is an extremely serious allegation. But at present, it remains just that. The former prince was arrested and then released last week pending further investigations. Andrew’s brother, our Commonwealth reigning monarch King Charles III, has issued a clear statement asserting that there must be “a full fair and proper investigation” and that “the law must take its course”. In other words, following further police investigation, a determination will be made whether or not to charge Mountbatten-Windsor with this or any other offence, following which, if charged, he will have his day in court, and his guilt will either be proven or disproven as the case may be.

In Australia, as in the UK, it is a fundamental principle of criminal law that one is innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. So why the desperate rush on the part of our Prime Minister, when there has been no conclusion to a police investigation let alone a criminal trial, to “confirm” his government’s agreement to any proposal to remove the former prince from the line of royal succession when no proposal has of yet been firmed up and when a senior member of the British government has asserted that as a prerequisite, the police investigation needs to play out?

Here’s where the Jewish angle comes in. King Solomon in the Book of Proverbs (14:16) writes: “The wise are cautious and avoid danger while fools plunge ahead with audacity.”

Or, as Alexander Pope paraphrased it: “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!”

I fear it was that same unfortunate trait of unholy haste to pass judgement that persuaded the Albanese-led government to fall hook, line and sinker for the Hamas-propelled lies alleging deliberate IDF targeting of innocents in Gaza, post-October 7, fuelling the false accusations of genocide. The same egregious sprit of impetuosity that drove the Prime Minister and his Foreign Minister to “recognise” a non-existent Palestinian state and drive a wedge between the government and the Australian Jewish community.

Sadly, it took an evil massacre of innocents to restore, somewhat, this relationship.

We seem to live in an era of legislative overreach. Civil judges override government legislation – it’s happened recently both here and in Israel – and now our Australian government is seeking to return the compliment.

I cannot help but feel that this is a symptom of a greater malaise.

The concept of tikkun olam, mending the world, first encountered in the Talmud, is a very noble one. However, the concept has become besmirched in our day. Instead, society has become highly adept at shallow virtue-signalling. Symbolic gestures are affected. Moral outrage is peremptorily expressed to align with popular opinion, but there is no considered cheshbon ha-nefesh, no profound individual soul-searching.

The result is that ours has become a hypocritical generation. Virtue-signalling has not led to greater virtue. Finger-pointing and expressing public moral outrage has not led to inner moral refinement. One segment of society attempts to lay down arbitrary values to another. Leaders rush to post soundbites on social media that they think will ingratiate them with their power base without profound reflection, and truth is the loser.

Worst of all, the tall-poppy syndrome that has beset particularly Australian society has spawned the “sport” of shaming public figures as they fall from grace and trial by media, all of which is a far cry from genuine tikkun olam.

There are no shortcuts to mending the world. As Rabbi Israel Salanter, 19th-century founder of the Musar (moral refinement) movement in Judaism, declared: “One must first repair oneself; only then can one repair society!”

Sadly, Albanese’s premature missive to the British Prime Minister on the subject of royal succession, penned on presumption of guilt not innocence – echoing his egregious haste to pass ill-considered judgement on Israel – has effected a further fissure in the delicate fabric of our societal ethics founded in the bedrock of our fading Judeo-Christian moral code.

Rabbi Chaim Ingram OAM is a Sydney-based educator and author.