Leaders toast Israel

POLITICAL and communal leaders mingled at an annual birthday salute marking the 68th Independence Day of Israel at the Hotel Windsor last Wednesday, sponsored by the Victorian government, Zionism Victoria and the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV).

In a speech toasting Israel, Premier Daniel Andrews condemned Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, and raised the prospect of a policy of boycotting the boycotters, adopted by New York State.

“The [New York] Governor [Andrew Cuomo] said, and I quote, ‘If you boycott Israel, New York will boycott you.’ I want to commend his leadership, I’m sure we all do tonight,” Andrews told an applauding audience.

“We still, each of us, long for the day when Israel is regarded like any other country … whose sovereignty is never under question and whose existence is never in jeopardy,” he added.

Liberal Leader Matthew Guy spoke of Israel in 1948 as “a country the size of Gippsland” on which all its neighbours declared war.

He paid tribute to the Jewish State overcoming the odds to become “a leader in biotechnology, in information technology, in agriculture, in water resources”.

Guy said Israel’s multiculturalism was notably exhibited in its High Court, where there are Muslim and Christian judges alongside Jewish judges, a court structure he said was unique in the Middle East.

Israel’s ambassador Shmuel Ben-Shmuel described his country as “a flourishing liberal democracy in a part of the world that has known so much tyranny and bloodshed”.

JCCV president Jennifer Huppert noted Israel’s humanitarian initiatives. “Israelis continue to travel to places of natural disaster to provide humanitarian aid around the world, and more recently again to provide aid to victims of the conflict in Syria.”

PETER KOHN