‘Sensible and principled position’
Rabbi Elton of Sydney's The Great Synagogue said he personally would not have criticised the ECAJ letters.
Rabbi Benjamin Elton has defended the letters written by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) to Prime Ministers Anthony Albanese and Benjamin Netanyahu after a war of words broke out between the two leaders last week.
ECAJ president Daniel Aghion called on both Albanese and Netanyahu to address their policy differences “through diplomacy rather than public posturing”, adding that if things needed to be addressed publicly “they should be said using measured and seemly language befitting national leaders”.
Albanese accused Netanyahu of being “in denial” about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, before Netanyahu said Albanese would be remembered as a “weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews”.
Aghion said Netanyahu’s intervention into Australian domestic politics was “clumsy” and his comments were to the “detriment of the Australian Jewish community”.
The Rabbinical Association of Australia then issued a statement distancing itself from the ECAJ letters and affirmed its “unwavering public support for the State of Israel and its Prime Minister”.
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