In the battle for Jerusalem, Australia can lead the charge

In that day I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it. (Zechariah 12:3)

Australians often ask me: What can I do that will really help Israel?

The answer lies before us:

Heading our way in 2017 are two anniversaries that together present an historic opportunity to make almost unbreakable the Australia-Israel connection.

Seizing on them would entail Churchillian statesmanship in government, and resolve and courage, plus that uniquely national characteristic of mateship, from regular Aussies.

• June 5-10, 2017 is the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War that restored the Jewish presence in the heart of their ancestral lands and in Jerusalem – held for 3000 years to be their capital.

• October 31, 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Beersheba when the extraordinary charge of the Australian Light Horse helped liberate the Land of Israel from foreign control and directly facilitated the 1948 rebirth of the national homeland of the Jewish people.

More than any other nation in the past 100 years – on the battlefields of two world wars and successive Middle Eastern ones, in diplomatic arenas like the United Nations, and on the floor of its own federal parliament – Australia has contributed positively to the destiny of the Jewish people and their resurrected state.

More than any other English-speaking country, Australia opened its doors to European Jewish immigration, between 1945 and 1961 doubling the Jewish population in the country.

Only Israel welcomed more Holocaust survivors than Australia.

Your country’s philosemitism and pro-Israel stand have remained consistent during the last quarter century of mounting efforts to delegitimise and demonise Israel.

The global community – willing to champion the cause of virtually every aboriginal/indigenous people on earth – wants to see the Jews – the only true indigenous of the land known for thousands of years as Israel – evicted from their ancestral lands in order to create there a new Arab state called Palestine.

This irony, coupled with the oldest prejudicial hatred of all time – anti-Semitism (which mere decades ago manifested in the destruction of a full one-third of world Jewry) – means that the Jews find themselves without a single absolute defender; not one nation unequivocally on their side.

Consequently Israel is the only country in the world refused the right to designate its capital.

I say again: Israel is the only country void of even a single ally willing to recognize its chosen capital city Jerusalem and place its embassy there.

One of the most effective ways to help Israel and stymie support for the two state solution – and here Australia could seize the opportunity to instigate change – would be for just a handful of nations to move their embassies to Jerusalem.

Such a move would existentially strengthen Israel and also alter the course of history for Australia.

Should your country need any encouragement, it is worth noting that after 25 years of failed ‘land-for-peace’ efforts; and amid fears escalated by the extended reach of violent Islamists and the flooding of Europe by mostly Muslim migrants who are irreversibly impacting the demography and cultural consistency of the Continent – the world’s hitherto unchallenged political correctness is being widely reassessed.

Hence we see the recently published new Republican Party platform in the US no longer supports the ‘two state solution’ and supports an indivisible Jerusalem. We see phenomena like Brexit, which has unchained the UK from that overwhelmingly anti-Israel EU. (Time will yet tell how an independent Britain will relate to Israel.) We see the ascension of anti-Immigration and anti-Islamisisation parties in diverse countries. And we see the election upset of Pauline Hanson who has had the courage to call the primary enemy of Israel and of Judeo-Christian civilization by its name.

Against this backdrop, parliamentarians in other lands are being urged to debate moving their embassies to Jerusalem. A pitch made in the Czech Republic in July is motivating a discussion in parliament. Czech president Miloš Zeman has previously proposed that the Czech embassy be moved.

In March this year, in his maiden speech, Liberal senator James Paterson called for the Australian government to formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv.

The proposition is being put to other Australian senators, and if voices in the electorate will get behind it, enough momentum could be generated to see this question debated in Parliament House and in fact see legislation passed to make this happen.

Australia could in this way also encourage other nations that have been intimidated into opposing the Jews’ claim to their capital.

One hundred years after Beersheba Australia can also lead this charge.

Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated provisional acceptance of an invitation from the Turnbull government to become – sometime early in 2017 – the first sitting Israeli Prime Minister to visit Australia. The possibilities all this poses!

Now therefore, right now, there is something every individual Australian can do towards effectively strengthening Israel in the face of all its enemies:

Take just a few minutes to carefully handwrite (not email) in your own words a short but pointed letter to your federal representatives – telling them you want your government to move the Australian Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. *

Tell him or her that you have been to Israel and/or that you are proud of the closeness that exists between your country and the Jewish people – a special friendship that has been in place since before Israel’s independence, and the bond that has formed since then.

But be clear that you are embarrassed and dismayed to learn that Australia refuses to recognise the Jews’ claim to their 3000-year-old capital. Insist that this has to change.

This is no way for Aussies to treat their mates.

——————–

*Strongly encourage family, friends and fellow believers to write too. Draft and circulate petitions calling for this to happen.

News items:
– Australia’s youngest-ever senator calls to recognize capital Jerusalem
– White House corrects location of Jerusalem on day of Peres’ funeral
– Trump to Netanyahu: If I’m president, I’ll recognize undivided Jerusalem
– Trump to CNN: I’ll move the US Embassy to Jerusalem
– PLO loses a battle for Jerusalem in the Czech Republic

Ten reasons why Australia should honour Israel’s claim to Jerusalem as its capital and move its embassy to Jerusalem

1. Every country on earth is permitted to designate which city will be its capital. Not to honour Israel’s choice is to act in a way that is exclusively prejudicial against the Jewish state.
2. The founding fathers of the nation of Israel and Israel’s greatest king, David, regarded Jerusalem as the capital and most important city in the nation.
3. The Jewish people have thus held Jerusalem to be their capital for 3000 years.
4. Since Jerusalem’s destruction by Rome in AD 70, every devout Jew has prayed daily to return to the land of Israel and to Jerusalem.
5. No other nation in history has ever designated Jerusalem as its capital.
6. International law as promulgated by the League of Nations in 1923 and upheld in the Founding Charter of the United Nations includes Jerusalem in the land designated for close Jewish settlement.
7. The international community, which was complicit in enabling the destruction of European Jewry in World War Two, owes this to the Jews.
8. The Palestinian Arabs have no national history in the land of Israel and therefore have no claim to Jerusalem.
9. It is immoral and unjust for the nations of the world to seek to dispossess the Jewish people of their ancestral lands and of their historical capital.
10. As an historically Judeo-Christian nation the vast majority of whose lawmakers swear their oaths on the Bible, Australia should naturally hold to the position of that Bible regarding Israel’s national claim to Jerusalem.