The Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry (ECAJ) and the Zion­ist Fed­er­a­tion of Aus­tralia (ZFA) are deeply con­cerned by the incon­sis­ten­cy in Australia’s deci­sion to vote in favour of a UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly res­o­lu­tion call­ing for a cease­fire short­ly after issu­ing a joint state­ment togeth­er with Cana­da and New Zealand that called for the removal and dis­man­tling of Hamas.

The joint state­ment con­demned Hamas’ heinous acts of vio­lence includ­ing sex­u­al vio­lence, the unac­cept­able treat­ment of hostages, and Hamas’ use of Pales­tin­ian civil­ians as human shields. It called for Hamas to lay down its arms and stip­u­lat­ed that there is no role for Hamas in the future gov­er­nance of Gaza.

We wel­come this posi­tion.

How­ev­er, the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly res­o­lu­tion demands an imme­di­ate cease­fire, and does not call for Hamas to sur­ren­der or dis­arm.  It also implies that Hamas can some­how be defeat­ed with­out there being any large-scale impact on the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion, behind which Hamas delib­er­ate­ly hides.

We acknowl­edge the state­ment issued by the Aus­tralian Ambas­sador to the UN, H.E Mr James Larsen that refers to the call for a human­i­tar­i­an cease­fire as a call for more human­i­tar­i­an paus­es and the fact that Aus­tralia sup­port­ed the Unit­ed States’ attempt to unequiv­o­cal­ly con­demn Hamas for the 7 Octo­ber ter­ror­ist attacks.

How­ev­er, the fact that the res­o­lu­tion omit­ted these crit­i­cal issues and appears to call for a cease­fire should have been enough of a rea­son to vote with Australia’s clos­est ally, the Unit­ed States and oppose this res­o­lu­tion.

The deci­sion to vote in favour of this res­o­lu­tion has cre­at­ed uncer­tain­ty and con­fu­sion and is a depar­ture from the clear­ly prin­ci­pled posi­tion that Aus­tralia adopt­ed fol­low­ing Hamas’ attack on 7 Octo­ber.

The Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment can­not have it both ways. Either it stands by its posi­tion in the joint state­ment that recog­nis­es that Hamas must be removed from pow­er and return all the hostages or it sup­ports a cease­fire which would allow Hamas to remain in pow­er and deliv­er on its promise to repeat the attacks of 7 Octo­ber at the ear­li­est pos­si­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty.

Sin­cere­ly,

Daniel Aghion KC, Pres­i­dent Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry

Jere­my Leibler, Pres­i­dent, Zion­ist Fed­er­a­tion of Aus­tralia