The following article has been published in The Spectator Australia by Peter Wertheim.

The brouhaha that followed the federal government’s announce­ment that Australia will consider moving Australia’s Israeli embassy to Jerusalem continues to sputter along.  Imme­di­ately following the announce­ment the ABC reported, correctly, that Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi had expressed concerns about the announce­ment to Marise Payne. But the ABC also jumped the gun and reported, incor­rectly, that Indonesia was con­sid­er­ing putting the proposed Indonesia Australia Com­pre­hens­ive Economic Part­ner­ship on hold. The latter pro­pos­i­tion was swiftly and emphat­ic­ally denied by Indone­sian Trade Minister Eng­gar­tiasto Lukito who confirmed that the deal remains on track to be signed this year. The deal is as much in Indonesia’s interests as Australia’s.

Whilst the Palestini­an cause is a highly emotive one within the 56 states of the Organ­isa­tion of Islamic Co-operation, including Indonesia and Malaysia, none of these states has a record of putting its concerns for the Palestini­ans ahead of its own national interests. States rarely place sentiment above their national interests. The Indone­sian Trade Minister’s state­ments should not have come as a surprise.

A second tack taken by critics of the announce­ment was given voice by the Palestini­an Authority’s envoy to Australia, Izzat Abdulhadi, who claimed that moving the Aus­trali­an Embassy to Jerusalem would be ‘contrary to inter­na­tion­al law’ and would thus make Australia ‘an inter­na­tion­al pariah’. To support the claim, Palestini­an spokespeople fre­quently cite UN Security Council Res­ol­u­tion 478 which they say is a decision binding on all States under Article 25 of the UN Charter.  However, 478 only applies to action taken by Israel to assert its sov­er­eignty ‘in the Palestini­an and other Arab ter­rit­or­ies occupied since June 1967, including Jerusalem’. Israel’s gov­ern­ment precinct is located in the western part of the city, which has been part of Israel’s sovereign territory since 1948. It is not located in the part of Jerusalem ‘occupied [by Israel el] since June 1967’. The US Embassy is located in the western part of the city, as would any other embassy, including ours.

A third criticism was the assertion that most Aus­trali­ans are opposed to moving our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. A Roy Morgan SMS survey under­taken on December 14 – 15, 2017 was dusted off to support this claim. It asked the question: Do you support or oppose President Trump’s recent decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel? The survey found 76 per cent of Aus­trali­ans opposed the Trump announce­ment and 24 per cent supported it. Implaus­ibly, there were no ‘Don’t know’s.

The wording of the question suffered from several defects. It linked recog­nising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital with Trump, who on any view is a polar­ising per­son­al­ity. It also mis-char­ac­ter­ised Trump’s decision. Trump did not ‘declare’ Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel; the US recog­nised it as already being Israel’s capital.

There is no way of knowing which of those who answered ‘No’ did so because they did not like Trump per­son­ally, or were put off by the con­tro­versy, or were misled into believing that Trump was ‘declaring’ Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital, rather than because they were opposed in principle to recog­nising the reality that Israel’s seat of gov­ern­ment has for decades been in Jerusalem.

Israel’s par­lia­ment, min­is­teri­al offices, Supreme Court, President’s residence and PM’s residence have all been located in the western part of Jerusalem since the early days of the state. This is not part of the area that Israel captured during the 1967 war and is not des­ig­nated by the UN as ‘Occupied Palestini­an Territory’. It is not a part of the city that  has been the subject of nego­ti­ations for a two-state outcome.  Locating an embassy in the uncon­tested western part of Jerusalem would in no way pre-judge the future status of the contested eastern part of the city captured by Israel in 1967. It is ironic that some of those who argue against a uni­lat­er­al embassy move on the false premise that it would pre-judge a permanent status issue in the Israel-Palestini­an conflict, namely the future status of the eastern part of Jerusalem, are the very people seeking to commit Labor at its National Con­fer­ence in December to extend uni­lat­er­al  recog­ni­tion to a Palestini­an state. That move would neces­sar­ily pre-judge a whole raft of issues, including east  Jerusalem.

My organ­isa­tion, the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry, was keen to test the veracity of the Roy Morgan survey. We com­mis­sioned YouGov/Galaxy to conduct a poll asking: In 1949, Israel des­ig­nated Jerusalem to be its capital city, and has its par­lia­ment there. Do you think Australia should recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? The survey was conducted in February among 1,205 Aus­trali­ans. The demo­graph­ic dis­tri­bu­tion of the sample as between age, gender, marital/parental status, geo­graph­ic­al location, income level and edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment reflected the results of the 2016 census as published by the ABS. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.9 per cent.

The results paint a very different picture to the published Roy Morgan findings. A key finding of the YouGov survey was that when the question of Jerusalem was framed as one of whether to ‘recognise’ (rather than ‘declare’) Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and was asked without men­tion­ing Trump or the US, Aus­trali­ans supported recog­ni­tion by a margin of almost two to one (40 to 21 per cent).  Based on party pref­er­ence, those sup­port­ing recog­ni­tion out­numbered those against in every group except the Greens [scroll down].

My organ­isa­tion, the peak rep­res­ent­at­ive body of the Jewish community, has long supported recog­nising the reality that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and moving the embassy there. Of course Jerusalem strikes an emotional chord for all Jews. It has been our people’s spiritual and political capital since the dawn of the Iron Age 3,000 years ago. But we also believe it is in Australia’s interests, and the interests of peoples of the Middle East, for western nations to back the region’s only real democracy, instead of cravenly yielding to threats of retali­ation or, worse still, conjuring up the spectre of threats which don’t exist. The announce­ment of the Aus­trali­an gov­ern­ment that it is open to con­sid­er­ing whether Australia’s embassy in Israel should be moved to Jerusalem was made four days before the highly-sig­ni­fic­ant by-election for the Federal seat of Wentworth. The timing of the announce­ment led to a storm of criticism. Yet when the issue of recog­nising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is con­sidered on its merits, without being accom­pan­ied by the hoopla of Aus­trali­an (or US) domestic politics, the idea enjoys far more support than oppos­i­tion. Its time will come.

Data from the YouGov poll

When the question of Jerusalem was framed as one of whether to “recognise” (rather than “declare”) Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and was asked without men­tion­ing President Trump or the US (in contrast to the question asked in the Roy Morgan survey), Aus­trali­ans supported recog­ni­tion by a margin of almost two to one (40% to 21%).  Based on political party pref­er­ence, those sup­port­ing recog­ni­tion out­numbered those against in every group except the Greens.

Analysing by gender and age group, those sup­port­ing recog­ni­tion clearly out-numbered those against, among both women and men, and in every age group. Those most strongly in support were in the youngest (18 – 24) and oldest (65+) cat­egor­ies.

Other factors, such as level of edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment and geo­graph­ic­al location, produced only minor vari­ations in the pattern of those favouring recog­ni­tion clearly out­num­ber­ing those opposed.