The following article has been published in J‑Wire by Peter Wertheim.

Bob Hawke was one of the giants of Aus­trali­an public life.

Both as a trade unionist and a political leader, he was a mod­ern­iser and a reformer who combined hard-headed prag­mat­ism with deep emotional con­vic­tion. He had a unique talent to find common ground between parties in conflict, and to persuade them that it was in their own long-term interests to make com­prom­ises that promoted the common good.

Hawke instinct­ively abhorred racism and bigotry of all kinds, and would not hesitate to call them out, regard­less of the political con­sequences.  He had a natural empathy with people of all back­grounds.

From the time that Bob Hawke first visited Israel in 1971, accom­pan­ied by his daughter Sue, he became a pas­sion­ate advocate of its right to live in peace, to grow and develop, and to realise its full potential.  He saw this as a vital interest of the demo­crat­ic world, and famously observed, “If the bell tolls for Israel, it tolls for all of us”.

Hawke’s com­mit­ment was so deep that he even clashed with Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam when the latter bowed to the pressure of Arab states which had raised oil process after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Whitlam announced that Australia would hence­forth adopt an “even-handed” policy towards Israel and the Arabs, a sub­stan­tial shift from the support for Israel previous Aus­trali­an gov­ern­ments had shown.  Hawke was appalled by what he referred to as Whitlam’s “immoral, unethical and ungrate­ful” view of Israel.

As Australia’s Prime Minister between 1983 and 1991, Hawke brushed aside bur­eau­crat­ic res­ist­ance from within the Depart­ment of Foreign Affairs to throw Australia’s support behind the inter­na­tion­al campaign for the right to emigrate of Jewish Refuseniks in the former Soviet Union.  The campaign was led by the Aus­trali­an Jewish community, most notably by Isi Leibler as President of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry, and gave tre­mend­ous heart to per­se­cuted Soviet Jews, a key factor in the ultimate success of the campaign.  Hawke’s energetic efforts on their behalf reportedly led the Popular Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of Palestine to plan to assas­sin­ate him.

Bob Hawke intro­duced legis­la­tion to enable the pro­sec­u­tion of Nazi war criminals in Australia and estab­lished a Special Invest­ig­a­tions Unit to gather the necessary evidence.

He also directed Australia to support inter­na­tion­al dip­lo­mat­ic efforts that ulti­mately led to the res­cis­sion in 1991 of the infamous UN General Assembly Res­ol­u­tion sixteen years earlier that had equated Zionism with racism.

In February 1987 Hawke visited Israel, the first serving Aus­trali­an Prime Minister to do so. There­after, Hawke’s rhetoric about Israel underwent a gradual change.  Whilst main­tain­ing a strong com­mit­ment to Israel’s rights, he began also to express sympathy for the Palestini­an cause, and for the view that unless Israel reached a com­prom­ise with the Palestini­ans, it would face the long-term demo­graph­ic nightmare of ruling over more Arabs than Jews.

Towards the end of his life, Hawke became more outspoken in cri­ti­cising Israeli gov­ern­ments and sup­port­ing the estab­lish­ment and recog­ni­tion of a Palestini­an State in the West Bank and Gaza.  Yet he never descended into the kind of crude polemics that have char­ac­ter­ised the turn away from Israel of his Labor colleague, Bob Carr.

In February 2017 Hawke wrote, “I am well known as a long-time supporter of the right of Israel to exist as a state behind secure and recog­nised borders – nothing has changed in that respect. What has changed is the sentiment of Israeli political lead­er­ship”.

Bob Hawke was a con­cili­at­or to the end. His flaw perhaps was to think that the basic decencies of life in Australia, which formed the necessary under­pin­nings to his suc­cess­ful res­ol­u­tion of so many disputes in this country, can be harnessed to resolve all inter­na­tion­al conflicts.   The world is poorer for the fact that that it is mani­festly not the case, and for the passing of a leader who encap­su­lated those decencies in his own character and vision for a better future.

Bob Hawke  1929 – 2019

Peter Wertheim is the co-CEO of The Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry.