ECAJ statement on meeting with Prime Minister.

ECAJ Pres­i­dent Daniel Aghion KC said fol­low­ing the ECAJ’s meet­ing with the PM:

The Prime Min­is­ter reit­er­at­ed what he has said pub­licly about the recog­ni­tion of a Pales­tin­ian state. It is on the Government’s agen­da, but it is not immi­nent.

We also think that the Gov­ern­ment has a real­is­tic under­stand­ing that Pales­tin­ian state­hood requires a recog­ni­tion of Israel’s per­ma­nence as a Jew­ish state, a com­mit­ment to peace­ful coex­is­tence, demil­i­tari­sa­tion and demo­c­ra­t­ic reform, in addi­tion to the com­plete dis­arm­ing of Hamas and the imme­di­ate release of all remain­ing hostages, liv­ing and dead.

Much of our dis­cus­sion focussed on the scourge of anti­semitism in Aus­tralia. We are heart­ened by the Government’s con­tin­u­ing sup­port for the Spe­cial Envoy to Com­bat Anti­semitism, Jil­lian Segal AO, and the IHRA work­ing def­i­n­i­tion.

The Spe­cial Envoy’s action plan is under active con­sid­er­a­tion. Recent anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents only under­line the per­sis­tence of the prob­lem of anti­semitism in Aus­tralia, and the Prime Min­is­ter con­firmed that he ful­ly under­stands the urgency of the need to address it.

Anti­semitism is not a prob­lem that can be solved by Gov­ern­ment alone. It requires a whole-of-soci­ety response. We have assured the Gov­ern­ment that they have the full coop­er­a­tion of the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty.