Commentary by ECAJ co-CEO Alex Ryvchin originally published in The Daily Telegraph on 7 January 2024.

Will Australia once again treat Israelis like democratic allies fighting the embodiment of evil rather than, at best, a nuisance and, at worst, an enemy?

The Attor­ney-Gen­er­al is embark­ing on a peace­keep­ing mis­sion to Israel on behalf of the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment, though it is dif­fi­cult to ascer­tain who he is aim­ing to paci­fy.

The Government’s response to the Octo­ber 7 atroc­i­ties has includ­ed push­ing for the cre­ation of a Pales­tin­ian state, refus­ing to rule out arrest­ing the Israeli Prime Min­is­ter at the behest of an inter­na­tion­al tri­bunal, and mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for Israeli tourists to vis­it Aus­tralia by drown­ing their appli­ca­tions in pro­cess­ing delays and addi­tion­al paper­work.

At the very least, the vis­it will afford the Gov­ern­ment an oppor­tu­ni­ty to atone for the hurt caused by the For­eign Minister’s refusal to vis­it the sites of the Octo­ber 7 inva­sion and atroc­i­ties.

The Attor­ney-Gen­er­al will be moved by his vis­it. It is impos­si­ble to stand in places where fam­i­lies were tor­tured and burned alive and feel noth­ing.

He will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the beau­ty of the Nova Fes­ti­val site and the idyl­lic agri­cul­tur­al vil­lages for­ev­er defiled by rape, slaugh­ter and inno­cents dragged off like medieval tro­phies of war.

He will grasp what Israel is fight­ing for and what it is fight­ing against.

In the south, he will meet gen­uine heroes who sin­gle­hand­ed­ly fought off the ter­ror­ists and saved count­less lives doing so.

He should meet wound­ed sol­diers, who are hum­ble, steely, the salt of the earth.

All this will help him under­stand why the removal of Hamas, once and for all, and the lib­er­a­tion of the hostages it still holds, includ­ing babies and ail­ing seniors, is the moral imper­a­tive of our time.

He will also field ques­tions from incred­u­lous Israelis along the lines of “what the hell is going on in Aus­tralia? They’re burn­ing syn­a­gogues and cars there now?”

The ques­tion is whether any of this will lead to a pol­i­cy reset and mean­ing­ful action.

Whether Aus­tralia will once again treat Israelis like demo­c­ra­t­ic allies fight­ing the embod­i­ment of evil rather than, at best, a nui­sance and, at worst, an ene­my. Whether it will com­pel the Gov­ern­ment to aban­don its con­fronta­tion with Israel at the Unit­ed Nations and to say clear­ly and strong­ly, as it should have along: “Hamas must let the hostages go and lay down its arms and the war ends tomor­row.”

Or will they con­tin­ue on their cur­rent path which will for the first time in Aus­tralian his­to­ry force Jew­ish Aus­tralians to con­sid­er on elec­tion day, which par­ty will do more to keep our fam­i­lies safe from vio­lent Jew-hatred and which par­ty will treat Israel like a pari­ah or like a friend?