The Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty is a deeply Zion­ist com­mu­ni­ty. Israel is at the core of our Jew­ish iden­ti­ty and a focus of our schools, youth move­ments, syn­a­gogues, com­mu­nal insti­tu­tions and, in many cas­es, our fam­i­ly con­nec­tions.

We cel­e­brate Israel’s suc­cess­es and achieve­ments. When Israel is under attack, we share the pain and suf­fer­ing of our broth­ers and sis­ters. We defend Israel against the irra­tional hatred that is sad­ly increas­ing­ly per­va­sive through­out the world.

We recog­nise and respect that, being in the dias­po­ra, we have dif­fer­ent rights, but we are also deeply invest­ed in Israel’s sur­vival and the well­be­ing of all Israelis and the Jew­ish peo­ple.

We believe that Israel must for­ev­er remain a Jew­ish and demo­c­ra­t­ic state, root­ed in the vision of the prophets. Despite the incom­pa­ra­ble chal­lenges that Israel has faced since its incep­tion, the Jew­ish home­land has admirably upheld those prin­ci­ples as set forth in its Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence.

It is from this posi­tion of uncon­di­tion­al love and con­nec­tion that we express our seri­ous con­cern at the gov­ern­ing coalition’s pro­pos­als to make fun­da­men­tal changes to the rela­tion­ship between the Knes­set and the judi­cia­ry with undue haste and in the absence of broad-based pub­lic sup­port. We also view with deep con­cern oth­er pro­pos­als in rela­tion to reli­gious plu­ral­ism and the law of return that risk dam­ag­ing Israel’s pre­cious and unique rela­tion­ship with Dias­po­ra Jew­ry.

We call on the gov­ern­ing coali­tion to heed the call from Israeli Pres­i­dent Isaac Her­zog for gen­uine dia­logue, based on his five prin­ci­ples for judi­cial reform, and to pause all of these con­tro­ver­sial pro­pos­als so that con­struc­tive dia­logue can occur and a nation­al con­sen­sus can begin to emerge.