The ECAJ extends our warmest wishes to the State of Israel as it marks its 78^th Yom Ha’atzmaut (Inde­pend­ence Day).

One year ago, with 58 hostages still held in Gaza, the war against Hamas and the con­com­it­ant antisemitic fallout around the globe consumed both our local and the inter­na­tion­al Jewish community. Today, those hostages have been returned and the war is all but over.

However, 12 months on, as we observe Yom Ha’atzmaut once more, Israel has been embroiled in yet more deadly conflicts, and our own community is still reeling from one of the most tragic and traumatic episodes in Australia’s storied history.

Four months on from the heinous atrocity at Bondi Beach, the tears continue to flow as we mourn the 15 lives lost, the innocents massacred and maimed merely for wanting to celebrate Chanukah.

While the ever-present grief casts a pall over even the most joyous of chagim (festivals), we pray the wars against both the terror-promoting Iranian regime and their proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon will ulti­mately promote peace in the Middle East and, indeed, the entire world.

Erad­ic­at­ing the nuclear and ballistic threat posed by the Islamic Republic helps safeguard the security of the Jewish State and the wider region, while global stability would be greatly enhanced by the removal of a regime respons­ible for the most heinous of attacks across the world, including on these shores and, more recently it seems, in the UK.

And so, as we mark Israel’s 78^th Inde­pend­ence Day, we pray the precipice on which we stand overlooks the dawn of a new Middle East, the very Middle East envisaged 78 years ago in the Declar­a­tion of Inde­pend­ence which saw the nascent Jewish State extend its “hand to all neigh­bour­ing states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neigh­bour­li­ness” and pledging “to do its share in a common effort for the advance­ment of the entire Middle East”.

This Zionist ideal is as profound today as it was in 1897 and 1948. And we are grateful to all those both within and outside our community, who are engaged in a daily battle against malicious attempts to mis­char­ac­ter­ise the true nature of Jewish nation­hood and the right to self-determ­in­a­tion which are so central to our identity.