Benjamin Netanyahu will on Wednesday become the first sitting Israeli prime minister to visit Australia.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will welcome Mr Netanyahu and his wife Sara for four days, a trip that’s attracted criticism as well as support.
For Dr Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, it’s an exciting milestone in the diplomatic relationship between the two countries.
“It’s very hard for Israeli prime ministers to leave the country for more than three days,” Dr Rubenstein told SBS News.
“The country is under perpetual threat and the politics at home are rough and ready.”
“It’s taken a while. Perhaps it’s overdue, but that’s what makes it more exciting and important.”
Many have remarked as to why it has taken so long, given Australia supported the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, and has, as Labor MP for Melbourne Ports, Michael Danby described “probably the most pro-Israel Jewish community in the world”.
“The community is very, very close to Israel.”
“Probably because we’re the – most intensely – the children and grandchildren of survivors of the Nazi genocide in Europe. That colours our thinking obviously,” Mr Danby said.
“I think the Israelis have come to realise in the last 10 years that Australia is a very important country, 12th largest economy in the G20” he said.
Mr Netanyahu is travelling with a large business contingent, and the official statement reads that expanding cooperation in cyber-security, innovation and science, agritech, energy and resources, and the environment are the key topics.
But wherever Benjamin Netanyahu goes, the Palestinian conflict follows him.
Sixty Australians signed an open letter which said Mr Netanyahu should not be welcomed here. Among them was Peter Slezak, a Jewish academic who lives in Sydney.
Mr Slezak belongs to both the Independent Australian Jewish Voices and the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network.
“Well I think we shouldn’t welcome him, we shouldn’t have invited him,” Mr Slezak told SBS News.
Mr Slezak acknowledged his opinion is a minority one in the Australian Jewish community, but said more are starting to think critically about Israel and its leadership.
“I’m Jewish. My parents are both Holocaust survivors. My mother and her mother survived Auschwitz,” he said.
“There’s a lesson we were supposed to have learnt. We say ‘never again’, but sadly I think most Jews don’t understand that properly. That means never again, to anybody.”
Read the full article by Daniela Ritorto at SBS.