E&OE …………………………………………………………………………
To Professor Moshe Kaveh, to Professor Newman, Professor Freidlander and to all the other academic company of the Bar Ilan University. To my many Australian Jewish friends who are here today and particularly I acknowledge the presence of Isi Leibler, of Leon Kemploer, of Jo and Gerder Brender, of Colin Rubinstein, of Graham Smorgan and if there are any others I haven’t seen, I apologise.
To the Australian Ambassador to Israel, Dr Rigby, to Mr & Mrs Levy, the Ambassador and wife from the State of Israel to Australia and ladies and gentleman.
This morning’s ceremony is both, in my capacity as Prime Minister, important and moving and on a personal basis is also a source of very pride and pleasure. This is my third visit to Israel. It is my first as Prime Minister. I first visited Israel in 1964, long before I entered public life and, as I reflect with amusement on occasions to many of my Jewish friends, on that occasion I stayed at the YMCA in Jerusalem. I returned 24 years later as Leader of the Opposition and moved across to the road to the King David Hotel. I have not come back again for the third time as Prime Minister and I do so as the Leader of a nation which has had strong and close ties with the State of Israel since its foundation in 1948.
Australia was one of the very first countries in the world to recognise Israel and throughout all of the travail of the State of Israel in the years that have gone by since Australia has been a staunch, reliable and consistent supporter and that support and that encouragement has been based upon a number of things. It has first and foremost been based upon the shared values that Australia and Israel have. We are both democratic societies. We are both societies that believe in the rule of law. We are both societies that preach and practise racial tolerance and equality. We are societies that believe that disputes should be settled by peaceful resolution.
The ties between Australia and Israel of course are a broader expression of the ties between the Jewish people of Australia’s history and the rest of the Australian community. There were Jews amongst the very first of the European settlers more than 200 years ago. And over that period of time, Jewish people have made a massive contribution to the building of the modern Australia.
I have just come from visiting the Word War I battlefields of Gallipoli and Northern France where so many Australians served and tragically far too many died all those years ago. It is worth reminding ourselves that amongst the seven Australians who won the Victoria Cross at Lone Pine, one of them was a Jew. I don’t need to remind an audience such as this that the greatest Field Commander Australia produced during World War I and arguably Australia’s greatest Jewish son, Sir John Monash of course has brought great lustre to the Jewish community of Australia and great lustre to his nation.
And as you go through the years, you find at every level in business, the professions, in government in culture, in every aspect of Australian life the Jewish community has played a magnificent and a positive role.
And of course coming here today and accepting this honorary degree is for me something of a very special personal experience given my own links and the genesis of them with the Jewish community in Australia because it was at Sydney University in the middle to late 1950’s that I first formed some enduring friendships with Jewish people and fellow students at the University, friendships which have endured to this day. And as a very Anglo-Celtic Protestant boy growing up in the suburbs of Sydney that experience was very special. It exposed me to the breadths and the quality of Jewish life, their strong commitment to family values, the depth of their historical tradition, their understanding of the contribution of communities to the building of a united society and united nation.
And at an academic level of the many people who struggled to teach me the intricacies of the law at Sydney University, none left a deeper impression on me that the late Professor Julius Stone, a very distinguished English Jew who’d come from Leeds University and who was the Professor of jurisprudence and international law at Sydney University for some 25 years.
And from those years on, I have been very proud to call many Jewish Australians my close friends. I served articles of clerkship with a Jewish solicitor in Sydney and had the opportunity and I think one of his other article clerks is here today and he was a pretty good teacher, he didn’t cop any sloppy work and he taught me a great deal and gave me a great deal of understanding and he himself of course was a great Australian having represented Australia at Rugby Union and in fact, his name is Myer Rosenbloom, he is in fact the oldest surviving Wallaby in Australia and his son also represented Australia at rugby union.
But through the years my association with Jewish people has been close and strong and something of which I am immensely proud. And in my time in public life I have of course continued that association.
So Mr President, Professor Kaveh today is personally a very rewarding and very happy occasion but it’s also beyond that and more importantly than that it is an opportunity for me to record again the strength of the relationship between Australia and Israel. It is also an opportunity for me on behalf of the Australian Government to welcome the peace process which is underway in the Middle East and to applaud the leadership being given in that process by the Prime Minister of Israel and all of those who are so strongly committed to the process of building peace.
It is impossible for anybody to come to the city of Jerusalem without being gripped by the sense of history and the sense of place. To do as I did last night and visit The Great Mosque, to tread the Via Dolorosa and then to visit the wailing wall is to experience again the richness and the special character and the special place in the life of the international community of the city of Jerusalem. So much began here, so much remains in Jerusalem and so much has been given to the world from this very special place.
In the words of a psalmist that is so well known, there is a future for the man of peace and there are many men of peace in many parts of the world today and there are many here in the Middle East who are working to build a fair and just outcome and I salute the contribution that is being made by so many in academic life here in Israel and so many within the Jewish community around the world not least in my own country Australia.
But of all the things, Mr President, that bind Australia and Israel together, the most important of all, as I said a few moments ago, are the beliefs and the values that we have in common. Our belief that the worth of individual men and women is always important, that each individual in society has a right to strive and achieve what the talents they might have would give to them, that there is no hierarchy when it comes to the right of people to practise their religion, to observe the tradition and the culture of their race or their community.
No community in the world in recorded human history has suffered as much from intolerance and prejudice and persecution as have the Jewish people and Israel stands as a fine example of the generous response of the Jewish people notwithstanding that dreadful history and the contribution that Israel is making through the strength and the openness of its own society. And the tolerance it extends to different beliefs and different values is a fine demonstration to the rest of the world.
And I am very proud to say that Australia is a country that not only preaches, but also practises to the full, racial understanding and racial tolerance. Religious tolerance in Australia is a given. We openly promote and practise it. We have for long observed a non-discriminatory immigration policy. We, as a society, of course are not without our historical blemishes and our own treatment of our indigenous population years ago of course draws quite properly critical comment. But the modern Australia is a society built of the people of 140 different countries in the world and I can think of no finer experiment, if I can use that expression, in harmony, understanding and tolerance in terms of bring different races, beliefs and religions together than you can find in the Australian nation.
So for all of these reasons Professor, may I say to you and to your University that you do me personally, you do my country and in a broader sense, the entire Australian community a great honour and a great courtesy in having conferred this degree on me. I am delighted to note to mark this occasion you are establishing an Israeli Australia Centre within the Bagan Sedat Strategic Centre at the University and how appropriate it is that it should be within the embrace of a centre named after those two great leaders who were willing to risk and sacrifice in terms of their own domestic political situation so much to reach out to each other and to bridge some of the divides that existed in the Middle East to build a more peaceful future.
Can I say finally that the personal affection I have for the State of Israel, the personal regard I have for the Jewish people of the world will never be diminished. It is something I hold dearly, it is something I value as part of my being and as part of what I have endeavoured to do in my life and this degree and this ceremony today means a great deal to me and I thank you very warmly.
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