Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Industry and Support) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fadden for bringing forward this motion and wish to associate myself with his comments in relation to those bitter days of 1938 and the Evian Conference. One of the broader messages and lessons to be taken from that was that the result of that conference effectively sent a loud message to the Nazis and to Adolf Hitler: 'You can do what you like with the Jewish community, not only of Germany but, of course, later on, all of eastern Europe and Europe in a broader sense.' That was the fatal consequence of that Evian Conference—compounded, I have to say, by the later support of Australia of the 1939 British white paper which, of course, had the very unfortunate consequence of denying thousands of Jewish refugees their lives when they could very easily have been absorbed into Palestine at the time.

That history of Australia and the Jewish peoples of that region are deep and meaningful, and also forged in blood. During the First World War, my own family and many Australians were in Egypt and Palestine as part of the light horse endeavours to free that region from the Ottoman Empire. Australian light horsemen had an initial encounter with Jewish refugees who had been expelled from that area because of the suspicions the Ottomans had of their loyalty to the Ottoman Empire. They were put up in refugee facilities in Alexandria. A lot of Australian light horsemen went to those facilities to do what they could to support those refugees, including giving the kids rides on their horses and the like.

My own family and other Australians had their first contact then and, of course, through the Palestine campaign. Before that, in the campaign on Gallipoli, Australians serve alongside the Zion Mule Corps. Membership of that unit was formed largely by refugees who were in Alexandria. So right from that very earliest battlefield experience, Australians were side-by-side with members of the Yishuv, the Jewish community of Palestine.

It didn't end there, of course. Following the experience of the Zion Mule Corps, a Jewish legion of volunteers was formed. Eventually, that became a force of about 5,000 troops. In particular, there were three battalions, which were designated as the 38th, 39th and 40th battalions of the Royal Fusiliers, which served in Palestine alongside the Australians through the remainder of that campaign. In fact at one point those units were placed under the command of Major General Edward Chaytor, who was the commander of the Anzac Mounted Division. So we were actually in command of the Jewish Legion in Palestine through a number of major engagements in the Jordan Valley, north of Jerusalem and in that final critical battle of Megiddo, serving alongside them.

Not only that, one of our greatest war heroes of the First World War, Lieutenant Colonel Eliezar Margolin, was made a CO of the 38th battalion. He'd been a hero of Gallipoli, and was wounded several times on the Western Front before he was put in command of the 38th battalion, a battalion which had as one of its members David Ben-Gurion, future Prime Minister of Israel. Eliezer Margolin is honoured today in the village that's dedicated to the Jewish legion Avichail, and a square in that village is named after Eliezer Margolin.

Of course, that didn't end the story. Last year we celebrated the centenary of the battle of Beersheba. I was there on the day, as part of that contingent of Australians, when so many of us flooded the town. There was a warm reception. The entire town was decorated and plastered with Australian flags. The community of Beersheba embraced the Australians who came. It was a wonderfully warm reception. It was such a significant event in their own history that they will never forget. I'm sure the Australians who were there for that centenary will never forget.

That relationship continued into World War II. Again, my family and thousands of Australians enjoyed the support and welfare provisions that were provided by the Jewish community in Palestine. It was a centre of activity for the 2nd AIF, who were engaged in the campaign in Greece, the Western Desert, Syria and Lebanon. My grandfather, on my father's side, was in the 2/3rd Machine Gun Battalion in the 7th Division, which was the critical formation involved in that Syria-Lebanon campaign. They were based around the Nazareth area before going into that campaign. To give a flavour of the experience of the soldiers who were looked after by the Jewish community, there's a terrific book that's just been published, which I'm reading at the moment, by Richard James called Australia's War with France: the Campaign in Syria and Lebanon, 1941. One passage in there struck me as summarising that relationship with the troops at the time. In it he said, 'The 7th Division headquarters was established in a monastery at Nazareth overlooking the fertile plains shimmering in the blue haze of the summer heat. The men camped for several pleasant days among orange groves and gumtrees. They enjoyed hospitality from the surrounding Jewish settlements.' In Albert Moore's recollection, each night the troops flocked to the communes, or kibbutzim, until the CO felt that it was too good. So he set up a ballot system to rotate leave to the kibbutzim where the Australians, as it says in the book, 'feasted on poultry and farm produce and drank iced milk, the local libation of choice.' In the book, James mentions that the Jewish way of life made a favourable impression on the men. He says, 'Their fine physique and comely appearance, their willingness to do their share of manual labour, their charming family life, and their softly murmured shaloms.' 'It was a wonderful relationship we had,' remembered Keith Norrish, one of the veterans. The Australian soldiers took up a collection in thanks for the way they had been treated and bought a player piano with a silver plaque and gave it to the settlement kibbutz that they had enjoyed such wonderful times with. That reassures me of the fact that my grandfathers were looked after. It was pretty much the last time we heard from my grandfather on my father's side, who went on to fight in the Far East. He was captured in Java and ended up on the Burma-Thai railway. It is some comfort to the family to know that he was looked after before that hellish experience.

Serving in that campaign with the Australians was Moshe Dayan, who was a scout for the 2/14th Battalion advance party that went in. It was a unit of the 21st Brigade under Jack Stevens and part of the 7th Division that my grandfather was in. In that advance party, he went forward with Lieutenant Jim Kyffin and Lieutenant William Allan to the town of Iskadrun, and there he suffered the injury that left him with the famous eye patch. Using a machine gun from a roof of a police station he raised his binoculars to see where fire from the enemy was coming from and a round hit straight into the binoculars and destroyed his eye, and he was out of action.

He and Kyffin fought extremely bravely in that contact and in that battle, and Kyffin was awarded the Military Cross for his own actions in that battle. Kyffin later on lost sight in his eye in a wound he received later at Jezzine—quite a coincidence. Kyffin and Moshe Dayan were very close friends and kept in constant contact until Kyffin's death in 1976. That was also the campaign in which Roden Cutler earned his Victoria Cross.

Those experiences in World War II were deeply affecting for the general Australian attitude. At the time, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al Husseini, was in Germany helping to organise the genocide of the Jewish people of Europe and looking to, hopefully, repeat that effort against the Jewish community of Palestine. He helped recruit many soldiers into SS units for the Germans. So the comparison with those attitudes was, I think, a big factor in the way that our troops were looked after. It was a big factor in the attitudes of Doc Evatt and Ben Chifley after the war in very actively pursuing and achieving acceptance of the partition plan that led to the creation of the state of Israel. Doc Evatt's efforts, in particular, were enormous at that time and in the subsequent battles of recognising Israel and admitting Israel to the UN. Those things were not supported at the time across the entire political spectrum because they were contrary to British policy. Thankfully, we later moved on to a very solid bipartisan approach to these issues, as we still have today.

So this is a bond formed in blood. It is a bond that is growing today with the wonderful technological achievements of the state of Israel in renewable energy and technology in general. We now have an MOU with them, which has been a long time coming. We obviously are going to benefit from learnings in those technologies as well as advances that have been made in water efficiency and farming. I'm pleased to have been in Israel in the capacities of defence and of agricultural and broader technologies. It's a relationship that will continue to grow.

Obviously, both sides of this House will work as hard as we can with the peoples of that area to move to a two-state solution to make sure that the people of Israel and the Palestinians can live in peace and harmony in the years ahead. We owe them nothing less given the experiences that I've outlined, which have been forged in blood. I look forward to making my own contribution in whatever way I can. I thank the member for his motion.

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