7/2/2023 0 Comments Plutocracy part 2![]() At the time “there was a wave of grief through some sections of the Jewish community at Hawke’s departure,” and Jewish leaders “effusively praised the former prime minister.” Bob Hawke was “particularly close to the Jewish community” and, in particular, to influential Jews like Isi Leibler, multicultural activist Walter Lippmann, and wealthy businessmen like Eddie Kornhauser and Peter Abeles. When Paul Keating successfully challenged Prime Minister Hawke for the leadership of the Labor Party in 1991, there was consternation among the ranks of Jewish activist organizations. In 2002, the Howard government made dual citizenship legal, “in recognition of Australia’s diversity and multiculturalism.” Leibler insisted on seeing Chris Hurford who “interrupted a lengthy meeting with a rather important lobby to see me.” Hurford caved in to Leibler’s demands/threats and, in April 1986, with Opposition support, announced amendments to the government’s proposed citizenship legislation that restored the citizenship of all the Australian Jews living in Israel. A “sense of urgency” gripped Leibler during this campaign he “was a man possessed, furiously working on this issue, and sometimes furious when he didn’t get his way, as, for instance, when an Immigration Department official refused to see the logic and force of the case Leibler was putting to him.” In his notes, Leibler recalled that “The conversation was very heated and I was quite abusive.” Leibler was adamant “this problem would have to be resolved even if it meant I had to go and see the Prime Minister for the second time that day.” Leibler had met with Bob Hawke earlier that day as part of a delegation organized by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Leibler coordinated an intensive lobbying campaign to have Jews granted a special exemption to the dual citizenship laws. ![]() Here were Jews committed to Israel, living and raising children there, even serving in the Israeli army, and yet determined to hang on to their Australian citizenship.” This situation might have “raised the old charge of dual loyalties, a long-standing anti-Semitic trope in which Jews are a sort of fifth column, with greater loyalty to their fellow Jews than to the country in which they live and are citizens. Contrary to what Australian immigration officials had always told them, not only would adult Australians in Israel lose their citizenship, but so too would their children who had been born in Israel.” These Jews, noted Gawenda, who Leibler and the ZFA regarded as a Zionist success story, wanted to have their cake and eat it too. So too would Australian Jews who had arrived after 1981 and been granted permanent residency by Israel.Īmong Australian Jews there was outrage and panic, and the “ZFA was inundated with demands for help. The bill prompted Immigration Department officials to rule that those who had settled In Israel before 1981 and become Israeli citizens would have their Australian citizenship revoked and passports cancelled. That year, however, the Labor government introduced legislation to amend the Citizenship Act to clarify the prohibition on dual citizenship. This was not enforced by Australian authorities prior to 1986. Under Israel’s Law of Return, Jews who settled in Israel automatically became Israeli citizens – meaning they had implicitly renounced their Australian citizenship. ![]() ![]() Under the Citizenship Act, Australians could not become citizens of another country without giving up their Australian citizenship, as Rupert Murdoch had done to become an American citizen. Having Their Cake and Eating It Too – The Dual Citizenship Campaignīy the mid-1980s Mark Leibler had established the Zionist Federation of Australia as “a political lobbying powerhouse.” The organization was centrally involving in ensuring 7,000 Australian Jews who had made Aliyah to Israel retained their Australian citizenship.
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