Mark Dreyfus visit to Israel is no gimmick, but it must go beyond Labor PR

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus: Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, a prominent Jewish member of cabinet, will soon visit Israel for about a week to help mend relations between the two countries. Dreyfus had a trip to Israel scheduled for the one-year anniversary of the October 7 terrorist attacks. It was cancelled when Iran launched missiles against Israel. The trip would be the first by a cabinet minister since Foreign Minister Penny Wong visited Israel last January.

Prominent Jewish opposition member of parliament Julian Leeser slammed the move as a pre-election gimmick. “Sending Mark Dreyfus to Israel will not change the underlying failure of this government – which is the weak leadership of Anthony Albanese and hard-left policies of Penny Wong,” he said.

He added that the Attorney-General had gone along with every anti-Israel policy of the Albanese government and that as the minister responsible for royal commissions, the Australian Federal Police and the Human Rights Commission, he has been an “impediment to addressing anti-Semitism in this country”.

Some of this criticism is over the top and entirely out of line. Dreyfus is no doubt politically minded and will protect the Prime Minister. However, he can’t escape that this trip is personal too. (Mind you, Dreyfus, with no factional allegiance, also plays his politics hard.)

He was strongly condemned by former Labor parliamentarian Michael Danby some years ago for drawing Josh Frydenberg back into the citizenship saga. Danby accused Dreyfus of playing “political tactics” on the issue and that Dreyfus was not cognisant of the “wider political, historical and ethical issues” involved with Frydenberg’s right to sit in parliament. As a senior cabinet member whose Jewish faith and heritage have always been an inseparable part of his identity, Dreyfus doesn’t need to justify a visit to Israel at any time, especially post-October 7.

Even if the criticism that a state-level trip represented by Dreyfus should be led by Prime Minister Albanese or Foreign Minister Wong is valid, it’s nevertheless appropriate that the Attorney-General visit Israel if for no other reason than to tackle head-on the lack of leadership by the Albanese government in failing to stand firm against the lawfare being directed against Israel in the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and other judicial bodies.

For this reason, while it’s unclear at this time whether Dreyfus intends to be the first Australian cabinet member to visit the sites where Hamas massacred Israelis on October 7, in a case of better late than never, failure to add it to his itinerary would be seen as a smack in the face of the Jewish community. It would also be a missed opportunity for Dreyfus to report back to his colleagues with a complete picture of Israel’s ongoing war efforts against the Hamas enemy that refuses to surrender or release hostages it holds in violation of international law.

It’s incumbent upon Dreyfus to not merely make perfunctory meetings and photo-ops. He should listen closely to his counterparts in Israel, Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, Israel Defence Forces chief military advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi and Tal Becker, legal adviser to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who grew up in Australia. He would be able to return to Canberra with a clear understanding of Israel’s defence of the IDF’s performance in this war, both from a legal and moral standpoint.

While normally the choice of Dreyfus to represent the government would appear to be tokenism, the fact Australia is being aggressively pressured to support lawfare against Israel means Dreyfus could help the Albanese government climb down from that tree, if it is smart enough to recognise that. It’s widely expected that within days after president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration he’ll impose sanctions on the ICC that will target both individual ICC personnel, including judges and prosecutors, and the institution, employing designation procedures such as those used by the State Department for terrorist organisations globally. Dreyfus could come back from his trip and say Australia would not arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or former defence minister Yoav Gallant if they set foot on our soil.

Of course, the Albanese government could be using Dreyfus to validate its own unprincipled policies on the ICC’s arrest warrants, a move that would be ill-advised for both Dreyfus and the government.

Hopefully, Dreyfus will reassure Israel that we will be open to putting more pressure on Iran to stop the Houthis’ aggression, getting Hamas to lock in a hostage deal and lay down arms, and end Iran’s interference in other states, including what’s left in Syria.

But we may see a dramatic change of approach if the Coalition wins government this year, with a very different, openly pro-Israel policy.

Apart from introducing a clear policy on how to tackle anti-Semitism, it seems clear Peter Dutton would travel to Israel himself or dispatch members of his leadership group on a high-level visit immediately. While he may not rush it, he might recognise Jerusalem as the capital and move the embassy to make it more permanent. He would immediately suspend aid to UNRWA and shift some of Australia’s voting patterns in the UN.

Anthony Bergin is a senior fellow at Strategic Analysis Australia.