Australia’s Prime Minister gave a contradictory speech on Jerusalem. He stated that he recognised West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital but that he would not move Australia’s embassy until there was a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel.

This not only makes his claim of recognising West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital empty words, it gives veto power to the Arabs, who have refused any kind of peace with Israel for eight decades, even when presented with the incredibly generous offer made in 2008. They want nothing short of Israel’s destruction as a Jewish state.

Even worse, he recognised East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. This was the Jewish Quarter until the Jordanian Army invaded in 1948 and brutally cleansed it of its then majority Jewish population, destroyed 58 synagogues and desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery there. Judaism’s holiest sites such as the Wailing Wall are in that Quarter.

In summary, not only did the Prime Minister not really recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, he indirectly gave approval to the cleansing of Jews from their holy sites.

Photograph: An Arab Legion soldier in ruins of Hurva Synagogue, Jerusalem 1948.