When Bob Hawke first visited Israel in 1971 as ACTU president, he called his meeting with Prime Minister Golda Meir a “life-changing event.” He spoke of Israel as a small but resilient democracy, standing firm in a hostile region. He warned that “if the bell tolls for Israel, it won’t just toll for Israel, it will toll for all mankind.”

Hawke never wavered. In 1973, after the Yom Kippur War, he returned as both ACTU and ALP president, openly clashing with Prime Minister Gough Whitlam over moral equivocation. He condemned the socialist left’s hostility toward Israel as morally repugnant and inconsistent with Labor values. Years later, he would say, “I’m an Israeli. If I were to have my life again, I would want to be born a Jew.”

This year also marks forty years since President Chaim Herzog visited Australia in 1986, the first official visit by a sitting Israeli president. His visit symbolised friendship, shared democratic values, and solidarity between nations that understood the threats of extremism and antisemitism.

On a personal note, Herzog’s legacy is inseparable from my own family’s survival. As a British Army general in World War II,........

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