Two months ago, Morrison raised hopes of moving the Australian embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv when he said he was “open-minded” after President Donald Trump moved the American embassy and recognised Israel’s capital.

Last week, however, Morrison announced that Australia would merely establish a defence and trade office in Jerusalem and would move the embassy only after a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

More explosively, he said he recognised “West Jerusalem” as Israel’s capital, and supported the aspiration for a future state of Palestine with its capital in “East Jerusalem”.

Cue irritation and even outrage in Israel — and no wonder. There is no west Jerusalem in Israel — just Jerusalem. The city is not divided into two separate halves like West Berlin and East Berlin before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Australia has, in effect, unilaterally divided Jerusalem, contravening the convention established for every other country that it has the sovereign right to decide upon its own capital.

Morrison thus also effectively declared that the Western Wall and the ancient Jewish quarter of the Old City, along with the Hebrew University and Mount Scopus’ Hadassah University Medical Centre, are not part of Israel’s capital since they too lie beyond the 1949 ceasefire lines.

Back in October, many Australians viewed their prime minister’s “open mind” as a cynical attempt to win by-election votes for a Sydney seat with a high Jewish population. In the event, his Liberal Party lost that by-election and his coalition turned into a minority government.

Attempting therefore to steer a middle course on Jerusalem, he fell down the gap. Australia’s Muslim neighbours, Malaysia and Indonesia, are annoyed. Hamas and the Arab League are furious. Israel is disappointed and angry.

It takes a particular kind of genius to be attacked by all sides. But Jewish Diaspora leaders have been exhibiting a similar genius.

The Australia, Israel and Jewish Affairs Council welcomed the government’s “acknowledgment of the reality” that “Jerusalem is Israel’s capital”.

But the Morrison government didn’t recognise that reality because it didn’t say Jerusalem was Israel’s capital. It situated it instead in an entity that doesn’t exist.

Do these Australian Jewish leaders realise they too are agreeing that Jerusalem’s Western Wall and Old City don’t belong to Israel and might be given away to the Palestinians if they get a state?

Britain’s Jewish leadership fell into the same mire.

On Twitter, the Board of Deputies of British Jews praised Australia for recognising “the simple truth of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital” and urged the British Foreign Office to “follow suit”.

But, of course, Australia hadn’t recognised this simple truth. The Board had rushed to praise a move that unilaterally divided Jerusalem and upset Israel.

At the same time, however, it was also attacked by the kind of people who would have been horrified by Trump moving the embassy.

They said the Board had been “simplistic” and needed to be more “cautious and measured” in its Israel comments.

This row reflects the fact that the Board is supposed to be apolitical and represent the whole Anglo-Jewish community. And that harbours many different and passionately opposed views about Israel.

So although the Board supports Israel, it usually does so in studiedly vague terms and avoids contentious issues such as the status of Jerusalem.

But that means failing to say that the Jewish people is entitled to a city that not only contains its holiest sites, not only is part of the land that the international community pledged to it a century ago, but was only ever the capital of the Jewish nation-state alone.

Furthermore, the Board cannot properly defend British Jews against antisemitism unless it publicly exposes the lies told about Israel, including the claim that it illegally occupies “Palestinian” lands.

Recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is to acknowledge the Jews’ historic and unique claim not just to the city but to the entire Land of Israel. It thus repudiates the big lie told by the Arab world, which rewrites the Jews out of their own history in order to destroy Israel altogether.

When in 1967 Israel liberated those parts of Jerusalem that had been illegally occupied by Jordan, it did no more than complete the task of ridding the land of the illegal Arab colonialist regime, which had helped try to destroy Israel at its rebirth in 1948.

The current Arab administration of the Temple Mount has turned that ostensibly holy Muslim site into a theatre of genocidal war, using it to incite the mass murder of Jews.

Those who entertain the very possibility of Israel giving up that part of Jerusalem to people with such a murderous and antisemitic record are helping perpetuate, however unwittingly, the war of extermination against Israel in which Jerusalem is used as a hostage. (Jerusalem Post)

Melanie Phillips is a columnist for The Times

E-MAIL: comment@jewishtelegraph.com

If you have a story or an issue you want us to cover, let us know - in complete confidence - by contacting newsdesk@jewishtelegraph.com, 0161-741 2631 or via Facebook / Twitter