The capital of Israel is Jerusalem, and no amount of diplomatic re-framing can change that fundamental fact. Yet in 2022, the Albanese government under Foreign Minister Penny Wong suggested that Australia would no longer recognise West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, reversing the previous Liberal government’s decision.

In her latest interview, Senator Wong refused to acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

‘The Australian government’s longstanding position on Jerusalem and borders is that they are final status issues, subject to negotiations. Australia’s recognition of the state of Palestine does not prejudge the outcome of these negotiations.’

A tidy bit of bureaucratic phrasing, and a telling one.

It cost Canberra little in practice but a great deal in credibility. The message to Israel was clear, Australia will sit out history and wait for someone else to decide it. Since when does any government tell another country what its capital is?

When it comes to the Labor government, I see something colder at work. I see an unmistakable chill in their tone whenever Israel is mentioned, contrasted with indulgent sympathy for its loudest detractors.

Remember our Foreign Minister’s quick visit to Israel shortly after the atrocities of the October 7 attacks, and a failure to visit the sites of the attacks? And yet funding was quickly re-instated to UNRWA, even as Israel had provided ample evidence of alleged UNRWA employee participation in the attacks and the hiding of Israeli hostages.

Across Australian cities, so-called ‘pro-Palestinian’ demonstrations have surged, a mix of the ignorant, the radical, and the openly revolutionary. Many of these rallies are steeped in Marxist rhetoric and saturated with the chant ‘from the river to the sea’ words that, for most Australians, sound less like a plea for coexistence and more like a call for Israel’s eradication. When senior ministers echo talking points that question Israel’s legitimacy, they embolden precisely those who would destroy it.

Hamas have thanked the Australian government more than once.

The truth about Jerusalem isn’t up for debate. For more than 3,000 years, it has been the heart of Jewish civilisation, where Moses led the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, the city of King David, the site of the First and Second Temples, and the direction of Jewish prayer for millennia. The Hebrew Bible mentions Jerusalem hundreds of times. No other faith or people can make a remotely similar claim and certainly not Islam where Jerusalem is not even mentioned in the Quran.

Even in the ashes of Europe, Jerusalem remained the centre of Jewish hope. When survivors were liberated from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in 1945, emaciated, shattered, yet unbroken, they gathered to sing ‘Hatikva’ (The Hope), the anthem that yearns for Jews to be ‘a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem’. From the ruins of Europe rose a chorus that no amount of hatred could silence.

And while politicians posture, archaeology quietly confirms what Scripture and memory have always proclaimed. Every spadeful of earth in Jerusalem’s City of David uncovers proof of the ancient Jewish presence including Hebrew seals, coins stamped Yerushalayim, royal structures buried beneath centuries of conquest. One of the most striking discoveries in recent years is the Siloam Pool, where pilgrims in the Second Temple period purified themselves before ascending the Pilgrimage Road to the Temple Mount. It is history you can touch, a staircase of faith leading straight into the biblical narrative.

As Doron Spielman writes in his book, When the Stones Speak, archaeology does not flatter ideology. It tells the truth. And the stones of Jerusalem speak loudly. They speak of David and Solomon, of prophets and kings, of exile and return. They tell the same story the Jewish people have told for three millennia, a story not of conquest but of continuity.

Penny Wong may prefer to treat Jerusalem as a ‘final-status issue’, a polite abstraction to be shuffled around a negotiating table. But Jerusalem is not a bargaining chip. It is Israel’s capital by law, by history, and by unbroken right. Pretending otherwise is a diplomatic convenience that satisfies no one, least of all those who genuinely want peace.

Australia once prided itself on moral clarity in world affairs. Today, clarity is out of fashion, ambiguity is in. But ambiguity cannot rewrite archaeology, scripture or memory. The stones of Jerusalem are still speaking. Whether Canberra listens is another matter.