Search

Beno Rothenburg, Land of Israel (1962)

David S. Tesher was the fourth Israeli Ambassador posted to Australia, serving in the role from 1963-67.

Born in Russia in 1904, Tesher had emigrated to Germany where he served as Secretary-General of the Zionist Organisation in Berlin before fleeing Nazi persecution in 1937. From there he settled in Palestine, becoming Executive Director of the Jewish National Fund, and consequently conducting fundraising missions in Canada and the United States. With this international experience, in 1956 Tesher joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, being posted as Consul-General in Chicago before finally transferring to Australia.

At the time of Tesher’s appointment, support for Israel had a strong bipartisan appeal in Australia, with Labor’s H.V. Evatt having been instrumental in facilitating the founding of a Jewish state via the United Nations. Menzies too had been a strong ally of Israel, particularly during the Suez Crisis of 1956.

Shortly after his arrival, Tesher gifted Menzies with his copy of Land of Israel, authored by the famed archaeologist Beno Rothenburg. The book is an artefact of a time in which Menzies’s (and therefore Australia’s) relationship with Israel really blossomed. During Tesher’s tenure Menzies attended events to celebrate Israeli National Day, and to mark numerous other special occasions for Australia’s Jewish community. However the most remarkable showing of cordiality and warmth was the ‘Menzies Forest’ campaign.

Organised by the Jewish National Fund with Tesher’s assistance, this was a campaign to plant a forest in Israel to be named after both Sir Robert and Dame Pattie. Tesher believed that the project would ‘strengthen the bond of friendship between Australia and Israel’, and that Australia would share ‘the pride in the physical regeneration of the soil of Israel’. Extensive committees were set up in both NSW and Victoria to coordinate the project, and throughout 1964 and 1965 numerous fundraising events were held.

By October 1965, the effort had come to fruition, and Menzies was gifted the ‘olive wood testimonial deed’ to the forest during an elaborate ceremony and Gala concert held at the Canberra Theatre, which between 1200-1600 people attended. The forest covered 150 acres near Bat Schlomo, and would be home to 150,000 trees. Menzies used the occasion to deliver a notable speech, in which he expressed his deep admiration for the Israeli nation building project:

‘I must say that I love the idea of the forest. It is a very happy association between Israel and Australia because a forest has a beauty, it has usefulness, it has endurance, and above all things, it expresses a spirit of continuity which to me is the most important thing in the world…

The Jewish National Fund which has been referred to, and with which there may be some here who are not familiar, has been operating, I think I am right in saying, for over sixty years – sixty-two years – and in that time it has raised vast sums of money for the express purpose of taking a country – the old Palestine – arid, eroded by wind and weather, not very fertile, full of history but not full of water – they have set out to build it, almost physically to build it.

I remember at the very beginning of 1941 being in Palestine because even at that time, as some of the older of you may recall, I was Prime Minister (Laughter, applause). In fact I was reminded as I came in tonight by a very celebrated newspaperman in Canberra that though he still cross-examines me, the first time he ever did was in Palestine at the beginning of 1941. And I was fascinated by what I saw even though so much more has been done since by hard work, by imagination, by the completely constructive ideal of nation rebuilding. And therefore, when in due course Israel was established as the independent home of the Jewish people, this was something that didn’t just start, as we might say, from scratch, but worked on a basis which had for a number of years been steadily created by the Jewish National Fund.

Now that establishment of Israel as an independent state was swiftly acknowledged, of course, and supported by Australia, but it had a world significance, a world significance that we do well to recall. And here I come for the second time to Walter Scott, for this is one of the little verses that you find in “Ivanhoe” –

“When Israel of the Lord beloved

Out of the land of bondage came,

Her father’s God before her moved

An awful Guide in smoke and flame.”

“…out of the house of bondage…” for the second conspicuous time in history, and the earlier time was long long centuries ago – for the second conspicuous time, the Jewish people, oh many scores of millions of them, came out of the house of bondage. They didn’t all go to Israel. They couldn’t all go to Israel. But the establishment of Israel as an independent State was a gesture not only on the part of those who created it, but on the part of the world, that there had come up out of the house of bondage the disabilities and persecutions of centuries that culminated in Hitler’s Germany, and are not quite extinct, I regret to say, elsewhere – those disabilities and persecutions were, in a symbolic way, brought to an end, and hence the State of Israel.

The civilised world, I like to think, saw in the establishment of that State, that State in which this great forest will grow, not only the providing of an independent home for many Jewish people but also a shining symbol of delivery from bondage, of relief from persecution, and I believe, I am sure it is true, a shining symbol of world repentance, long delayed but never too late.’