PAST CAMPAIGNS GIVE HEART TO HOCKEY
Malcolm Brown
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
-campaigns-give-heart-to-hockey/2007/06/29/1182624 165403.html
June 30 2007
JOE HOCKEY, defending the Federal Government’s workplace relations
policy and campaigning to hold his North Sydney seat, will be looking
further back this weekend: to his Palestinian roots and the charge
of the Australian Light Horse 90 years ago.
The charge by the 4th Light Horse Brigade on October 31, 1917, took
the Turkish defenders by surprise and took the town, capturing the
all important wells and breaking the Turkish defensive line from Gaza.
The attack led to the capture more than 730 Turks, for the loss of
31 killed and 38 wounded. It was to go down as one of the landmark
events of Australian military history.
Mr Hockey, accompanied by his two-year-old son, Xavier, will be a
special guest at the Reserve Forces Day parade tomorrow, which will
commemorate the victory.
The parade will feature 90 horses and standards flown by the 15
regiments that served in World War I.
Mr Hockey said: "My roots lie in that part of the world. My
grandfather, Joseph Hokeidonian, an Armenian, was sent by the Catholic
Church in Jerusalem to go to Palestine as a spy."
Grandfather Hokeidonian appears to have performed his duties well,
though his war service cost him an eye. After hostilities ended he
became deputy town clerk of Beersheba and helped to rebuild the city.
Mr Hockey’s father, Richard, was born in Bethlehem in 1927. But Joseph
disappeared afterwards. He was apparently hit by a car in Egypt.
After serving in the British Army in World War II, Richard migrated
to Australia in 1948, where he married an Australian, Beverley,
and had four children, the youngest, Joseph, born in 1965.
Mr Hockey has visited Beersheba and the Middle East numerous times,
the last being in 1998 when he took his father on a parliamentary
delegation.
There are other links between Beersheba and the North Sydney
electorate. In World War I the Liberal member for North Sydney,
Sir Granville Ryrie, who had served in the Boer War, volunteered for
service as commander of the 2nd Light Horse.
With a horse presented to him by his North Sydney constituents, he
went on to serve at Gallipoli and in the Middle East and took part
in fighting that led to the capture of Jerusalem.
The victory at Beersheba signalled the beginning of the end for the
800-year Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, an event not missed by
Australia’s Jewish community.
The Melbourne-based Pratt Foundation has helped fund a memorial park
in Beersheba, which will feature a sculpture by Australian artist
Peter Corlette of a charging Australian light-horseman.
Sam Lipski, the foundation’s executive director, said he had been
inspired to establish the park because there was nothing else, other
than a war graves cemetery, to mark the extraordinary feat of arms
by Australia, which had such big repercussions for the future state
of Israel.
The park, representing total investment of about $2 million, has been
established in
co-operation with the city of Beersheba, the United Israel Appeal and
some charitable foundations. To be known as the Park of the Australian
Soldier, it will be opened on April 28.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
