The Guardian newspaper published a report by its foreign and defense correspondent Daniel Hirst, titled "An American group launches a campaign against Australia for retracting recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," in which it stated that a pro-Israel group based in the United States is conducting a campaign against the Australian government's decision to cancel the recognition of occupied Jerusalem as the capital of the occupying Israeli state.

The campaign sparked accusations that the organization, headquartered in Los Angeles, was “trying to deceive the Australian government into believing that the only way to support Israel is to follow Trump’s policies.”

The StandWithUs organization published a half-page advertisement in the Weekend Australian magazine claiming that “Jerusalem was originally the capital of the Jewish people.”

The organization urged readers to send an email to the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and the Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, via a form, to urge them to reconsider “their unjustified and poorly implemented decision to reverse the Australian government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

Roz Rothstein, co-founder and CEO of StandWithUs, said the organization had run programs in Australia for more than a decade but now plans to officially open an Australian office, just as they recently opened their new offices in South Africa and the Netherlands.”

The StandWithUs website, founded in 2001, states that its goals are “to defend Israel” and combat anti-Semitism. But Rothstein faced criticism in the past for urging Israel supporters to back their government's policies. She was quoted in 2011 as saying that supporting Israel means “respecting the democratically elected government of Israel.”

The campaign sparked accusations that the organization, headquartered in Los Angeles, was “trying to deceive the Australian government into believing that the only way to support Israel is to follow Trump’s policies.”

The StandWithUs campaign has drawn criticism from the Australia New Israel Fund, which promotes the vision of Israel as a homeland for Jews and a democracy for all its citizens.

Liam Geteru, the executive director of the New Israel Fund in Australia, said: “StandWithUs is trying to deceive the Australian government into believing that the only way to support Israel is to follow Trump’s policy.”

Geteru explained that there is “a reason why no country recognized Israel’s effective annexation of united Jerusalem in 1967 and that only three countries followed Trump’s embassy move in 2017 – it is just a bad foreign policy.”

This comes following the Australian Cabinet's decision about two weeks after the cancellation of the former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s 2018 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The Australian Advocacy Network for Palestine previously welcomed the Australian government’s decision, considering Morrison’s 2018 stance “a flawed political trick” and “should not have happened in the first place.”

Conversely, The Guardian pointed out that Assistant Foreign Minister Tim Watts said in a speech he delivered before the Zionist Federation in Australia last Saturday that Australia’s commitment to Israel “has never wavered.”

It mentioned that Jeremy Leibler, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, thanked Watts for “taking the time to honestly listen to our concerns” but confirmed that the Australian Jewish community was “deeply disappointed by the reversal of the Australian government’s policy.”