Extract from ABC News
Analysis
Isaac Herzog was invited by the governor-general at the request of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, following the Bondi terror attack targeting Jewish Australians. (Reuters: Alastair Grant)
Anthony Albanese has long grounded his approach to the fraught issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the belief that the principal desire of the overwhelming number of Australian voters is that those tensions should not be brought here.
The Hamas terrorists who led a terrifying and horrific attack on Israelis on October 7, 2023, that killed more than 1,200 people, and the subsequent actions of the Israeli government in presiding over a retaliatory action which killed more than 70,000 people, shattered the idea that Australia could simply keep the tensions away.
The trauma felt by both the Jewish and Palestinian — and wider Muslim — communities made that impossible.
The actions of two radicalised gunmen — who slaughtered 15 people and injured 40 others attending a Jewish festival on December 14 at Australia's most iconic beach — literally brought those tensions home.
It was Australia's worst terrorist incident. But it was also one that has been politicised to stratospheric levels from the start.
Even before families were able to bury their dead, the weaponising of the attack in the political realm was unprecedented.
The invitation to Isaac Herzog was issued by the governor-general at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's request. (ABC News: Tristan Hooft)
A representative of Israel
A prime minister who was clearly flailing to find a way through the anger and recriminations decided to invite Israeli President Isaac Herzog to visit Australia in support of the Jewish community here.
But the Israeli president's visit in the next few days has now not only crystallised the divisions in the community. Very unfortunately, it has also represented a direct link between events that, until now, there have been considerable efforts to keep separate in the wake of Bondi.
That is, it has linked Israel's actions in Gaza to the antisemitic killings in Bondi.
That is both because of Herzog's own contentious history, and because he is the highest possible representative of Israel.
Opponents of his visit point to the fact that there is a genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, and that a UN Commission of Inquiry last year named Herzog as one of several senior Israeli figures who "incited the commission of genocide".
It did say, however, that Herzog — who is outside the political or military chain of command — was not responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity.
The inquiry quoted the president as saying in October 2023 that it was "an entire nation out there that is responsible", a quote which Herzog has denied, saying the comments were taken out of context.
Australian Chris Sidoti was a member of the Commission of Inquiry. He argued this week the invitation to the president should be withdrawn and asked: "What was the prime minister thinking when he invited Herzog?"
"In the days after the massacre, he no doubt thought inviting Herzog was a good way to express support for the traumatised Jewish community. But Herzog is a political leader, not a religious leader," Sidoti said.
"He is divisive in Israel and his visit could be divisive in Australia. If the prime minister wanted to support the Jewish community, he would have done better to invite a respected Jewish religious leader."
Protests against Israeli President Isaac Herzog's upcoming visit to Australia have been held. (AAP: Callum Godde)
A tragedy in Bondi
The people killed at Bondi that afternoon were killed because they were Jewish and, as many observed at the time, were just living their lives in Australia removed from the troubles in the Middle East, not responsible for them.
They did not deserve to be the targets of radicalised hatred.
But an uncomfortable question still to be answered has always been the extent to which the motivation for that hatred was in any way a response to the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza after October 7.
Those questions have all come to the forefront of the conversation in anticipation of the president's visit.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong this week urged critics of the visit to consider the context of the trip, insisting Jewish leaders had urged the government to issue an invitation.
And that's where it gets complicated. Not all Jewish Australians want Herzog to come.
On January 28, the Jewish Council of Australia issued a statement expressing "outrage that the Albanese government would fuel the flames of division by inviting Herzog to visit Australia" warning that his trip is "completely inappropriate and offensive and will rightly spark mass protests".
"Inviting a foreign head of state who is implicated in an ongoing genocide as a representative of the Jewish community is deeply offensive and risks entrenching the dangerous and antisemitic conflation between Jewish identity and the actions of the Israeli state," said the council's executive officer Sarah Schwartz.
"This does not make Jews safer. It does the opposite."
The council takes a very different view of things to the dominant arguments put by the more powerful groups in the Jewish lobby like the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
The JCA has been dismissed as tiny, or an "extreme left-wing fringe" of the community.
Global coverage of divides
The differences in views within the community have gone international.
The headline on the lead story on the Israeli website Haaretz on Friday was "When Israel's Opposition Leader calls Australian Jews 'Hamas Lackeys'".
The article, by journalist David Issacharoff, perhaps did not lead where the headline might have suggested.
It reported on a post on X by Israel's leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, which was attacking the Jewish Council of Australia as "lackeys of Hamas" and of "radical Islam", while accusing it of hoping others "will forget that you are Jews".
"The antisemites will gladly use you, but they think about you exactly what we think about you: that you're useful idiots," Lapid wrote.
But Issacharoff's argument was not in support of Lapid but that in "choosing to adopt far-right language to attack progressive Jews in the diaspora", Lapid was actually bolstering "narratives that do the opposite of protecting Jews".
The journalist wrote that "singling out Jews who voice legitimate criticism of Israel as "Hamas lackeys" and "useful idiots" supposedly trying to conceal their identity directly bolsters antisemitic narratives portraying Jews as traitors and agitators.
"These Jews, who are voicing a different moral stance and refuse to remain silent, may in fact be saving face for many other Jews and Israelis, showing that they are not all conflated with Israel and its ultranationalist and openly racist government."
The reason why it's worth quoting the Haaretz article is that it shows, despite all the trauma in Israel, there is still some tolerance for a white-hot debate in that country about the actions of its government.
On January 28, the Jewish Council of Australia issued a statement expressing "outrage that the Albanese government would fuel the flames of division by inviting Herzog to visit Australia". (Reuters: Flavio Brancaleone)
Politicians reluctant to wade in
Politicians in Australia — on the other side of the world — are generally much more reluctant to wade in.
Some sections of the Jewish community here have successfully argued since 2023 that there is no difference between anti-Zionism, or even just objections to particular acts of the Israeli government, and antisemitism.
This was a major pressure point in the report of the antisemitism envoy last year, which recommended the use of the "International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism including its illustrative examples, as best practice for identifying antisemitism".
The examples attached to that definition "might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic".
Linking criticisms of Israel with antisemitism is that — just as all Muslim Australians were for too long tarred with the brush of extremist terrorism — Jewish Australians are now finding themselves linked to the actions of the Netanyahu government, whether they agree with them or not.
Already, there have been severe constraints put on those wishing to protest Herzog's presence in Australia.
But the controversy that has erupted over Herzog's visit points to wider and deeper challenges for our political leaders.
Only five months ago, Australia joined a raft of nations recognising the state of Palestine at the United Nations.
Much has changed in the Middle East since then.
Perceptions among analysts in the in the region have shifted from Iran being the greatest threat to stability to one where that role is now being played by Israel.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah are much lesser threats to Israel than they once were.
The killing of Palestinians by the IDF in Gaza has continued. Israel continues to occupy around half of Gaza. Its aggressive and often violent expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank continues.
These power shifts raise profoundly difficult foreign policy questions for the world, including countries like Australia, which might like to think of themselves as a world away.
Unravelling the threads of antisemitism and anti-Israeli sentiment will require both more political courage and more community tolerance than we have seen to date.
Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.
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