\n Prime Minister Anthony Albanese invited Herzog to visit as a gesture of unity with Jewish Australians after 15 people were killed<\/a> at a Hanukkah festival near Sydney\u2019s Bondi Beach \u2013 the worst terror attack committed in the country.\n <\/p>\n \n In the weeks after the December 14 attack, the government has repeatedly pushed the need for social cohesion. However, Albanese\u2019s decision to invite Herzog \u2013 the head of state of a country accused of genocide in Gaza, a claim Israel\u2019s government denies \u2013 has angered many Australians and even led to calls for the visitor\u2019s arrest.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI really do understand the depth of feeling about this visit, the depth of feeling in the community about what we\u2019ve seen in Gaza over the last two years\u2026 but this visit is about a mourning Jewish community, and I would ask Australians to recall that,\u201d Foreign Minister Penny Wong told ABC Radio.\n <\/p>\n \n Like many nations across the world, Australia has experienced sharp divisions over Israel\u2019s war in Gaza that have spilled into protests \u2013 with more planned in as many as 30 cities nationwide on Monday to mark Herzog\u2019s visit.\n <\/p>\n \n The largest will be outside Sydney Town Hall, where up to 5,000 pro-Palestinian protesters are expected to gather, despite restrictions on protests in the area imposed after the Bondi massacre.\n <\/p>\n \n Police say the protesters risk arrest if they move beyond the Town Hall square. Protest organizer Josh Lees, from the Palestinian Action Group, says demonstrators will not be intimidated.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe will be there in huge numbers for a peaceful protest to say Herzog is not welcome,\u201d he said in a message posted to Instagram.\n <\/p>\n \n Major Jewish groups in Australia, including the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Australian Jewish Association, have welcomed Herzog\u2019s visit and condemned the planned protests.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cPresident Herzog is a patriot and a person of dignity and compassion and holds an office that is above party politics,\u201d said Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive ECAJ, which represents some 200 Jewish groups around the country.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cHe is a person who has sadly had to comfort families, police and first responders after terrorist attacks many times, and will know how to reassure and fortify our community in its darkest time.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n As Israel\u2019s head of state, Herzog occupies a largely ceremonial role removed from the executive decision-making led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose stated aim to destroy Hamas following the group\u2019s October 7 massacre has resulted in the deaths of over 70,000 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.\n <\/p>\n \n The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in 2024<\/a> for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Then last September, an independent UN inquiry found Netanyahu and Gallant \u2013 as well as Herzog \u2013 had \u201cincited the commission of genocide.\u201d<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n The inquiry commission pointed to comments Herzog made less than a week after Hamas militants killed and kidnapped hundreds of Israelis<\/a> on October 7, 2023. Herzog said \u201can entire nation\u201d had been responsible for the Hamas attack.\n <\/p>\n \n His words \u201cmay reasonably be interpreted as incitement to the Israeli security forces personnel to target the Palestinians in Gaza as a group as being collectively culpable,\u201d the commission found.\n <\/p>\n \n After the report\u2019s release, Herzog angrily dismissed it as suffering from a lack of legitimacy.\n <\/p>\n \n The president\u2019s office has not responded to a CNN request for comment. But Herzog has previously rejected claims he blamed all Palestinian people for the attack.\n <\/p>\n \n One of the authors of the report, UN commissioner Chris Sidoti, a former Australian human rights commissioner, says the country has a legal and moral imperative to detain Herzog on arrival, though he doesn\u2019t think it\u2019ll happen.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI feel quite confident that he would not even be attempting this trip if he had not received assurances from the Australian government that he would not be arrested,\u201d he said. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has confirmed that Herzog is protected by diplomatic immunity.\n <\/p>\n \n An Israeli official told CNN that Israel\u2019s justice ministry had assured Herzog and his delegation there was no threat of arrest, partly because it was a state visit and also because no warrants existed for anyone in their party.\n <\/p>\n \n One of Herzog\u2019s entourage, Doron Almog, chairman of the Jewish Agency, is also the subject of a formal complaint filed with the AFP by four legal groups including the Australian Centre for International Justice (ACIJ) and Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq.\n <\/p>\n \n Almog, a former general in the Israel Defense Forces, reportedly canceled a planned trip to South Africa for fear he\u2019d be arrested there by a country that took a genocide case against Israel to the International Court of Justice.\n <\/p>\n \n Unlike Herzog, Almog does not have diplomatic immunity, the lawyers said.\n <\/p>\n \n CNN has reached out to the Jewish Agency for comment.\n <\/p>\n \n In an interview with The Australian newspaper prior to his arrival, Herzog said he wanted to use the trip to confront \u201clies and false information\u201d about Israel.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s the time to get out of that brainwash campaign that has been going on within the Australian public for quite some time, both against the Jews and against Israelis.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But not all Jewish groups in Australia are poised to welcome him.\n <\/p>\n \n The Jewish Council of Australia, a progressive advocacy group, accused Albanese of using Jewish grief as a \u201cpolitical prop and diplomatic backdrop.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Hosting Herzog \u201crisks entrenching the dangerous and antisemitic conflation between Jewish identity and the actions of the Israeli state,\u201d Sarah Schwartz, the group\u2019s executive officer, said in a statement. \u201cThis does not make Jews safer. It does the opposite.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n On Monday, the group says a full-page open letter signed by \u201chundreds of Jews\u201d will be published in two major Australian newspapers to \u201csend a loud message that Herzog is not welcome here.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n After the Bondi attacks, many in the Jewish community said Albanese had not done enough to stamp out antisemitism that had worsened<\/a> since Israel sought to avenge Hamas\u2019 murderous attack.\n <\/p>\n \n In the two years to September 2025, as Netanyahu\u2019s government turned much of Gaza to rubble and the Palestinian death toll grew, Jewish groups recorded more than 3,700 \u201canti-Jewish incidents\u201d in Australia, including arson attacks on synagogues<\/a>, car fires, and antisemitic graffiti.\n <\/p>\n \n The shaken Jewish community was forced to increase its own security for fear that hatred could turn to bloodshed.\n <\/p>\n \n In the days after the Bondi Beach massacre \u2013 allegedly committed by a father and son<\/a> who had embraced Islamic State ideology \u2013 the government announced sweeping new gun laws<\/a>, tougher rules on hate speech, and stronger powers for the home affairs minister to cancel visas on character grounds.\n <\/p>\n \n As his political opponents demanded he recall parliament and hold a special federal investigation into the attacks, Albanese asked Australia\u2019s governor-general to formally invite to Herzog to the country.\n <\/p>\n \n Just over a month later, police spent this weekend in talks with the Sydney-based Palestinian Action Group to try to convince it to accept a compromise protest location, away from the Town Hall.\n <\/p>\n \n Sidoti, the UN commissioner, said the Australian government had made a \u201ctragic mistake\u201d by inviting Herzog to the country at a time of deep division.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThis mistake should have been corrected weeks ago. It\u2019s still not too late to correct it, but it\u2019s increasingly unlikely with every hour that passes, and that\u2019s a grave pity,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThis is a visit that will have serious consequences for social cohesion in Australia.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brisbane \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Israeli President Isaac Herzog will get two very different receptions when he arrives in Australia on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-465916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Israel's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/ap26028571020588.jpg\")
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