Abject Failure
Next week’s visit by Herzog, framed by the Albanese government as a mission of solidarity following the horrific Bondi terror attack in December 2025, is now increasingly viewed by analysts, community leaders and punters alike as a diplomatic misstep that will fail to achieve its stated objectives. While the official rhetoric emphasises strengthening bilateral ties, support for the Jewish community, and enhancing social cohesion, the reality on the ground suggests that the visit is instead acting as a catalyst for unprecedented domestic friction, legal challenges, and deep-seated communal anxiety. Albo really fucked it this time.
Central to the failure of this visit is the inherent paradox of attempting to foster social cohesion by introducing one of the most polarising figures in contemporary global politics into a sensitive domestic grieving process. The decision to invite a foreign head of state to provide pastoral care after a local tragedy is seen by many as a conflation of faith and foreign policy. Rather than bringing Australians together, the announcement has triggered nationwide protests, with a variety of civil society organisations mobilising thousands across major capital cities.
In Sydney, the NSW Police Commissioner was forced to invoke emergency powers and declare the visit a major event to manage the anticipated unrest. This securitised atmosphere, characterised by exclusion zones, 3,000-strong police deployments, and the threat of hefty fines for dissent, creates a climate of state-enforced order rather than organic social harmony. When a healing mission requires such massive paramilitary protection just to proceed, it has arguably already failed.
The visit also fails to deliver the promised uniform support for the Australian Jewish community, as it ignores the significant diversity of opinion within that diaspora. While organisations like the AIJAC and the Zionist Federation of Australia have welcomed the President as a source of leadership and hope, other voices, such as the Jewish Council of Australia, have condemned the visit as an act that instrumentalises Jewish grief for political ends. The current atmosphere within the Jewish community is one of exhaustion and acute anxiety. Having endured a hellish summer marked by the trauma of the Bondi massacre and a documented surge in antisemitism, many families feel the community is being used as a symbolic battleground.
The general atmosphere isn’t one of unified celebration but of apprehension; there is a tangible fear that Herzog’s presence will provoke further hostility toward Jewish Australians by reinforcing the dual allegiance trope. Many community members say they need space for quiet rehabilitation, not a high-stakes diplomatic circus that puts them back in the crosshairs of national controversy.
The planned demonstrations further complicate this dynamic. For many Jewish Australians, the sight of mass protests directed at the representative of the Jewish state so soon after a targeted antisemitic attack on home soil is deeply triggering. It creates a sense of siege, where the very act of mourning is overshadowed by geopolitical shouting matches. Conversely, for the protesters, the visit is an affront to international law, given the UN Commission of Inquiry’s 2025 findings that Herzog’s rhetoric constituted incitement to genocide. This legal shadow means the visit doesn’t strengthen ties in a traditional sense; instead, it places the Australian government in a precarious position regarding its own domestic laws. With formal requests submitted to the Australian Federal Police to investigate Herzog upon arrival, the visit has become a test of Australia’s commitment to universal jurisdiction and the Rome Statute, rather than a simple reaffirmation of a long-standing friendship.
The visit also risks undermining the long-term safety of the Jewish community by entrenching the conflation of Jewish identity with the actions of the Israeli state. Critics argue that when the Prime Minister invites the President of Israel to console Australian citizens, he implicitly suggests that their primary identity is tied to a foreign power. This doesn’t make Jews safer; as some progressive Jewish leaders have noted, it validates the rhetoric of those who target local Jewish institutions as proxies for Middle Eastern conflicts. The atmosphere is currently thick with a sense of conditional citizenship, in which the community’s right to safety is negotiated through the lens of international diplomacy rather than treated as a fundamental domestic right.
Ultimately, the visit is unlikely to achieve its purported goals because it attempts to apply a political solution to a communal trauma. The solidarity being offered is high-level and ceremonial, while the division it generates is grassroots and visceral. In the wake of the Bondi tragedy, what was required was a period of national introspection and the reinforcement of local social bonds. By bringing in a figure who carries the heavy baggage of the Gaza conflict and international legal scrutiny, the government has ensured that the next five days will be defined by barricades, legal briefs, and shouting matches in the streets. Far from a moment of leadership and hope, the Herzog visit stands to be remembered as the moment when Australia’s internal social fractures were laid bare, leaving a community already in mourning to navigate the fallout of a diplomatic mission that prioritised optics over genuine communal peace.
Yes, I’ve been very vocal against Israel’s genocide and, in fact, its actions of the last 77 years. But being the child of Holocaust survivors and an IDF soldier in the 1970s, I can understand the stress many in the Jewish community are feeling right now. I’m just grateful my father passed before all this happened and that my mother is in aged care with dementia and has no idea. I also strongly believe that much of that stress has been exacerbated by the inciteful rhetoric from media and politicians (Minns, in particular), the toxic diatribe and threats from some Jewish lobby groups, and a resentful feeling in the general community that we now have a Jewish Voice to Parliament we didn’t ask for.
Tough times ahead; just unfortunate that we don’t have the political leadership to see us through them safely.