Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese of “betraying Israel” and “abandoning” Australia’s Jewish community, escalating a sharp diplomatic dispute that has been building for days between the two countries. Netanyahu said on Tuesday that history would remember Albanese “for what he is: a weak politician.”
Australia barred far-right Israeli lawmaker Simcha Rothman, a member of Netanyahu’s coalition, from entering the country on Monday, prompting Israel to retaliate by revoking the visas of Australian representatives to the Palestinian Authority, reports BBC.
Australian immigration minister Tony Burke said Netanyahu was “lashing out” in response to Canberra’s recent decision to join the UK, France and Canada in recognising a Palestinian state.
“Strength is not measured by how many people you can blow up or how many people you can leave hungry,” Burke told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Wednesday.
Albanese later told reporters he does not “take these things personally.” “I treat leaders of other countries with respect, I engage with them in a diplomatic way,” he said.
Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid condemned Netanyahu’s remarks, calling them a political “gift” to the Australian leader.
“The thing that most strengthens a leader in the democratic world today is a confrontation with Netanyahu, the most politically toxic leader in the Western world. It is unclear why Bibi is rushing to give the Prime Minister of Australia this gift,” Lapid wrote on X.
Diplomatic tensions flared on Monday after Rothman’s Australian visa was cancelled ahead of a speaking tour organised by the Australian Jewish Association (AJA). Burke said the government took “a hard line” against people seeking to “spread division.”
“If you are coming to Australia to spread a message of hate and division, we don’t want you here,” he said.
Last year, Burke also denied a visa to Israel’s former justice minister Ayelet Shaked, a right-wing politician who left parliament in 2022.
Hours after Rothman’s visa was revoked, Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar instructed the Israeli Embassy in Canberra to “carefully examine any official Australian visa application for entry to Israel.”
He later posted on X that “while antisemitism is raging in Australia, including manifestations of violence against Jews and Jewish institutions, the Australian government is choosing to fuel it.”
In recent months, Australia has reported a string of antisemitic attacks and remains home to one of the world’s largest per capita populations of Holocaust survivors.
The AJA said Rothman would still appear virtually at their event.
“The Jewish community won’t bow down to Tony Burke or [Foreign Minister] Penny Wong,” it posted on social media.
Australia’s announcement earlier this month that it would recognise a Palestinian state drew a sharp response from Israel. At the time, Albanese accused Netanyahu of being “in denial” about the humanitarian toll of the war in Gaza.
“The stopping of aid that we’ve seen and then the loss of life that we’re seeing around those aid distribution points, where people queuing for food and water are losing their lives, is just completely unacceptable,” Albanese said.
The state of Palestine is recognised by 147 of the UN’s 193 member states, and Australia’s move followed similar decisions by the UK, France and Canada.
In response, Netanyahu lashed out at the leaders of those three countries, accusing British prime minister Keir Starmer, French president Emmanuel Macron and Canadian prime minister Mark Carney of siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers.”