Opinion
With the sound and fury that already is accompanying the visit to Australia by Isaac Herzog, we should know who he is. But, first, who he is not.
Herzog is the president of Israel, not the prime minister. So he’s the head of state, not the head of government. His position is mostly symbolic and constitutional, not substantive or executive. He formerly led Israel’s Labor Party, so he was no friend of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.
In his current apolitical post, he’s supposed to represent all Israelis, not a political party. He’s elected in a secret ballot by all members of parliament, the Knesset, and he is not appointed by the prime minister.
If he has any power, the president has the “soft power” of symbolising a nation rather than ruling it. He does have one rather pointed power, however. The power to grant pardons to criminals. This makes him of special interest to Netanyahu.
Bibi, as Netanyahu commonly is known, is on trial over three distinct cases before the Israeli courts, charged with fraud, breach of trust and receiving bribes. Even as he serves as prime minister.
In November, Netanyahu appealed to Herzog for a pardon. And how’s this for chutzpah? He asked for a pre-emptive pardon, before he’s forced to give testimony in court. He wants impunity for breaking the law and immunity for even having to explain himself.
US President Donald Trump blundered into the middle of this delicate matter to tell Herzog publicly that he should agree to pardon Netanyahu. Herzog has been scrupulously non-committal and has said only that he’ll give the request careful consideration.
Another part of an Israeli president’s job is to cultivate the country’s ties with Jewish people everywhere. Which brings him to Australia. The first wrenching news of the Bondi terrorist murders made his heart miss a beat, he says: “I’m coming to visit and see my brothers and sisters of the Jewish communities in Australia to express our bond, our connection, our love, our affection, our condolences and I think it is something which is very important to a community which has been harassed and devastated by this terrible, terrible attack and by the ongoing onslaught of antisemitism against the community all over Australia,” he says in an interview with my colleague Matthew Knott and me.
And he wants to take the opportunity to explain Israel’s position and “upgrade the relations to where it should be” between two democratic nations. “The Australian people are incredible friends. We co-operate with them in so many fields of doing good. We can contribute together to the world positively from climate to water to agriculture to science, so let’s do that together.”
He points out that Australia was present at the creation of Israel both on the battlefield and in the UN: “Little do Australians remember but Australians who liberated our land in 1917 and liberated Beersheba, Abraham’s city, and our forefather. And it, I think it was almost a God-given moment in history. And later, Australia was the first nation to recognise the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine of those days in 1947.”
He pays tribute to “the legendary” Australian Labor external affairs minister, Doc Evatt, whose work at the UN helped midwife the Jewish state.
Herzog has many friends and connections in Australia, including a long-standing relationship with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. When he was in politics, Herzog chaired the Israel-Australia Parliamentary Friendship Group. It’s partly a family affair. His visit, which starts in Sydney on Monday, will be the fourth state visit by an Israeli president.
The first was by his father, Chaim, 40 years ago. “Then-prime minister Bob Hawke and the governor-general [Sir Ninian Stephen] hosted him and my mother beautifully,” Herzog says, “and I hope to revisit that experience.”
But Herzog knows this visit will be very different. There were protests in 1986, “but very little compared with what goes on now”, says Mark Leibler, former chair of the Zionist Federation of Australia, who was present and involved with the 1986 visit, “when you look at these demented non-stop marches”.
But there is so much to protest against. When Hamas launched its barbaric savagery against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, it was impossible for civilised, fair-minded societies not to sympathise with Israeli victims. Twenty months later, it was impossible for civilised, fair-minded societies not to sympathise with Palestinian victims of Netanyahu’s atrocities.
No one could fault him for launching a retaliatory war against Hamas. But the recklessness of his tactics dismayed countries around the world. And Netanyahu’s wilful blindness to its starving of Palestinian children proved to be the last straw for many. Even Trump openly contradicted Netanyahu last year by calling it real starvation: “You can’t fake that,” said the US president. Australia joined France, Britain and Canada in announcing their intention to recognise a Palestinian state.
When we ask Herzog about the conduct of the war in Gaza, we want to know whether he thought Netanyahu could have better protected civilian life and, in the process, preserved some of the global goodwill that Israel had enjoyed after the Hamas attack. Herzog justifies Netanyahu’s strategy.
To undermine Hamas’ military capability, “you go into a civilian terrain because the whole infrastructure of Hamas is based on civilian terrain, and you find long-range missiles in people’s bedrooms and living rooms, literally. And you find them in mosques and shops and in schools. You find terror equipment, RPGs, bombs, missiles, rockets, the whole thing, literally. So you have to go in physically to take them. And sometimes it’s painful. It is painful, and we tried our best. We alert in advance, we send messages, we send text messages, we tell people to get out so that we can finally clear up the place.”
He declined to express the least reservation about Netanyahu’s war. And his punchline: “Let’s not be naive. Had any Australian been attacked like that in Australia, you would act the same.” Overall, “I’m very proud of the way my nation has gone through the worst atrocity in its history since the Holocaust.”
He does address the specific complaints against Herzog himself. He acknowledges that it was “lacking taste” and “an error” to sign a smokescreen shell. He denies ever intentionally trying to hold all Palestinians collectively responsible for the Hamas attack: “I made an explicit comment that there are many innocent Palestinians and this, of course, is not mentioned by those criticisers,” such as human rights lawyer Chris Sidoti, who made the absurd proposal that Australia, having invited Herzog on a state visit, should handcuff him the moment he arrives. Foreign policy as farce. “And,” adds Herzog, “I was involved in procuring a lot of the humanitarian aid to Gaza.”
Yet, if Herzog is defending Netanyahu’s wanton way of war, why shouldn’t Australians protest against his visit? Peaceful protest is not only legal, it’s a fundamental part of free societies.
Here’s why protest should be set aside at this moment. Because Herzog’s visit confronts Australians with a choice. We can choose to see his presence as a good-faith act of mourning and consolation, connection between the Jewish state and Australian Jews.
Jewish Australians, a tiny and vulnerable minority, are frightened and frustrated. Frightened by the virility and violence of the Jew-hate directed against them for no fault of their own. Frustrated at the unique unfairness that they are held somehow responsible for the decisions of a foreign government. No other people is held to this standard.
If the Herzog visit gives them some measure of comfort, why not allow our fellow citizens this moment of solace, untroubled by noisy protest? A minority of Jewish Australians, notably the progressive Jewish Council of Australia, wishes he weren’t coming, fearing the divisiveness that will ensue. But that’s not an option. He’s here, invited by the prime minister and the governor-general, and welcomed by the opposition leader in a bipartisan embrace.
Or we can choose to see Herzog’s visit as an opportunity for futile fury against a faraway power. It’s a selective moral outrage, of course. Where are the protests against the Iranian dictatorship’s murder of tens of thousands of anti-regime demonstrators in the past few weeks? Which campuses are convulsed with outrage as the ayatollahs relegate women and girls to second-class status and send protesters to torture chambers and mass graves? Nowhere, and none. There’s only silence.
Most Australians, as pollster Jim Reed attests based on his research with Resolve Strategic for this masthead, “weren’t taking sides” in the Gaza war, “did not want to take sides, and actually had a mildly positive to sympathetic view of Israel overall”.
The protesters who turn out against Herzog are not representing the Australian mainstream. And they’re not representing the vital Australian value of respect for their fellow Australians in a moment of mourning.
This is a test for Australian maturity and unity. We can choose to make our country better by helping heal a wound imposed by violent terrorists. Or we can give the terrorists exactly what they sought to achieve by their calculated mass murder on Bondi Beach. A protest against Herzog cannot make the least difference to even a single Palestinian in Gaza. But it can continue the roiling division inside Australia, pitting Australian against Australian.
Because the Bondi attackers murdered Jewish Australians, but their true target was Australia itself.
Peter Hartcher is political and international editor.
Peter Hartcher is political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.