Jewish influencer’s Sammy Yahood’s visa to tour Australia cancelled by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke

A Jewish social media influencer and self-defence coach who campaigns against Islam has accused Australia of tyranny and censorship after Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke cancelled his visa at short notice to stop the spread of hatred.

Sammy Yahood, a 25-year-old UK-born, London raised kickboxer now living in Israel, had been due to speak in Melbourne on Wednesday at a Young Jewish Professionals event.

But his visa was cancelled on Australia Day, just three hours before his scheduled flight to Australia from the United Arab Emirates.

“If someone wants to come to Australia they should apply for the right visa and come for the right reasons,” Mr Burke said in a statement. “Spreading hatred is not a good reason to come.”

Yahood hit back, accusing Australia of tyranny, following Labor’s recent cancellation of Israeli politicians.

“My visa was denied on false pretences, and the immigration minister has labelled me as hateful,” he told his 171,000 Instagram followers on Tuesday morning.

“This is a story about government overreaching. This is a story about tyranny, censorship and control.

“It’s 2026 and moral clarity is now hatred. This is what happens when normal individuals stop standing up for their morals, values and identity. It’s time. We cannot allow them to get away with this.

“I’m telling you now, the Australian Government, a tyranny which seems very similar to one that I know from the UK, does not know what they have started.”

Yahood’s one-night event - titled Peace Through Strength - was marketed as being about “reclaiming Jewish confidence, pride and moral clarity”.

He had also been scheduled to visit synagogues in Sydney and Melbourne, and Australian Jewish organisations, having booked his flights on December 11, three days before the Bondi massacre that killed 15 innocent people at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration.

But Yahood’s social media posts condemning fundamentalist Islam and anti-Israel protesters waving Palestinian flags appear to have counted against him.

“It’s time to ban Islam. It’s time to stop being tolerant of those that are not tolerant of us,” he told his 33,600 X followers in November.

In an August 2025 video made in London, he declared Islam was trying to take over the West and destroy free society.

“I will never submit to the will of Allah. I’m a proud Jewish man,” he said.

The Australian Jewish Association, who had booked Yahood to run a self-defence session with another synagogue, condemned the visa cancellation, arguing the Government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was displaying a pattern.

“The persistent targeting of Jewish visitors by the Albanese Government has contributed to the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia,” the group’s chief executive Robert Gregory said.

“This latest cancellation reinforces deep concerns within the Jewish community that, despite the horror of the Bondi massacre and the government’s belated apology, the Albanese Government hasn’t changed and was never genuine.”

Mr Burke has previously blocked other right-wing provocateurs with American political commentator Candace Owens barred from coming to Australia in 2024.

This occurred two years after former immigration minister Alex Hawke banned top seeded tennis champion Novak Djokovic from entering the country to play at the Australian Open for refusing to take a Covid vaccine.

But the Australian Jewish Association noted Mr Burke had also previously cancelled the visas of former Israeli justice minister Ayelet Shaked, American technology entrepreneur Hillel Fuld and Israeli Knesset member Simcha Rothman.

Mr Burke’s Labor electorate of Watson, in south-west Sydney, contains Lakemba where almost 42 per cent of residents are Muslim.

Australian Jewish groups have been split on Labor’s new hate speech laws, introduced this month in the wake of the Bondi massacre, with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry in favour but the Australian Jewish Association opposed.

Celebrity visa cancellations are nothing new with rapper Chris Brown denied entry into Australia in 2015 on character grounds following a 2009 conviction for assaulting his former girlfriend Rihanna.

The banning of prominent Jewish visitors to Australia on political grounds can be traced back to 1934 when anti-fascist Czech journalist and communist Egon Kisch was barred from entering Australia by then attorney-general Robert Menzies, on fears he would preach Marxism.