MENACHEM VORCHHEIMER: Isaac Herzog can do for Australian Jews what Albanese has failed to do

The visit of Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, matters to Australia’s Jewish community because, painfully, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese cannot help us heal.

Not because healing is impossible, but because Mr Albanese and his Government chose, for 28 months, not to hear us. Not to protect us. Not to stand with us. And not to confront the extremist Islamic ideology that ultimately spilled Jewish blood on Bondi Beach.

The Jewish community is grieving two losses.

The first is obvious and unbearable: the Bondi Chanukah massacre of 14 December 2025, where 15 people — including 10-year-old Matilda — were murdered and dozens more were shot while Jews gathered publicly, peacefully, to celebrate a festival of light.

The second loss is quieter, but just as devastating: the realisation that our own Government does not have our backs — and that many of our political leaders sided instead with voices that deny Jews the right to exist as a people at all.

I am an Australian-born Jew. Eighth generation. My maternal grandfather was a Rat of Tobruk. My paternal grandfather was a German Jew who survived the Holocaust, as did my father. I am not an Israeli citizen. I never served in the Israeli army. But Israel is central to who I am, as it is for Jews everywhere.

In every synagogue in Australia, prayers are directed toward Jerusalem — the site of the First and Second Jewish Temples — because the Jewish connection to the land of Israel is not political, not modern, not optional. It is more than 3000 years old, recognised in international law, and grounded in the universal right of self-determination.

That right has been openly rejected — loudly, repeatedly — by the very movements and figures this Government chose to appease.

Since October 7, 2023 — the largest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust — Australian Jews have lived under constant intimidation, hatred and fear. Yet we were never given permission to grieve.

On October 9, 2023, when the Sydney Opera House sails were lit in memory of the murdered, Jews were told to stay home. Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel mobs had already claimed the streets. These crowds were not responding to Israeli military action in Gaza; they were reacting to (and in many cases celebrating) the massacre of Jews on October 7.

“Gas the Jews.”

“Fuck the Jews.”

“Where are the Jews.”

These chants were not about Israel. They were about us, Jews.

Some of the same voices had already been legitimised by the Government. Sheikh Ibrahim Dadoun, who praised the October 7 massacre as “a day of pride” and “victory,” had previously stood alongside Anthony Albanese at a National Iftar Dinner. In Greenacre, in Sydney’s West, fireworks were lit, sweets were handed out, all while Jewish blood was still wet.

At the same time, radical Islamic preacher Wissam Haddad was broadcasting sermons dehumanising Jews. Nothing was done. Instead, millions in government grants, under the banner of “social cohesion”, flowed to organisations associated with Muslim leaders who glorified or excused this hatred.

Then came the warning that should have changed everything.

On December 6 2024, the Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue was attacked in a terrorist incident later attributed to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Prime Minister went to Perth to play tennis. He visited five days later. Jews understood the message.

A year later, on December 14 2025, the worst fear of the Jewish community was realised.

The alleged Bondi terrorists were radicalised here. They trained here. They bought their weapons here. Australian authorities have acknowledged this. One was a follower of Wissam Haddad. And yet, not a single Islamic extremist leader has been arrested or charged for radicalising the men who murdered Jews in Australia.

That failure matters.

Because the loudest voices opposing Isaac Herzog’s visit are not peace activists. They are not critics of Israeli policy. They are anti-Israel ideologues who deny Jews the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland.

The belief that Jews alone do not deserve a nation, safety, or sovereignty is not abstract. It is the same worldview that justified murder at Bondi.

While the killers pulled the triggers, they did not invent the moral climate that animated them. That climate was cultivated here, in Australia — through rhetoric that called Jews nazis, baby-killers, colonisers, terrorists. Through chants of “from the river to the sea”, “all Zionists are terrorists” and “globalise the intifada”. Through silence, indulgence, and appeasement by those in power.

This is why Isaac Herzog matters.

He is not a politician. He does not command armies or pass laws. Like a governor-general or a monarch, he is a symbol — of Jewish survival, continuity, and the other side of that coin, shared grief. He understands something this Government does not: that when hatred is left unchecked, it always turns violent. Jews learned that lesson long ago.

Many Jewish Australians no longer feel safe. Many do not trust their Prime Minister. Many believe — rightly or wrongly — that Jewish lives were traded for votes, and that Bondi was the consequence.

Isaac Herzog cannot undo that pain. But he can do something Australia’s leaders have not.

He can see our pain. He can stand with us. And he can allow a shattered community who have not been allowed to mourn since October 7 2023 finally, the space to grieve.

To deny his visit is to deny Jews that right yet again.

Menachem Vorchheimer is a Melbourne businessman and Jewish community advocate