Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has launched an extraordinary personal attack\u00a0on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, claiming he has “betrayed” Israel.<\/p>\n
The post on social media is the latest escalation in tensions between Israel and Australia, and between the two leaders personally.<\/p>\n
“History will remember Albanese for what he is: a weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews,” Mr Netanyahu said in a post on the social media platform X.<\/p>\n
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid took a swipe at Mr Netanyahu for the personal attack.<\/p>\n
“The thing that strengthens a leader in the democratic world today most is a confrontation with Netanyahu, the most politically toxic leader in the Western world,” he posted on X.<\/p>\n
“It is unclear why Bibi is in such a hurry to give the Australian Prime Minister this gift.”<\/p>\n
The comments come after Israel’s foreign minister revoked visas for Australia’s representatives to the Palestinian Authority, in what was seen as a retaliatory move for Australia’s decision to recognise a Palestinian State.<\/p>\n
Gideon Sa’ar also cited the Australian government’s decision to cancel visas for Israeli figures wanting to travel to Australia, including far-right politician Simcha Rothman, as being “shameful” and fuelling antisemitism.<\/p>\n
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong had called Israel’s decision to cancel the visas of its representatives to the Palestinian Authority an “unjustified reaction”, and the Netanyahu government was “isolating” Israel.<\/p>\n
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), which describes itself as the peak body for the Australian-Jewish community has called for “calm heads”.<\/p>\n
“Allies with extensive economic, scientific and cultural ties should not be engaging in a diplomatic tit-for-tat that erodes the goodwill and cooperation built up over decades,” ECAJ co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said.<\/p>\n
“Calm heads need to take control of the situation otherwise there will be a risk to some $2 billion in bilateral trade, extensive investment in Australian start-ups, vital security cooperation and the Israeli-made medicine and medical technology that we all rely on.<\/p>\n
“There are real-life consequences here and we want to see the countries work through any issues before things get out of hand.”<\/p>\n
The ABC has contacted Mr Albanese’s office for comment.<\/p>\n
Mr Albanese and Mr Netanyahu spoke almost a fortnight ago, ahead of the Australian government’s announcement it would recognise a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September.<\/p>\n
Loading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has launched an extraordinary personal attack\u00a0on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, claiming he…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":158153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[65587,38602,4740,13257,441,70,18890,454,99,606,8992,50,4851,22391,80,90840,131],"class_list":{"0":"post-158152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-albanese","9":"tag-anthony-albanese","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-authority","12":"tag-federal","13":"tag-gaza","14":"tag-genocide","15":"tag-government","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-labor","18":"tag-netanyahu","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-palestine","21":"tag-palestinian","22":"tag-politics","23":"tag-statehood","24":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115054958584802346","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}