Inviting a foreign head of state to commemorate an Australian tragedy blurs citizenship, religion and geopolitics – and risks undermining social cohesion at a moment that demands unity.

The invitation extended to Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, to attend a commemoration for the victims of the Bondi massacre has struck many Australians as puzzling – and, more troublingly, divisive. At a moment that calls for national unity and shared mourning, the decision risks entangling a domestic tragedy with foreign state politics in ways that sit uneasily with Australia’s multicultural foundations.

Australia’s Jewish community, like its Muslim, Hindu, Christian and secular communities, is composed of Australians. Citizenship, not creed or ethnicity, is the organising principle of our public life. This is not merely an aspirational slogan; it is the social contract that has underpinned Australia’s cohesion and progress for decades. Against that backdrop, the official invitation of a foreign head of state to participate in a commemoration of an Australian tragedy – apparently by virtue of shared religious identity – raises a basic question: what, precisely, is being represented?

If President Herzog were to attend in a private capacity, as an individual expressing sympathy, the matter would be different. But to invite him as the president of a foreign country confers a political imprimatur that effectively places Australian Jews under the symbolic “cover” of another state. That implication is neither fair nor accurate. Australian Jews are Australians first, not proxies for a foreign government. One need only ask whether the same logic would apply elsewhere: would an Australian prime minister invite the president of a Muslim-majority country to a memorial event organised by Australian Muslims? The answer, self-evidently, is no.

This is where the decision becomes more than a diplomatic misstep; it becomes a symptom of a wider malaise. Australia has recently struggled with the conflation of religion, ethnicity and geopolitics – particularly in relation to Israel and Palestine. When state leaders blur these lines, they undermine the very principle of equal citizenship. The result is not solidarity but suspicion, not inclusion but hierarchy.

Singling out one community for exceptional treatment – however well-intentioned – invites resentment and fuels the perception that influence, rather than principle, determines public decisions. It is neither necessary nor helpful to invoke conspiratorial language to recognise a simpler truth: when governments appear to privilege the interests or symbols of a foreign state in domestic civic life, many citizens will feel sidelined. That sense of exclusion, left unaddressed, becomes the breeding ground for grievance.

History offers a sober lesson here. Social cohesion frays not only when minorities are marginalised, but also when communities are publicly framed as exceptional or separate from the civic whole. Such framing exposes them to backlash and, paradoxically, makes them less safe. Many Australian Jews understand this risk clearly, which is why Jewish Australians have been among those protesting the president’s visit – not out of hostility to remembrance, but out of concern for the health of Australia’s civic culture.

Responsibility for this moment rests squarely with political leadership. Whether the invitation stemmed from misjudgement or from intense lobbying pressure, the outcome is the same: it projects weakness and a readiness to place symbolic foreign interests above the unifying needs of the nation. A prime minister’s first duty is to safeguard the integrity of Australia’s public space, especially at times of grief.

The problem does not stand alone. It sits alongside other recent decisions that suggest a troubling double standard. When the Premier of New South Wales dismissed the invitation of Australian Palestinian academic and writer Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah to the Newcastle Writers’ Festival as “crazy,” many asked a fair question: would the same language have been used had the invitee been an Israeli-Australian writer? Such contrasts erode trust in claims of neutrality and fairness.

Australia rightly prides itself on anti-discrimination principles and a robust commitment to free expression. Those values cannot be selective. They must apply consistently, or they lose their moral force.

The commemoration of victims should unite Australians across backgrounds, beliefs and politics. Introducing foreign state symbolism into that space does the opposite. It risks deepening divisions, hardening identities, and setting precedents that will be difficult to unwind.

If Australia is serious about preserving social harmony, it must resist the temptation to conflate faith with foreign policy, community with statehood, and mourning with geopolitics. The safest, fairest course is also the simplest: treat all Australians as equal citizens, grieve together as a nation, and keep foreign state politics where they belong – outside our shared civic rituals.