The Australian government on Friday canceled the visa of Hillel Fuld, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen and prominent pro-Israel social media personality, citing national security and public order concerns stemming from his online rhetoric.
The decision, issued by the Department of Home Affairs, prompted widespread criticism, including from the International Legal Forum, an NGO and global coalition of lawyers combating terrorism and antisemitism.
Arsen Ostrovsky, the forum’s CEO, told JNS the move was “a purely political decision, acquiescing to an orchestrated campaign by radical anti-Israel groups to cancel Fuld, a decision made all the more disconcerting in the wake of an unprecedented explosion of antisemitism in Australia.”
The Department of Home Affairs cited several of Fuld’s social media posts, including one from January where he said Palestinians in Gaza should be viewed as Germans were under Nazi Germany.
Another post cited by the department as grounds for canceling Fuld’s visa said that Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, “is not a moderate. He wrote extensively denying the holocaust, he pays terrorists to kill Jews, including the terrorist who murdered my brother, and any chance to paint him as a moderate is dangerous and simply false. There is no fundamental difference between Fatah and Hamas.”
A Palestinian terrorist murdered Ari Fuld at the Gush Etzion Junction in Judea in 2018.
“They cited some pretty mainstream stuff,” Hillel Fuld told JNS about the 10-page document that the Australian government sent him, informing him that it is revoking his visa for his trip next week, where Fuld was to give talks at Jewish community events in Sydney and Melbourne. “The message is: ‘You’re a Zionist and we don’t want you here.”
The Department of Home Affairs determined that his presence in Australia “would or might be a risk to the good order of the Australian community,” especially its Islamic population, it wrote in the letter.
Since taking office in 2022, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has shifted away from the country’s traditionally pro-Israel stance. His government reversed the previous recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and has taken a more critical approach to Israel in international forums.
Following the October 2023 terrorist attacks in Israel, the Albanese administration was criticized by pro-Israel advocates for its muted response and for abstaining in a U.N. vote that condemned Israel’s military actions.
In a significant policy departure, Australia voted in favor of a U.N. General Assembly resolution in December urging Israel to end what it called its “unlawful presence” in the “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” including eastern Jerusalem. In the past, Australia typically opposed or abstained from votes containing such language. Only eight countries voted against the measure: Argentina, Hungary, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and the United States.
In December, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tied this policy shift to a surge of antisemitic incidents in Australia, the tally of which was later revealed to have quadrupled in 2024 over 2023.
Netanyahu slammed the torching of a synagogue in Melbourne in December and suggested that the antisemitic act was inextricably linked to the Labor government and Canberra’s “extreme anti-Israelism,” as he phrased it.
