Rallying for Belonging
After Herzog’s Visit, Australia Confronts a Deeper Question: Who Gets to Belong?
In Melbourne’s late summer light, something shifted. What was meant to be a gesture of solidarity became a national reckoning about belonging.
When Israeli President Isaac Herzog concluded his Australian visit by telling pro-Palestinian demonstrators to “go protest in front of the Iranian embassy,” it landed with a thud far louder than the applause inside the room. The remark was framed as a rebuke to Tehran’s repression and regional meddling. Yet on Australian soil, in a country that prides itself on the ‘fair go’ and a hard-won multicultural compact, it was heard as something else: a suggestion that thousands of Australian citizens raising their voices on Gaza somehow belonged elsewhere.
Across the country, the numbers told their own story. In Melbourne, police estimated about 10,000 people marched from Flinders Street to Parliament House, while organisers claimed as many as 30,000. In Sydney, thousands gathered at Town Hall; 27 arrests followed clashes that Human Rights Watch later criticised as potentially excessive force. Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Canberra and Darwin all saw rallies ranging from hundreds to thousands. Reuters and the ABC described a nationwide day of action. This was not fringe theatre. It was civic mobilisation on a scale that demands political literacy, not dismissal.
The protests were driven by horror at Gaza’s civilian toll and by allegations—including those aired before international bodies—that Israeli conduct may breach international humanitarian law. Protesters cited findings of a United Nations Commission of Inquiry; Israel has rejected claims of genocide as false and defamatory. Whatever one’s view, the Australian streets reflected a global moral rupture. Repeated national surveys over the past decade indicate Australians increasingly expect their foreign policy to reflect commitments to international law and universal human rights.
When that moral language collides with a close partner’s conduct, tensions surface at home. But this moment is not only about the Middle East. It is about Australia.
The Scanlon Foundation’s 2024 Mapping Social Cohesion report found that 85 per cent of Australians believe multiculturalism has been good for the country, and 82 per cent see migrants as good for the economy. Yet the same report warned that social cohesion is under pressure from cost-of-living stress and global conflict. The Australian Human Rights Commission’s ‘Seen and Heard’ consultations documented rising Islamophobia, antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism after October 2023, alongside deep feelings of being ‘othered’.
This trend was starkly reflected in reporting from the Islamophobia Register Australia, which recorded a 740% increase in incidents following the Bondi attack—a spike that, as Aftab Malik observed in the Guardian, left many Muslim communities feeling newly exposed and unsafe.
In that context, telling Australian protesters to take their grievances to a foreign embassy risks activating an old anxiety: dual loyalty. For Muslims and Australians, more than a million citizens and residents woven into the national fabric, the insinuation that dissent on foreign policy equals foreign allegiance cuts deep. Political theorists call this ‘othering’: the subtle demotion of a group from full civic membership. It need not be explicit to wound.
Australia has walked this tightrope before. After 9/11, Muslim communities bore suspicion that lingered long after the smoke cleared. During past Middle East crises, Jewish Australians have endured spikes in antisemitic abuse. In Europe and North America, diaspora politics around Israel-Palestine have similarly tested social cohesion. Democracies that blur the line between criticism of a government and hostility to the people pay a steep price.
None of this negates the trauma that prompted Herzog’s invitation. The Bondi Beach terror attack in December 2025, which killed 15 people, shocked the nation and rightly drew condemnation of antisemitism. Solidarity with Jewish Australians was—and remains—essential. The mistake is assuming that solidarity with one community requires the marginalisation of another. Social cohesion is not a zero-sum game.
If anything, the protests demonstrated the opposite. Many rallies explicitly rejected antisemitism while demanding accountability for Palestinian suffering. Placards calling for a ceasefire sat alongside statements affirming Jewish safety. This is messy, pluralist democracy at work. It is loud. It is uncomfortable. It is profoundly Australian.
The policing in Sydney, where footage showed officers dragging men who had paused to pray, complicated matters further. Human Rights Watch and community leaders questioned whether force was proportionate. When prayer becomes a flashpoint, trust frays. A society confident in its values should be able to distinguish between peaceful religious observance and genuine threats to order.
There is a foreign-policy lesson here, too. Australia’s credibility in the Indo-Pacific rests partly on its claim to champion a rules-based order. That credibility depends not only on positions taken in New York or The Hague, but on how debates are handled at home. If diaspora communities feel silenced or scapegoated, adversaries will exploit that fracture. Resilience begins in the suburbs of Melbourne and the streets of Western Sydney.
What would a wiser path look like? Start with honesty: criticising a foreign government is not disloyalty, and standing against antisemitism does not mean endorsing every Israeli policy—leaders must say that clearly and often. Add balance: engaging Israeli officials should never exclude Palestinian voices or multilateral partners; a confident middle power can walk and chew gum at the same time.
And back it with action: as the Human Rights Commission urges and Scanlon data confirms, social cohesion needs real investment—in education, dialogue and culturally aware policing—because unity at home is strategic strength abroad.
Australia’s multiculturalism has always been pragmatic rather than romantic—a bargain struck across difference. It survived the end of White Australia, the turbulence of the war on terror, and the pandemic’s border closures. It can survive this too. But only if the reflex to others is resisted, and the instinct to listen is strengthened.
In the end, the question is not whether protesters should have stood outside an embassy elsewhere. It is whether, on Australian soil, citizens of every heritage are permitted to stand, speak and belong without their loyalty being questioned.
That answer will shape not just social harmony, but Australia’s standing in a fractured world.
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