By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, JNS
Once a staunch ally of Israel and a democratic light in the Southern Hemisphere, the country has tragically devolved into a sewer of Jew-hatred.
President Donald Trump,
As a rabbi who has long admired your bold defense of the Jewish people and the State of Israel, I write to you now with urgent moral concern. I implore you to take the extraordinary but necessary step of publicly calling for a ban on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese from entering the United States of America. This would serve as a powerful signal that the United States, under your leadership and the leadership of moral nations, will grant no quarter to heads of state who tolerate, excuse or enable the modern-day bloodletting of the Jewish people.
Australia, once a staunch ally of Israel and a democratic light in the Southern Hemisphere, has tragically devolved into a sewer of Jew-hatred. What was once the home of a proud Jewish community, and where my wife, Debbie, was born and raised, has become a nation in which Jews fear wearing kippot in public, synagogues are defaced and burned, and Jewish students are harassed on university campuses simply for being Jewish and Israel.
But the rot goes deeper than societal antisemitism. It is now firmly embedded in the Australian government itself.
Under Albanese, Australia has witnessed not only a surge in antisemitic incidents but a staggering moral collapse in the face of atrocities committed against Jews by Hamas. Since Oct. 7, 2023, when more than 1,200 people in Israel were butchered by terrorists—burned alive, raped and mutilated in the most grotesque pogrom since the Holocaust—Australia’s response has ranged from tepid to disgraceful.
Rather than standing with Israel in its darkest hour, Albanese’s government has embraced a shameful moral equivalence. His administration has condemned Israel’s self-defense in Gaza while remaining disgracefully muted about the barbarity of Hamas. Even worse, Australia has joined the chorus of nations at the United Nations that sought to isolate and demonize Israel for defending its people.
Let's be clear: This is not diplomacy, it is complicity.
When a national leader fails to denounce the slaughter of Jews with clarity and conviction, and instead panders to those who justify terrorism, he becomes morally culpable. When the prime minister of Australia refuses to treat Hamas as the genocidal death cult it is, he dishonors the memory of the victims and emboldens the next massacre.
Mr. President, you have never been afraid to speak truth to power. You were the first U.S. president to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, to move the embassy there, and to push back against the institutional antisemitism that has infected bodies like the U.N. Human Rights Council. Your voice on behalf of the Jewish people has been unwavering, even when it was politically inconvenient.
That is why I urge you now: Use that voice once more.
Call for the United States to place Albanese on a list of foreign officials barred from entry. Such a move would not be without precedent. America has previously denied entry to foreign leaders and officials responsible for human rights abuses or inciting violence. Albanese’s betrayal of democratic values and Jewish safety places him squarely in this category.
This is not merely about punishing a weak and morally compromised leader. It is about sending a message to the world: America stands with the Jewish people—not just in word, but in deed. America does not do business as usual with those who look away as Jewish blood is spilled.
Albanese has repeatedly failed the test of moral leadership. Since the rise in antisemitic violence across Australia—swastikas on Jewish homes, violent protests outside synagogues, anti-Israel mobs terrorizing Jewish neighborhoods—his government has responded with platitudes, not policy. He has not fortified protections for Jewish Australians. He has not cracked down on hate preachers who incite violence. And he has done precious little to stem the tide of anti-Zionist hatred on university campuses, where Jewish students are routinely targeted.
Worse still, his government has supported international resolutions that cast Israel as a pariah state while turning a blind eye to Hamas’s war crimes. To what moral depths must a leader fall before we say enough?
I have warned in my writings that Australia—a country I love and where I was a founder of the Rabbinical College of Sydney in 1986—has become a cesspit of antisemitism. This is not hyperbole. It is a tragic reality. Jewish Australians now live in fear. Many are considering emigration. Synagogues require small armies of security guards. Children are being taught to conceal their identities. This is not the Australia I once knew. It is a nation in moral crisis.
President Trump, you have always understood that such hatred does not arise in a vacuum. It thrives when people say nothing and metastasizes when leaders excuse it. And it reaches lethal proportions when nations normalize those who enable it.
History is watching. The Jewish people are watching. And your millions of supporters, who care deeply about the safety of Jews worldwide, are watching.
Silence is complicity. Action is justice.
