It’s High Time to Expel the Israeli Ambassador to Australia

Calls to expel Israeli ambassador to Australia Hillel Newman are again rising. This is in relation to his recent comments around the Israeli Defence Force having absolved itself of the murder of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom, along with his pompous op-ed suggesting “Jew-hatred” is out of control locally and his denials of the claims of Australian women alleging sexual assault at IDF hands.

Foreign minister Penny Wong announced on 20 August 2026 that Israel had announced it would not be prosecuting IDF personnel over Frankcom’s 2024 death or that of the rest of her World Central Kitchen convoy, killed alongside her. Wong deemed this “outrageous”, which is a strong word to use against Israel. Newman, however, then appeared to urinate all over local sensibilities.

Before the press, the ambassador threw his support behind the IDF findings, suggesting that the military had considered the convoy Hamas. He fell short of any apology, and instead, absolved Israel of any “criminal responsibility”. And on being questioned as to whether this would sully Israel’s reputation, the official then launched into a diatribe about the many of “haters of Israel” in Australia.

Newman, a career diplomat, who was only appointed as ambassador to Australia in February this year, has twice been called in to speak with the foreign affairs minister about the brazen manner in which his nation has been harming Australians. And the condescending nature of the ambassador’s repeated public pronouncements has been taken as a quintessential example of Israeli belligerence.

Calls to expel the Israeli ambassador from Australia began within weeks of Israel launching the Gaza genocide in October 2023. But the calls have become more pronounced over 2026, as Newman has repeatedly chimed in on the local narrative to assert Israel’s position in an insensitive manner, that’s not only lacked diplomacy but has further been devoid of any respect towards local authority.

Diplomacy or just plain belligerence

“Circumstances, conditional aspects led the soldiers at the time to believe this convoy had been taken over and controlled by Hamas, and they opened fire,” Newman told reporters in Canberra. “Now it was a mistake in retrospect. But the findings of the court are that there was no criminal intention, no intention to hit at aid workers, and therefore, there is no criminal responsibility.”

“We are really sorry for the family. We express deep sorrow and grief with the family of Zomi Frankcom,” the ambassador continued. “We care. But in the end, one must also understand that not every case where someone dies, a casualty, means that there’s criminal liability. One cannot attack the findings of the court, if the findings are not suitable to one’s political agenda.”

At a 20 August afternoon press conference about the Israeli determination on the Frankcom case, Wong was hit with multiple questions regarding the continued presence of the Israeli ambassador in light of his comments, and she responded that this nation doesn’t host ambassadors to curry favour with other countries, but rather, it serves to facilitate in the advancing of Australian interests.

Wong also noted that the IDF investigation outcome has hardly rectified all the questions surrounding the killing of Frankcom and six other aid workers, as even if the first strike upon the convoy of aid vehicles had been a mistake, there has been no proper accounting for the two further strikes that were made upon the vehicles, with two minutes delays between each of them.

“Sadly, there are a lot of haters of Israel in Australia,” Newman said, in addressing a question, directly after he delivered his comments on the slain Australian aid worker’s death. “After Israel was attacked in an Hamas attack on 7 October, when 1,200 Israelis were killed… two days after Israel was attacked, before an Israeli soldier went into Gaza, there were demonstrations against Israel.”

Different strokes

The key reason that many Australians want to see the Israeli ambassador, whether that be Newman or his predecessor Amir Maimon, gone, over the last three years, is because Israel has been perpetrating the Gaza genocide. This mass killing, starvation and humiliation drive perpetrated upon the captive Palestinians of Gaza has torn down all international norms and strained relations.

But whilst the Israeli state has been able to create a massive killing field and turn Gaza into a moonscape without any substantial reprimand, including to the point of the local Israeli ambassador withstanding a barrage of calls for their removal, Australia did, all of a sudden, decide to expel the Iranian ambassador in August 2025, on what appeared to amount to some classified hearsay.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese announced that he was expelling the Iranian ambassador to Australia, Ahmad Sadeghi, on 26 August 2025, during a press conference held alongside ASIO director general Mike Burgess, and the pair outlined that he was being ousted because intel had suggested the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind two local arson attacks.

One of these two attacks took place on Gadigal land. It targeted a Jewish run Deli in Bondi in October 2024, and it was part of a spate of 13 arson and graffiti attacks perpetrated across Greater Sydney over the summer of 2024/25, while the second attack that was attributed to IRGC direction was the December 2024 torching on Boon Wurrung land of the Addas Israel Synagogue of Melbourne.

Linking Iran to these two arson attacks was straight out of left field, especially as NSW police and the Australian federal police had found that all 13 arson and graffiti attacks in Greater Sydney had been committed by gig criminals who were directed by Australian organised crime figures then located overseas. So, it seemed a little strange for just one of these attacks to be attributed to the IRGC.

Yet, the Iranian ambassador was cast out in an instant, whilst there has been mounting pressure calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, which has persistently been refused and pushed back upon by the government. And the Israeli press went on to immediately assert that the intel regarding IRGC being involved in local arson attacks likely came from Israeli spying agency Mossad.

Purposefully deployed to annoy

UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel commissioner Chris Sidoti explained to the ABC on the day after the Israeli government absolved itself of the April 2024 Frankcom killing and four other incidents, that the foreign minister ought to send Newman packing in response to the IDF inquiry outcome.

A local independent review by Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, who was appointed Special Adviser to the Australian Government on Israel’s response to the IDF strikes on WCK by minister Wong, recommended in August 2024 that Israel apologise for the deaths and further that reparations be paid. Yet, Newman has delivered no apology, just a little empathy and he’s refused criminal liability.

The ambassador turned up the volume on obnoxiousness when he appeared before the National Press Club in April this year and described the campaign against the IDF targeting of journalists in Gaza as “bashing Israel”. He further affirmed the mass killings of Palestinians. He denied the genocide and defended his nation’s new death penalty for Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis.

People then fell off their seats when Newman decided to pipe in to suggest that several Australian women, who claimed they’d been sexually assaulted by Israeli soldiers after being taken hostage by the IDF as part of the Global Sumud Flotilla, were lying. These assaults occurred amongst the mass brutalisation of 400-odd foreign nationals by the IDF. And the ADF has taken these claims seriously.

Newman, who was obviously just trying to upset the Australian constituency by this stage, went on to pen a July op-ed in The Australian, where he claimed that in all his decades as an Israeli diplomat, he has never seen “such level of hatred of Israel and of Jews”, as he’s experienced and witnessed in Australia. The official then went on to conflate support for Palestinians as a form of antisemitism.

“So far as the Australian government is concerned,” Sidoti further told the ABC, “the minister, when she sees the ambassador should tell him that he is going home. I don’t support breaking diplomatic relations with Israel. I don’t support the closing of embassies. But this bloke is clearly an unacceptable representative, as far as Australia is concerned, and he should be sent home.”

“He has interfered in Australia’s internal politics. He has been offensive in dealing with the members of the flotilla, who tried to reach Gaza with humanitarian aid, and again, his government now has failed Australian citizens,” the UN commissioner added.

“So, he should be told that he is going home.”