Jewish groups call on Tony Burke to cancel Israeli journalist visa
Jewish organizations are demanding Tony Burke refuse an Australian visa for an Israeli journalist after funders’ links to the IDF were revealed. Stephanie Tran reports.
A coalition of Australian Jewish organizations has written to Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke urging him to cancel Israeli journalist Zvi Yehezkeli’s visa on character grounds, citing comments in which he called for mass murder in Gaza and advocated violence against journalists.
The letter was signed by various Jewish groups, including Anti-Zionism Australia, Jewish Voices of Inner Sydney, Jews Against Occupation ’48, Jews for Palestine Western Australia, Jewish Defenders for Understanding Antisemitism and Jews for a Free Palestine.
The groups demanded that Yehezkeli’s visa application be rejected. Immigration Act 1958in particular by reference to section 116(1)(e)(i), which permits revocation where a person’s presence may pose a risk to the health, safety or order of the Australian community, and section 501, the character test.
“The undersigned request that you refuse the visa application of Zvi Yehezkeli… on the grounds that his presence in Australia would constitute a risk to the health, safety or good order of the Australian community and that his past and present general conduct indicates a foreseeable risk of maligning a section of society and inciting discord,” the letter states.
Burke considering visa
Tony Burke stated that the government was considering whether to reject Yehezkeli’s visa application.
To talk Sydney Morning HeraldHe said: “It never ceases to amaze me that someone who makes the kind of comments this person made would advertise a speaking tour before even getting a visa.”
Yehezkeli, an Israeli journalist and resident of a settlement in the occupied West Bank, will visit Australia in March and appear as a keynote speaker at fundraising events. Sydney And Melbourne.
Tax-deductible fundraiser under review
The Sydney and Melbourne events raise funds for Israeli organization The Institute for Social Momentum. Donations are being collected in Australia through the Chai Charitable Foundation, which advertises the fundraiser as tax-deductible.
A. donate link It appears on the registration pages for both events through the Chai Charity Foundation.
According to its 2024 financial report, the Chai Charitable Foundation reported revenue of more than $19 million. While $15.39 million of this was distributed as grants and donations to be used outside Australia, $1.62 million was directed domestically.
Revealed: Illegal settlements in Israel where Australian taxpayers are subsidizing the IDF
The foundation facilitates tax-deductible donations from Australians to organizations in Israel and has previously come under scrutiny for its fundraising activities.
The Chai Charitable Foundation is certified as a Public Benevolent Institution (PBI), a status reserved for charities whose primary purpose is to directly alleviate poverty, suffering, or hardship and are Discounted Gift Recipients, which allows donors to claim tax deductions on donations made to the foundation.
An investigation by MWMfound that the charity hosted numerous online fundraisers linked to Israeli military units and West Bank settlements.
The Chai Charitable Foundation initially denied that it was raising funds for such purposes. However, these pages were later removed. MWM Ask Chai questions.
incitement to genocide
One surrender French-Israeli human rights lawyer Dr. Omer Shatz concluded at his hearing at the International Criminal Court (ICC): “There are reasonable grounds to believe that Yehezkeli’s statements amounted to direct and overt incitement to genocide.”
Yehezkeli in December 2023 stated The Israel Defense Forces should have killed more than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
One 2024 interviewTo destroy Hamas, he said, Israel must take measures that “will bring Gaza to the point of humanitarian disaster.”
Yehezkeli defended the killing of journalists in Gaza last year. stating “If Israel decides to eliminate journalists anyway, better late than never” and He lamented the “damage” inflicted on Israel by journalists covering atrocities in Gaza.
“This is a realization of how much damage is done by those who publish photos of hunger in Israel and the entire Hamas side. […] Yehezkeli said how much psychological damage those journalists in quotation marks, terrorist journalists, or you can call them Nuhba journalists, did, how much damage they did to Israel.
Australian charity removes fundraisers for IDF and West Bank settlements
Stephanie is a journalist with a background in both law and journalism. He worked at The Guardian and as a paralegal, where he assisted Crikey’s defense team in the high-profile libel case brought by Lachlan Murdoch. His reporting has been recognized nationally, earning him the 2021 Guardians of Democracy Award for Student Investigative Reporting and a nomination for the 2021 Walkley Student Journalist of the Year Award.
