When the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, lands in Australia next week, it will be to a warm welcome from the government and the promise of mass protests from demonstrators opposed to his country’s war in Gaza.

Major Jewish organisations and federal and state governments have welcomed Herzog’s visit as “a moment of profound significance”, but other groups, including some Jewish Australian organisations, say the president should be barred from entering the country, alleging he has incited genocide against Palestinians.

Herzog was invited to Australia by the federal government after the antisemitic massacre in Bondi in December, when 15 people were killed by two allegedly Islamic State-inspired gunmen.

“We need to build social cohesion in this country,” Anthony Albanese has said, arguing the Israeli president’s visit is intended to foster “a greater sense of unity”.

_{Sign up: AU Breaking News email}

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (Aijac) says it believes it speaks for the majority of Jewish Australians when it welcomes Herzog’s arrival as “a powerful message of solidarity and support … following the tragic events at Bondi and the surge of antisemitism across the country”.

But others argue his arrival portends the opposite: that inviting Isaac Herzog will only sow discord.

Palestinian groups have called for mass protests against Herzog’s visit, and thousands have vowed to march in Sydney in defiance of restrictions imposed by the NSW police commissioner.

Several groups have filed complaints to the Australian federal police, saying Herzog must be investigated for inciting genocide in Gaza, an allegation he vehemently denies.

The liberal Jewish Council of Australia (JCA) has described Herzog’s invitation as an “outrage”, saying his presence will “fuel the flames of division”.

Who is Isaac Herzog?

For all of Israel’s modern history, the name Herzog has been prominent.

The current president is the son of Chaim Herzog, who was president from 1983 to 1993; Chaim Herzog’s father, Rabbi Yitzhak Halevi Herzog, was chief rabbi of Palestine, and then Israel, from 1936 until 1959.

A lawyer by training, Isaac Herzog was the leader of Israel’s Labour party and led the Zionist Union coalition that failed to oust Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud in the 2015 general election. He was chair of the Jewish Agency for Israel before being elected by the Knesset to the largely ceremonial, but influential, position of president in 2021.

Herzog has shifted politically. Once seen as a centrist, Herzog has tended to fall into lockstep with the Gaza policies of Netanyahu’s rightwing coalition since becoming head of state. Formerly an advocate for a two-state solution, he has suggested his view has changed since the 7 October attack. In Davos last year he said it was “not realistic at all” for Israel to withdraw from settlements in the illegally occupied West Bank.

In late 2023, Herzog was pictured signing an Israeli artillery shell being prepared to be dropped on Gaza, writing in Hebrew on the munition: “I rely on you”.

Last September, Herzog was named by the United Nations commission of inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory as having incited genocide against the Palestine people in Israel’s prosecution of its war in Gaza.

The commission, which does not speak on behalf of the UN as a whole, cited a speech on 13 October 2023, when Herzog said all Palestinians were responsible for the Hamas attack.

“It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said. “It is not true, this rhetoric about civilians who were not aware and not involved. It is absolutely not true.”

The commission noted that the president’s words were not an express call for genocide, but that, understood in the context of Israeli security forces launching offensives into Gaza, his comments “may reasonably be interpreted as incitement to the Israeli security forces personnel to target the Palestinians in Gaza as a group as being collectively culpable”.

Herzog later qualified his statement, saying “there are many, many innocent Palestinians who don’t agree” with the actions of Hamas. But the UN commission said it viewed that as an effort “to deflect responsibility for the initial statement”.

Israel’s foreign ministry has previously rejected the commission’s report as “distorted and false”, and Herzog has said his comments have been taken out of context, noting he also said Israel soldiers would follow international law.

Herzog’s initial bellicosity resonated. The slogan “there are no uninvolved” was subsequently chanted by Israeli soldiers deployed to Gaza, even written in Hebrew on an IDF watchtower in the West Bank.

Healing … or division

Opinion on Herzog’s visit has been sharply divided, including within Australia’s Jewish community.

Aijac has welcomed the visit as an opportunity to “strengthen the Australia-Israel relationship through constructive dialogue and renewed engagement”.

Aijac’s executive director, Colin Rubenstein, says he is saddened by attempts to politicise the visit.

“Our view is that, after Bondi, Herzog’s visit is not only appropriate, but an essential part of the healing process, and we are very confident we represent the overwhelming majority of Australian Jews in saying as much.”

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has argued similarly. Its co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin has said Herzog’s visit would bring “tremendous comfort to the families” of Bondi victims and “hopefully a reset of the bilateral relationship”.

“Sometimes it takes a catastrophe, a tragedy, to bring a sense of perspective and clarity and bring two feuding partners together.”

But Palestinian groups are fiercely opposed to Herzog’s visit. The president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, Nasser Mashni, says “Australia’s political elite is siding with genocide” by welcoming Herzog.

“For every Australian who says they believe in democracy, human rights, a fair go, free speech then you simply must protest Herzog’s visit.”

On Tuesday the NSW police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, extended protest restrictions in central Sydney, saying “significant animosity” around Herzog’s arrival in the country “was certainly a factor” in his decision.

Josh Lees, a spokesperson for the Palestine Action Group, said the NSW government was ripping up Australians’ democratic rights “in the service of Israel’s ongoing slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza”.

Protests are also planned in Melbourne and other cities.

The JCA has said Herzog’s arrival will “rightly spark mass protests”.

Its executive officer, Sarah Schwartz, argues that “growing numbers of Jews in Australia and globally oppose the actions of the Israeli government and reject its attempts to speak in our name”.

“We refuse to be ignored or silenced.

“Inviting a foreign head of state who is implicated in an ongoing genocide as a representative of the Jewish community is deeply offensive and risks entrenching the dangerous and antisemitic conflation between Jewish identity and the actions of the Israeli state. This does not make Jews safer. It does the opposite.”

Even within the government that invited him, support for Herzog’s visit is not universal.

The ruling Labor party’s Friends of Palestine group has claimed Herzog “works hand in hand” with Netanyahu, for whom the international criminal court has issued arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The ICC has not issued warrants for Herzog.

The executive director of the Australian Centre for International Justice (ACIJ), Rawan Arraf, says there is a compelling basis for the Australian federal police to commence an investigation into Herzog, despite the legal immunity he attracts by virtue of his position as head of state.

“At a time when the federal government is criminalising hate speech, a person who is alleged to have incited hate to commit the ultimate crime – genocide – must not be allowed to enter Australian territory without facing accountability for these serious allegations.”

The ACIJ has lodged a formal request with the AFP to investigate Herzog. The AFP says it is “reviewing the material”.

Three further organisations – the JCA, the Australian National Imams Council and the Hind Rajab Foundation – have filed a complaint to the AFP, the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, and the attorney general, Michelle Rowland, urging Herzog be investigated and refused entry.

“To welcome him to Australia would be an affront to justice, a threat to community safety and a violation of Australia’s international legal duties,” the complaint says.

Details of Herzog’s itinerary have not been revealed, beyond commitments to meet “bereaved families of the victims of the terror attack”, as well as the governor general and prime minister.