Scott Morrison’s holy war: Preaching politics in Israel

In Jerusalem, Scott Morrison blended faith, fear and foreign policy into a sermon that excused Israeli power while blaming dissent, Islam and Australia’s Labor Government for antisemitism at home. Dr Binoy Kampmark reports.

AUSTRALIA’S FORMER Prime Minister and faithful Pentecostal, Scott Morrison, never passes up the chance to express an opinion if it will net him a reward.

As one of various politicians of the Right (and far-rightist) hue invited by Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, he was in good company. The occasion: the second international conference on combating antisemitism held between 26 and 27 January at Jerusalem’s International Convention Centre, ambitiously titled Generation Truth.

The 14 December 2025 attack by two ISIS-inspired gunmen on those attending a Hanukkah event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach had supplied him with a hot script. Australia’s Albanese Government had previously been barked at by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for going wobbly on Israel and soft on Palestinians.

Morrison was in hearty agreement, claiming that the Labor Government had ‘walked away from the Jewish state while antisemitism has taken root in Australia’, feeding the hate through unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood.

Antisemitism or accountability? Drawing the line without erasing free speech

As Australia tightens hate-speech laws, a flawed definition of antisemitism risks being weaponised to shut down legitimate criticism of Israel rather than confront real hatred.

In keeping with various Christian groups of the Right, Morrison is of the view that Israeli interests need to be protected, shielded and treasured against other, undesirable members of the Book. Christians and Jews can make a common alliance against their enemies, even if evangelical Christianity has a well-stocked reserve of antisemitic attitudes. As Prime Minister, Morrison recognised West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, despite its contested status in international law, going so far as to open a Trade and Defence Office there in 2019.

In 2021, the Morrison Government officially adopted the definition of antisemitism proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), one that fudges criticism of Israeli policies with antisemitism. Since losing office, Morrison has been further courting Israel’s favour by attacking the United Nations for being a forum for antisemitism garbed in the argot of human rights.

Morrison's 27 January address recapitulated these points and more. He pointed to a five-fold rise in antisemitic incidents in Australia following the 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas. Context, such as Israel’s historical suppression of Palestinian autonomy and its ruthless campaign of pulverisation in Gaza, was absent. Regular protests in Sydney and Melbourne, including a Sydney Harbour Bridge march numbering 100,000 people, were all cut from the same cloth of antisemitism.

Again, Israel’s conduct and policies deserved no mention, while slogans such as “from the river to the sea” and “globalising the intifada” could only be seen as antisemitic declarations.

With political illiteracy typical of the man, Morrison then linked the protests and a softer approach to Palestinian statehood directly to the Bondi attacks, his mind unblemished by any understanding of what ISIS is and its hostility to Hamas. Shades, here, of the sham groupthink that marked Cold War analysis from Washington to Canberra on monolithic communism. Just as communism of the Chinese, Soviet and Vietnamese character was just communism, so can all forms of Islamism be considered identical.

The usual cod analysis of the “progressive Left” with its “neo-Marxist identity frameworks”, and the “radical Right” with its “conspiratorial and ethno-nationalist forms” are offered, both serving as the conduit for “grievance politics”. Morrison said, “When failure is moralised as systemic injustice, liberal norms collapse.”

Antisemitism, extremism and the case for a cautious Royal Commission

Independent Australia cautiously welcomes the Government's announcement this week of a Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion in Australia.

This is the golden apologia for Israel writ large: do not blame institutions and injustice for having any consequences, the spawn of their practices. Abandon grievance; it has no role.

This sets the scene for Morrison’s real concern and in this, he was keeping to the theme pushed by Chikli from the outset. Whatever the issues on the Left and Right of politics, Islam posed the greatest antisemitic threat, with its “imported European conspiracy theories, recasting Jews as a hidden enemy responsible for global disorder”.

Morrison's solution to such malignancy in a Western secular context? More religion, not less.

Morrison quotes Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, quoting Jonathan Swift:

“...we have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love.”

But the faith in question had to be of the “good” sort, an inward individual consideration, rather than the “bad” variety that externalised the grievance and made people rush for placards, street rallies and arms.

That bilious right-wing figures demanding the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza have more than enough religion to go around (Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich come to mind) suggests this formula to be flawed.

But Morrison singles out Islamic leaders and institutions within Australia as being alone in lacking accountability. What was needed was “a recognised accreditation framework for imams, a national register for public-facing roles, clear training and conduct requirements, and disciplinary authority for governing councils”. Sermons should also be translated into English, and links to foreign Islamic groups should be policed and curbed.

Morrison’s Companion of the Order for Gaslighting Australia

Scott Morrison – known for his inability to hold a hose and shirking all responsibility – has been handed the highest accolade in the land, a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).

In Australia, Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg spoke approvingly of the former PM’s tarnishing method, with Australian Muslims having to “take some responsibility” for terrorist acts.

Bragg told ABC radio on 28 January:

“Unfortunately, there has been a mutation of Islam in Australia and other Western countries where they have sought to kill citizens, not just Jewish people, but other citizens.”

The Australian National Imams Council (ANIC), the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) and the Islamic Council of Victoria were suitably unimpressed. Chief executive of the Islamic Council of Victoria, Zakaria Wahid, made the far from startling point that the Australian Government did “not hold entire communities accountable for acts of violence committed by individuals, and the same standard must apply to Muslims”.

Morrison has shown that he can be a good Pentecostal when required, demonstrating the sort of charity that never leaves his home or the halls of the Hillsong Church. As a Cabinet Minister and Prime Minister in various conservative governments, he showed a glacial contempt for women, welfare recipients, refugees, asylum seekers, those warning about climate change and open government.

As Prime Minister, he gave Australia AUKUS, a criminally exorbitant, foolishly negotiated security pact between Canberra, London and Washington that has turned his country into an American satellite and forward base against China. But his less-than-secular admiration for Israel has won him friends, a point Chikli has unreservedly acknowledged.

No doubt some well remunerated consultancy work is in the bag.