The olive branch of hypocrisy: Herzog’s tree and Australia's complicity

Behind the pageantry of Herzog’s visit, critics argue Australia is ignoring legal warnings and moral accountability over Israel’s conduct in Palestine, writes Lyn Bender.

ISRAELI PRESIDENT Isaac Herzog, who has happily supported the uprooting of Palestinian olive plantations, had the chutzpah to plant an olive tree on Australian soil in the name of Israel. It now stands alone and stranded at the Israeli Embassy in Canberra.

“Hypocrisy doesn’t even begin to cover it,” declared Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi on the lawns of Parliament House. Her rage mirrors my own. The Greens Senator endures racist denouncements. Being Jewish, I am denounced as a traitor to the Jewish people.

I wonder what might have been going through Herzog’s brain as he patted the soil at the foot of that tree. Was he claiming ownership of the decades-old olive trees that had been destroyed by settlers on the West Bank? Or symbolically asserting that European Jews have claimed a Middle Eastern identity and displaced the Indigenous people.

Thus, it has been declared that Palestinians don’t exist as a people entitled to the land and its olive groves.

Israelis will uproot or plant the beloved decades-old olive trees as they choose.

A few weeks before the terrible murders at Bondi, I, too, had planted an olive tree in my own garden. I thought about the Palestinians as I planted it in honour of them and their olive groves. I thought about how the trees and the Palestinians were being displaced. 

Protesters across Australia valiantly waved signs excoriating Isaac Herzog as an enabler of genocide.

Meanwhile, Herzog and his wife were smiling as they planted an olive tree on Australian soil. For how could planting a tree be seen as other than supportive of life?

Bending with a shovel to dig the earth for a tree is a better look than bending to sign a bomb.

That ordinance is destined to be the gift that will be dropped on Palestinians trying to shelter in the cynically named “safe zone” to which they may have fled. The olive tree will bear fruit for future diplomatic staff. The bombs will murder and vaporise innocent Palestinians who stood in the way of imperialist goals. Will this lonely tree make the Israeli ambassador feel at home?

Any propagandist would know that the spectacle of planting a tree is a good image, while signing a bomb to annihilate families is “bad optics”.

But Herzog’s tour of Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne has exposed the narrative of Israel. Deny truth and act as though its opposite was real.

The oft-repeated distortions are used to counter the evidence of our eyes:

There is no genocide.

There are still so many Palestinians alive, so it can’t be a genocide.

Hamas used those killed as human shields.

Hamas started it on 7 October 2023.

The Holocaust is frequently invoked to claim impunity from any Israeli atrocities.

Anyone who criticises Israel is antisemitic.

Even if you are certifiably Jewish and you critique Israel, you are dismissed as antisemitic or a self-hating Jew.

Even if your family were murdered in Poland by the Nazis, you are still declared antisemitic if you utter a word in support of Palestinians.

All who support the Palestinians are deemed to be antisemitic.

Those who protest genocide are Hamas sympathisers and antisemitic.

Saying Israel has the right to defend itself justifies atrocities.

The Palestinians who try to defend themselves are terrorists.

The Israeli Defence Force is the most moral army in the world.

The New Jewish Council, which advocates for Palestinian Rights, has been dismissed as a fringe group by the Zionist Lobby groups.

The counter to this:

All violence is abhorrent and to be condemned.

All victims deserve support and compassion.

Palestine is under brutal and illegal occupation.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for calm and social cohesion, but his fawning over the President of Israel has had the opposite effect. At the same time, ignoring the suffering of the Palestinian diaspora in Australia has been conspicuous.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Albanese for the Bondi massacre because the Government had recognised the state of Palestine. Support for Palestine was paired with the idea that it had in some way led to what is now called simply “Bondi”. It has become like 7 October.

The Australian PM and his brand-new wife, Jodie, were booed vociferously at a memorial for Bondi. The PM was moving through the booing throng of mourners, looking devastated as Jodie appeared shocked. He stood accused by the announcer as NSW Premier Chris Minns was feted.

This may have twisted Albanese’s arm metaphorically, forcing him to embrace Herzog.

From my own experience growing up in a community of Melbourne Holocaust survivors, you resisted the Israeli-backed Zionist community at your peril.

From childhood, we were taught to believe in the myth of Israel making the desert bloom and fighting courageously against the barbaric Arab enemies. They proclaimed that Israel had been promised to the Jewish people by God. Despite some orthodox scholars refuting this. The Nakba massacre and displacement of 1948 were never acknowledged. “Arabs” were lesser humans. Now they have been described as animals by the extreme Zionist government.

The President of Israel, who has been accused of inciting genocide, was feted by Albanese.

Legal experts have decried the visit.

Human rights lawyer Chris Sedoti has stated that he should never have been invited, declaring that Herzog’s visit was for propaganda purposes. Professor Ben Saul has concurred with these views.  

Amnesty International has also stated that Australia has an obligation to investigate the President of a state plausibly committing genocide.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for war crimes committed by Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Galant. Also, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling confirmed the illegality of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

Despite all this, Albanese welcomed President Herzog with honours suitable for a beloved hero.

NSW outdid itself by granting police permission to suppress protestors in I.C.E.-like fashion. Muslim demonstrators were dragged from prayer. It was almost as though this violent suppression was timed to make the President of a thuggish nation feel at home.

Israel has added esteemed institutions to the list of those proclaimed to be antisemitic, including UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.

The PM seems to be unable to recognise the obvious. In a plaintive, somewhat croaky voice, he has called for “social cohesion”, instructing Australians to “turn down the temperature”. Another unfortunate PM instruction, as climate change rages and burns.

Albanese has resorted to invoking his late mother's wisdom: “If you make your bed, you must lie in it,” in relation to the ISIS women and their children trapped in squalid Syrian camps. Is this his view of Palestinian families with rags for beds?

I am wondering if these wrong steps, blunders and invocations by PM Albanese are bringing forth the time when he might declare that he needs to spend more time with his family.

My dilemma is: what would Jillian Segal, the special “Zionist” Envoy for determining what is and is not antisemitism, decree? Her definition of antisemitism as linked to anti-Zionism has been subject to criticism by the UNSW Human Rights Institute.

My questions:

Is my Olive tree, planted in honour of Palestine, antisemitic?

Will one tree planted at the Canberra Israeli Embassy by genocide-invoking President Herzog somehow make genocide okAY?

What has happened to the olive trees and their cultivators in Palestine?

Lyn Bender is a recently retired psychologist. You can follow Lyn on Twitter @Lynestel.

Related Articles

• Welcoming a war criminal: Herzog signals death of social cohesion
• Government pressed on legal implications of Isaac Herzog visit
• Selective context: Why Isaac Herzog’s visit deepens Australia’s moral failure