Herzog, closing Australia visit, tells demonstrators: ‘Go protest in front of the Iranian embassy’

President Isaac Herzog, speaking at a Jewish event in Melbourne to close out his trip to Australia, praises the local Jewish community’s resilience but laments that his visit has had to take place under heavy police guard.

Major protests by pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel demonstrators have trailed Herzog during his four-day trip, and police have arrested dozens.

The visit is a solidarity trip in the wake of the terror shooting targeting a Hanukkah event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach in December, in which gunmen killed 15.

“To me, it’s obscure and odd that we need to have so many incredible police officers protecting us for the inherent right of us to gather here as proud Jews, to host the president of the only Jewish state on Earth without any harassment and disturbance,” Herzog says, according to remarks distributed by his office.

Herzog suggests that the protesters should instead oppose Iran’s brutal crackdown on anti-regime protesters last month.

“And I say to all those protesters outside, go protest in front of the Iranian embassy or whichever embassy they have,” he says. “For heaven’s sake, they killed and butchered around 50,000, tens of thousands of their own people, operating a whole machine of an empire of evil against us.”

Rights groups have documented thousands of deaths in the protest crackdown and estimate that the true toll is in the tens of thousands. Herzog does not cite a source for his estimate of some 50,000.

Herzog encourages Australian Jews to “to keep your Jewish hearts on your sleeves and wear your Zionism with pride. Do not be afraid to show who you are.”

He says that, in discussions with Australian leaders, he “found serious partners who are willing to hold serious conversations and address the vile rhetoric, the misinformation, and the shameful antisemitism head-on.”