Sneering, denying, lecturing, lying. Andrew Brown puts the case for the Australian government to expel Israeli Ambassador Hillel Newman.
Hillel Newman has been in Canberra six months. Twice summoned. Twice unrepentant.
He has ridiculed an Australian Federal Police investigation into allegations that Australians were beaten, tortured and raped. He branded the survivors frauds before a statement was taken. He defended the army that cleared itself over the killing of an Australian aid worker. Then he told readers of The Australian they are more hateful than the dictatorships he used to serve in.
That is not a diplomat losing his footing. It is contempt as policy. He is counsel for impunity, with a diplomatic number plate.
Zomi Frankcom
Start with Zomi Frankcom. On 1 April 2024 three clearly marked World Central Kitchen vehicles were struck in succession near Deir al Balah. Seven aid workers died. Her family says survivors crawled from one vehicle to the next only to be struck again. Israel conceded grave failures. Mark Binskin’s review for Canberra recorded a catastrophic breakdown in decision making.
Two years later the Israeli military examined the Israeli military and found no crime. Canberra got moments of warning, too late to tell Zomi’s family. The decision landed on World Humanitarian Day, the day an award was announced in her name.
Newman lectured. Findings of a court, he said, cannot be attacked because they fail to suit a political agenda. He refused liability.
He refused to say sorry.
The death of an Australian reduced to risk management. Grief, carefully portioned. Regret, scrubbed of responsibility.
The family asked for the drone footage and an independent investigation. Newman offered what Israel has offered for two years. Trust us. Stop asking. Stephen Lawrence MLC asks the obvious question. The International Criminal Court exists for states that cannot or will not investigate themselves, and that Court has already issued a warrant for Israel’s prime minister.
So why did Australia let the Israeli army judge the killing of an Australian, and why does it still host the man who calls that verdict beyond challenge?
The Gaza Flotilla
Then the flotilla. In May Israeli forces seized eleven Australians in international waters. Itamar Ben Gvir filmed them bound and kneeling while the anthem played. That humiliation is not an allegation. Israel’s own minister supplied the tape. Newman went on 7.30 and said nobody had been harmed. They were handled, he said, with great sensitivity.
Then the Australians came home. Juliet Lamont alleges she was dragged into a darkened container on a prison vessel, sexually assaulted and beaten. Neve O’Connor alleges soldiers kneed her in the face and stomach, slammed her head into a table, kicked her ankles from under her and pulled at her earrings with pliers.
Sam Woripa Watson came off the plane with a fractured rib and the memory of his friends being tasered and hit with beanbag rounds.
Those accounts are backed by medical evidence and lodged with the ICC. The AFP opened an investigation. Before it could establish a fact, Newman delivered his verdict. The inquiry was a mistake. Police were wasting their time. Footage would be provided only if Israel deemed the investigation professional. If Israel decided it was a witch hunt, he was not sure how it would respond.
Read that again. A foreign government withholding evidence from Australian police unless it approves of the inquiry. If Newman does not know what happened in Israeli custody he has no basis to call the survivors liars. If he does know, he should hand over the evidence. He has done neither. He sat in an Australian studio and told the Australian Federal Police which alleged rapes were worth its time.
Hating on Australians
Then the column. In 26 years as a diplomat, Newman wrote, he had never seen hatred of Jews like Australia’s. Not in Uzbekistan. Not in Tajikistan. Australians protesting a war were obsessive herds. It ran as Labor prepared to debate Gaza. A foreign official intervened in a domestic fight and traduced his host nation to do it.
Antisemitism is real and must be fought. That is exactly why it cannot be conscripted as a shield for a foreign government. Folding evidence of abuse into hatred of Jews does not protect Jewish Australians. It uses them, and it insults those who refuse to be body armour for Benjamin Netanyahu.
Penny Wong says expulsion would diminish Australia’s ability to engage. Matt Thistlethwaite calls him a conduit. A conduit runs both ways. Newman is a valve. Israeli denials pour in. Australian demands go nowhere. Engagement on those terms is submission with better stationery.
Expulsion does not sever relations. Australia keeps its embassy in Tel Aviv. Israel keeps its embassy in Canberra and sends someone capable of the job’s most basic requirement, some respect for the country receiving him. The Albanese Government should stop summoning Newman for scoldings he plainly regards as theatre and declare him persona non grata.
Every day he remains tells Australians that a foreign envoy may sneer at their police, smear their wounded and excuse the killing of one of their own without consequence. That is not restraint. It is self abasement.
Send him home.
Israel and Australia’s “transparent” inquiry into the World Central Kitchen killings in Gaza
Andrew Brown is a Sydney businessman in the health products sector, former Deputy Mayor of Mosman and Palestine peace activist