Australia/Israel Review

The troubling transformation of Australia’s fourth largest party

The Greens party’s recent approach to Israel and other priorities of the Australian Jewish community, including the unprecedented upsurge in antisemitism, has appalled the vast majority of Jews in Australia.

The Greens used to be an environmental party, but over the past couple of decades that focus has become an aside, as it has drifted ever further left. Over the most recent parliamentary term, it has paired hard-left ideology with a set of populist policies – think rent and supermarket price controls, cancelling all student debt – designed to maximise votes among young, progressive and naive Australians. But supporting “Palestine” and condemning Israel has been little short of an obsession – the subject of dozens and dozens of motions and speeches.

Greens candidates have claimed that Israel poisons wells, steals organs and conducts field executions of Palestinian civilians. Meanwhile, statements that Hamas raped women on October 7 or uses human shields were described as “racist”, while Israel is said to have not only lied about the extent of the October 7 attacks, but killed many of its own civilians in order to inflate the number of dead and justify attacking Gaza. At least one candidate openly expressed support for Hamas’ October 7 attacks.

Below, we look at Greens party policy, and what Greens sitting members and senators – and pre-selected candidates for the 2025 federal election – have said recently about issues of importance to the Australian Jewish community.

The Gaza war

The Greens have an election platform it dubbed ‘End the Occupation of Palestine’, which is largely focused on the ongoing Hamas-Israel war. It condemns the killing of civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Israel. It states that no civilian should be targeted, and that peace requires “an end to the State of Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and its [sic] ongoing genocide in Gaza.” The policy calls for Australia to sanction all members of Israel’s war cabinet and end military exports to Israel, and for Hamas to release the hostages. It makes no reference to the future of Gaza, beyond it being free of Israel, with no call for Hamas to disarm or give up its governance. The nature of Palestinian statehood is not mentioned in this policy, nor are there any calls for the Palestinian Authority to negotiate with Israel.

Meanwhile, individual Greens have gone much further.

Omar Sakr, the Greens candidate for the Sydney seat of Blaxland, celebrated the October 7 attack on his blog. He wrote on Oct. 8, “Hamas launched an assault out of occupied Gaza, bulldozing through the border wall, sending thousands of rockets toward Israel, and retaking at least one illegal settlement. It’s their most ambitious and successful resistance action in decades, and has led, as per the horrible norm, to indiscriminate shelling from the Israeli airforce [sic].”

He repeated the sentiment in December 2023, when he wrote, “Hamas did not ‘invade’ Israel. They did break out of the enforced siege on Gaza, and into the illegal Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestine.”

This idea that towns and villages in Israel are ‘illegal settlements’ in ‘Occupied Palestine’ is a common theme. Given that he also writes that ‘armed resistance’ is justified to fight occupation, this provides an indication of his thoughts on a two-state outcome.

Greens candidate for Blaxland Omar Sakr (right) with Senator Mehreen Faruqi (Image: Instagram)

Still on October 7, Sakr said the Hamas attacks were “the desperate actions of an imprisoned people breaking out of an illegal 16-year-long siege” and that “I grieve for [Hamas], for what… they have been forced to resort to in order to escape the hell that’s been made of their lives.”

As for what happened on that day, Sakr writes that the death toll “was due in part to the Israeli army indiscriminately murdering its own people.”

He adds, “stories of Hamas soldiers engaging in mass rape” is “hysterically racist”.

Sakr has also commented on Hamas tactics. For instance, he wrote that “there’s no evidence whatsoever” that Hamas uses human shields. That claim, he writes in a different post, is a “racist lie”. After Israeli hostages were released in early 2025, Sakr praised Hamas’ “restraint” for not killing them for 470 days.

Remah Naji is the Greens candidate for the Brisbane seat of Moreton. She also provided her thoughts about the extent of casualties on October 7. “The lies that the Israeli Offense Forces spread to justify the mass killing of Palestinians under the guise of ‘self-defence’ were taken as facts and were broadcasted [sic] unchallenged by most media outlets worldwide,” she wrote. This allegation was in a post discussing the Dural caravan plot being a criminal hoax, implying that Zionists lie to justify killing.

Naji is a prolific Instagram user, and many of her posts are about the Palestinian cause. Although she has used the term “genocide” dozens of times, she hasn’t mentioned “Hamas” even once.

Greens already in Parliament were a bit more careful with what they posted after October 7, but still very extreme. In every condemnation of the Hamas attacks (many of which didn’t actually mention “Hamas”), the Greens twinned the attacks with denunciations of Israeli occupation, thereby strongly implying the attacks were because of (or justified by) Israeli control of the West Bank, or a fictitious “occupation” of Gaza. Greens Leader Adam Bandt, silent for the first three days after the attacks, finally wrote on X, “We condemn the horrific attack on civilians. We condemn the occupation.”

The Greens took this approach to Parliament. When a bipartisan motion of condolence was introduced shortly after the October 7 attacks, the Greens refused to support it because it affirmed Israel’s right to self-defence.

More recently, in March 2025, in the face of a weakened Hamas and the ongoing war, thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of Gaza demanding Hamas’ expulsion. In response, Hamas killed at least six protest leaders, including one who they tortured (he was left with broken fingers and 170 stab wounds), dragged through the streets and ultimately dumped on his parents’ doorstep shortly before he died with a note stating, “This is the price for all who criticise Hamas.” Yet, Bandt deflected blame when asked about these Hamas murders of Palestinian human rights activists, saying, “The killing of civilians is devastating… For all killings to finally stop, and for Palestinians and Israelis to have a just and lasting peace, the occupation of Palestine and the invasion of Gaza need to end.”

“Genocide” everywhere 

Whereas most Greens waited until at least Oct. 10, 2023, to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide, MP Max Chandler-Mather was already there in May 2021 (before his election to Parliament).

Meanwhile, Chandler-Mather constantly claims that Israel has “murdered” civilians, with Senators Nick McKim and Penny Allman-Payne dipping into that rhetoric on at least one occasion. Samantha Ratnam, Greens candidate for the Melbourne seat of Wills and former Greens leader in Victoria, said that Israel is “intentionally targeting civilians”.

For his part, Sakr claims that Israel has also conducted “field executions of Palestinian civilians” and “torture and murder of Palestinians in Israeli camps.” He also claims that Israel is “using its most devasting wide-ranging bombs to kill as many as possible.”

Not to be outdone, Chandler-Mather said, “It’s the expressed and desired outcome of Israel that Gazan civilians die,” that “Israel intends to obliterate the Palestinian people” and thatIsrael is carrying out an “extermination” in Gaza and Lebanon. Senator David Shoebridge also said that Israel is attempting to wipe the Palestinian people out.

Chandler-Mather, among other Greens, has also claimed highly inflated numbers of people killed in Gaza – much higher than those claimed by Hamas. He claimed that the daily death rate in Gaza is the highest of any 21st century conflict. Perhaps he doesn’t know about Syria, where 500,000 people were killed in four years, or the 300,000 killed in Darfur between 2003 and 2008. Meanwhile, Sakr claimed in June 2024 that up to half a million Gazans (i.e. a quarter of Gaza’s population) had been killed and, six months later, that 1.17 million Palestinians had been killed “in a single year.” That’s half the Gazan population.

Naji was slightly more conservative, citing “experts” back in February 2024, just five months after the war began, to allege the death toll was 300,000.

On Israel

Outside of Gaza, Greens accuse Israel of a myriad of crimes. Israel, Sakr claims, poisons Palestinian wells and steals the organs of murdered Palestinians. “The overwhelming majority of Israelis,” Sakr writes, “are genocidal racist scum who approve of the mass starvation of 2 million people.”

Meanwhile, Naji claims that “Israel is a rogue genocidal occupying power that kills, rapes, maimes [sic] and tortures with impunity.” Sakr likewise accuses Israel of “470 days of torture and rape and murder in concentration camps.”

When Israel detonated the pagers worn by mid- and senior-ranking Hezbollah fighters, Naji wrote, “My heart goes out to the victims of this tragedy.” She also called the Hezbollah pagers “civilian devices”.

Despite the Greens ostensibly claiming to be committed to a two-state outcome, many have displayed emblems that show either Palestine replacing Israel, or lines that cross through the flag of Israel. The former include Greens candidates Tara Burnett and Huong Truong, Senator Shoebridge, as well as Bandt. As for crossing out the flag of Israel, Deputy Leader Senator Mehreen Faruqi got in trouble because she stood next to a sign with someone suggesting Israel should be put into a rubbish bin, but Senators Dorinda Cox and Shoebridge have both displayed similar themes on their social media.

Meanwhile, Sakr, in particular, really doesn’t like “Zionists”. He cites the “Zionist zeal for genocide,” adding in a different post that “Zionism [is] an overtly racist, colonial ideology that is rooted in the dispossession and destruction of Palestinians.” “To a Zionist”, he writes, somewhat bizarrely, “nobody can love Palestinians.” “It is an absolute necessity that we… refuse and reject Zionism at every point,” he concludes.

The Greens’ obsession with Israel is remarkable not just in its intensity but in its exclusivity. Over a third of the 71 foreign policy-related statements the Greens issued since the 2022 election are about Israel. In June 2023, well before the current war, a Greens motion suggested Israel was responsible for impeding progress on climate change. Chandler-Mather has linked Australia’s support for Israel to our cost-of-living crisis.

Interestingly, of those 71 foreign policy statements, none are about Ukraine. Yemen was mentioned only because the Greens condemned international efforts to stop the Houthis from forcibly blockading the Red Sea. Not mentioned anywhere were Pakistan’s forcible deportation of more than a million Afghan refugees, the bloody massacres in Sudan, China’s oppression against religious and ethnic minorities – characterised by some countries as actual genocide – or Azerbaijan’s conquest of the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

On the Holocaust

Three years ago, a Greens candidate likened Israeli policies to the Nazis. Bandt distanced himself from the comment, noting that the Holocaust was “without modern comparison”. He’s right, but that sentiment apparently hasn’t filtered down the ranks. Sakr describes what is happening in Gaza as “a holocaust”. He also accuses Israel of creating “concentration camps”, “death-marching” Palestinians, and of turning Gaza into “an extermination camp”. He adds, “Zionism is on the side of Nazis.” McKim claims Israel is forcing Palestinians into “concentration camps”. And although she didn’t cite the Holocaust, Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown claimed way back in November 2023 that Israeli actions in Gaza are “the worst war crimes in history.”

On antisemitism

The Greens like to condemn antisemitism, but refuse to understand its contemporary manifestations or engage with the mainstream Jewish community. Time and again, Greens act as if Jewish fears about antisemitism are a smokescreen to shield Israel from criticism, and that the real victims are those being accused of it. This inversion of victimhood has become a hallmark of the party’s rhetoric.

In 2021, the Greens released a position paper on antisemitism, but in the process of developing it, refused to consult mainstream Jewish organisations. Instead, the only Jews cited were tiny fringe groups already ideologically aligned to the party. In parliamentary debates about antisemitism on campus, Greens senators suggest that the real issue is not antisemitism at all, but rather efforts to “weaponise” the charge.

Meanwhile, Sakr writes of “the usual strategy of smearing any criticism [of Israel] as anti-Semitism” and insists that “claiming that Israeli violence is like Nazi violence is not antisemitic.”

On Australia

Greens views on Australian politics are also alarming. Naji appears to be the most extreme. She’s called the Prime Minister a “traitor” and the Opposition Leader a “fascist”. “So-called Australia”, she says, is a “pseudo democracy”. And, she says, “The Australian government and the capitalist elite are profiting off the killing of innocent men, women and children in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon.”

Meanwhile, she, as well as Chandler-Mather and Senators McKim, Allman-Payne, Shoebridge and Faruqi all claim that the Labor Government is complicit in genocide. Naji adds that the ABC and Universities Australia are also complicit in genocide and “covering up genocide”, respectively.