Australia’s peak Jewish group condemns Netanyahu’s ‘clumsy’ attack on Albanese and calls for end to ‘spat’

‘Australia and Israel are mature democracies and their governments need to act accordingly,’ Australia’s peak Jewish group has said. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

Australia’s peak Jewish group has lambasted Benjamin Netanyahu’s attack on Anthony Albanese as “inflammatory and provocative”, adding that the “clumsy intervention” showed a “woeful lack of understanding of social and political conditions in Australia” – notwithstanding what the group describes as “unseemly” conduct from Australia’s leader.

The concerned intervention by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) came as Australia and Israel entered the third day of a diplomatic tit-for-tat prompted by Australia’s visa cancellation of far-right Israeli politician Simcha Rothman on Monday.