Inviting a foreign head of state to commemorate an Australian tragedy blurs citizenship, religion and geopolitics – and risks undermining social cohesion at a moment that demands unity.

The invitation extended to Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, to attend a commemoration for the victims of the Bondi massacre has struck many Australians as puzzling – and, more troublingly, divisive. At a moment that calls for national unity and shared mourning, the decision risks entangling a domestic tragedy with foreign state politics in ways that sit uneasily with Australia’s multicultural foundations.

Australia’s Jewish community, like its Muslim, Hindu, Christian and secular communities, is composed of Australians. Citizenship, not creed or ethnicity, is the organising principle of our public life. This is not merely an aspirational slogan; it is the social contract that has underpinned Australia’s cohesion and progress for decades. Against that backdrop, the official invitation of a foreign head of state to participate in a commemoration of an Australian tragedy – apparently by virtue of shared religious identity – raises a basic question: what, precisely, is being represented?

If President Herzog were to attend in a private capacity, as an........

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