ECAJ welcomes postponement of Youssef tour

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) has welcomed what it describes as a decision to deny a visa to Egyptian-American comedian Bassem Youssef, whose Australian tour has been postponed days before it was due to open.

Youssef says the postponement is the result of documentation he was unable to obtain in time, and the Department of Home Affairs has declined to comment.

ECAJ co-chief executive Peter Wertheim said conflict and war had always produced extremes of language, and that over the past three years Australia had seen how such language undermined the rights and freedoms of those it targeted.

“It is bad enough that we have people in Australia who engage in such language, regardless of their professed reasons. The last thing we need is visitors to Australia who would add to the problem,” Wertheim said.

He said the government had tightened the law in January to exclude granting visas to visitors with a record of engaging in hate, vilification or extremist conduct, and that the change would mean nothing unless consistently applied.

“For that reason we welcome the decision to deny a visa to a comedian who has repeatedly referred to an entire nation, Israel, in coarsely dehumanising terms,” Wertheim said. “Australia loses nothing by keeping this brand of ‘comedy’ away from our shores.”

Ticketholders for Youssef’s first Australian show, scheduled for Perth on Thursday, were told on Tuesday it had been rescheduled due to circumstances beyond the promoter’s control. Shows in Sydney and Melbourne were also scheduled.

In a video statement, Youssef said there were new conditions and procedures for Australian visa applications and that he had tried to fulfil them.

He said he had been asked to provide a background check from the FBI, which he supplied, and also a criminal record from Egypt, a country he left 12 years ago. Because his Egyptian passport and national identity documents had expired, he said, the request took longer to process than the tour allowed.

“I respect Australian law. I respect the immigration laws,” Youssef said, adding that he could not board a plane without a work permit. He said the shows were postponed rather than cancelled and new dates would be announced.

Youssef said he had visited Australia twice before, giving a keynote speech for The Chaser in Sydney in 2015 and touring in 2023.

ECAJ made representations to Home Affairs earlier this year seeking to have the visa refused. In June, Wertheim told The Sydney Morning Herald that nobody from overseas with a record of making debased generalisations about entire national or religious communities should be granted a visa.

“That kind of rhetoric should not be allowed to poison our political discourse or be given the opportunity to create and promote entirely baseless feelings of grievance, fear, suspicion and hatred between different sections of Australian society,” he said.

Member for Wentworth Allegra Spender also wrote to Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke opposing the visit on behalf of the community, specifically citing comments Youssef made to American commentator Candace Owens and telling the minister she believed his antisemitism made him unsuitable for a visa.

“I’ve spoken directly to the minister on this and made it clear that I don’t believe Bassem Youssef should ever be given a visa to Australia given his record divisive antisemitic comments and particularly his offensive comments suggesting the Bondi terror attack might be a ‘false flag,” Spender told The AJN.

Youssef has previously described Israelis in social media posts as “genocidal, brutal, merciless” and used a vulgar epithet, and has claimed the 1994 bombing of the Israeli embassy in London was a Mossad false flag operation.

In a column in the Herald Sun in July, Andrew Bolt reported that on Owens’ podcast in February, Youssef had listed alleged Israeli false flag operations and referred to the Bondi attack, saying the blood on the head of one of the wounded, Arsen Ostrovsky, “obviously looks fake”.

A former heart surgeon, Youssef fled Egypt after his satirical television program was taken off air when he mocked then president Mohamed Morsi and the country’s military. He has lived in the United States since 2014 and is a US citizen.