Social media influencer Sammy Yahood is understood to unfold Islamophobic content material on-line.
Printed On 27 Jan 2026
Australia has cancelled the visa of an Israeli social media influencer who has campaigned towards Islam, saying it is not going to settle for guests to the nation who come to spread hatred.
Australian Minister for Residence Affairs Tony Burke mentioned in an announcement on Tuesday that “spreading hatred shouldn’t be an excellent motive to come back” to Australia, hours after influencer Sammy Yahood introduced that his visa was cancelled three hours earlier than his flight departed from Israel.
Really helpful Tales
checklist of three objectsfinish of checklist
Individuals who need to go to Australia ought to apply for the proper visa and are available for the appropriate causes, Burke mentioned in an announcement to the AFP information company.
Simply hours earlier than his visa was cancelled, Yahood had written on X, “Islam ACCORDING TO ISLAM doesn’t tolerate non-believers, apostates, girls’s rights, youngsters’s rights, or homosexual rights.”
He additionally referred to Islam as a “disgusting ideology” and an “aggressor”.
Australia tightened its hate crime legal guidelines earlier this month in response to a mass capturing at a Jewish celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, which left 15 folks lifeless.
In a current publish, Yahood, a local of the UK and a current citizen of Israel, had additionally advocated for the deportation of United States Consultant Ilhan Omar, a Somali-American, who’s Muslim.
In one other, he ridiculed the United Nations company for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which is liable for coordinating reduction for Palestinians and Palestinian refugees within the occupied West Financial institution, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
Israel started bulldozing UNRWA’s headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem final week, a transfer strongly condemned by the world physique and Palestinian leaders, who mentioned the flattening of the positioning marked a “barbaric new period” of unchecked defiance of worldwide regulation by Israeli authorities.
Regardless of the cancellation of his visa to Australia, Yahood mentioned he flew from Israel to Abu Dhabi, however was blocked from getting his connecting flight to Melbourne.
“I’ve been unlawfully banned from Australia, and I will likely be taking motion,” he wrote on X.
“This can be a story about tyranny, censorship and management,” he added in one other publish.
Yahood’s visa was reportedly cancelled beneath the identical laws that has been used up to now to reject folks’s visas on the grounds of disseminating hatred.
Sky Information Australia reported that Minister Burke beforehand revoked the customer visa of Israeli-American activist and tech entrepreneur Hillel Fuld over his “Islamophobic rhetoric”, in addition to the visa of Simcha Rothman, a lawmaker with Israel’s far-right Mafdal-Non secular Zionism celebration and a member of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, amid considerations that his deliberate talking tour within the nation would “unfold division”.
The conservative Australian Jewish Affiliation, which had invited Yahood to talk at occasions in Sydney and Melbourne, mentioned it “strongly condemned” the visa determination by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s authorities.
