We need a little more balance and perspective when it comes to Australia-Israel relations. There are those who are turning it into a political domestic football just as Peter Dutton did before the last election.

Australia’s Jewish community leaders have been far more strident in their criticisms of Benjamin Netanyahu than they have been in their language towards Anthony Albanese. In a letter to Netanyahu, the executive council of Australian Jewry president said that his comments about Albanese were “inflammatory and provocative, and demonstrated a woeful lack of understanding of social and political conditions in Australia.”

To be fair in a letter to Albanese last week, the president berated him for being “excessive and gratuitously insulting” by saying that Netanyahu was in denial about the sufferings of the Palestinians in Gaza. But on Netanyahu’s latest ad hominem attack, he asserted that the Israeli leader was playing right into the hands of opponents of Israel and antisemites to the detriment of the Australian Jewish community.

Meanwhile Sky-after-dark, which unashamedly backs the Coalition, continues to place the onus of the war-of-words on Albanese and foment division between the two nations. The Australian people saw right through this cheap political point-scoring at the last election. When will they ever learn?