The Australian government canceled the visa of a British-Israeli activist and critic of Islam shortly before he was scheduled to fly Down Under to speak before Jewish audiences.

“As in other cases, they wait until the last minute,” the Australian Jewish Association, which invited the activist known as Sammy Yahood to speak, said on X, noting that the visa was yanked three hours before Yahood’s flight was scheduled to take off.

Yahood, who uses that name (it means “Jews” in Arabic) for safety reasons, grew up in the United Kingdom and recently moved to Israel, was due to run a series of self-defense workshops and launch his “peace through strength” campaign.

“Another Jewish visitor has had his visa canceled. Sammy Yahood is a British and Israeli citizen. He is Jewish,” the AJA wrote.

The visa’s cancellation coincided with a new policy meant to keep out threats to the Jewish community, AJA said. “Parliament just voted to increase the powers of Toby Burke to cancel visas as an apparent response to support the Jewish community following the Bondi massacre,” AJA said, referencing the murder of 15 people at a Chanukah party in Sydney on Dec. 14.

Robert Gregory, the CEO of AJA, said in a statement that the cancellation of Yahood’s visa was part of a “misuse of Interior Minister Tony Burke’s ministerial powers” under new hate speech laws….

“This targeting is particularly galling given that the government has not acted against Islamic hate preachers,” Gregory said. “Whenever I speak to Jewish people around the world, they express great concern about what has happened in Australia. This is going to further tarnish Australia’s reputation.”

Yahood has criticized Islam on X, saying it “cannot be trusted to simply ‘co-exist.’” On Nov. 6, he wrote on X: “It’s time to ban Islam. It’s time to stop being tolerant of those that are not tolerant of us.”…