Australia is supposed to be a nation of tolerance and acceptance – the one place in a troubled world where people of different ethnicities, cultures and faiths can get along.
That no longer feels like the case. Since the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023, and the conflict in Gaza and Israel, Australia has been exposed as a simmering hotbed of ethnic and religious hatred.
The ugliest strain of all is anti-Semitism. It may have been breathed into life by Hamas’s evil, but it has been latent in Australia’s communities, as they have become ever more ethnically and religiously diverse, for some time. To many Jewish Australians, our city centres have become no-go zones. Every Sunday since October 2023 they have been occupied by noisy, abusive and hate-filled anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian rallies. As in London, New York and other major western cities, it has been fashionable to protest vehemently and violently against Israel, Zionism and, quite simply, Judaism.
These acts of anti-Semitism show no sign of abating
Soon enough, the protests turned into violence against the property of the Jewish community and threats against Jews. Jewish people walking on the street, identifiable by their yarmulkes or orthodox Jewish dress, frequently have been abused and threatened by others.
These acts of anti-Semitism show no sign of abating. The torching of the Adass orthodox synagogue in Melbourne last month made international headlines, but it was just one of an increasing number of anti-Jewish acts of vandalism. Cars in residential areas of Sydney with a sizeable Jewish community are being defaced with ugly anti-Semitic slogans. So too are Jewish synagogues and community buildings, including childcare centres and schools. The former home of a high-profile Jewish community leader, Alex Ryvchin, was recently attacked, presumably because the attackers still believed he lived there.
Last week’s anti-Semitic attack on a childcare centre – which is not specifically Jewish, but situated close to a synagogue in the Sydney seaside suburb of Maroubra – raised the hate bar yet again. This time, the centre was both splashed with vile anti-Semitic messages and set alight.
After a year of lip service about confronting this surge in anti-Jewish hostility, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese finally was compelled to act this week. On Tuesday, he called an urgent video meeting of Australian’s state premiers and territory chief ministers to determine how best they could work together to combat the scourge of anti-Semitism.
The commissioner of the Australian Federal Police (AFP), Reece Kershaw, briefed the meeting. Effectively, Kershaw is Australia’s top cop. To the surprise of the state and territory leaders, he stated that the AFP and Australian intelligence agencies have been working with Five Eyes partners – Britain, the United States, Canada and New Zealand – to ascertain ‘whether overseas actors or individuals have paid local criminals in Australia to carry out some of these crimes in our suburbs,’ as he said in a subsequent statement. ‘We are looking at if – or how – they have been paid, for example in cryptocurrency, which can take longer to identify’.
On Wednesday, Kershaw went further. ‘We believe criminals for hire may be behind some incidents, so part of our inquiries include who is paying those criminals, where those people are, whether they are in Australia or offshore, and what their motivation is’.
In other words, Kershaw is implying that the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran or like-minded terrorist groups, are channelling funds to the perpetrators of these acts.
Yet the arrests that have been made so far – including a Sydney man charged with attempted arson of another synagogue earlier this month – do not suggest there has been an orchestrated wave of violence. What they do suggest is that, whether fired up by hatred of Israel or Jews in general, individuals and small groups are committing acts of anti-Semitic violence and intimidation when they have the means and opportunity.
Kershaw’s dramatic and startling assertions may be based on international intelligence. But our prime minister effectively using this to deflect blame from the ugly side of Australian society is just a little too convenient for many Australians, both Jewish and gentile. Many believe that when it comes to anti-Semitism, Albanese and his government, perhaps intimidated by the fear of losing parliamentary seats with sizeable Muslim minorities, have been culpably slow to act on this issue.
The prime minister claims to have acted ‘from day one’ to protect the Jewish community. Yet that ‘day one’ – 9 October 2023 – was also the day a vociferous pro-Hamas and pro-Palestinian rally marched on the Sydney Opera House, shouting vile anti-Jewish slogans and condoning Hamas’s violence against Israeli Jews. And yet it was a single man who dared to confront the protesters, armed only with an Israeli flag, who was arrested that night.
As much as our political and law enforcement authorities want us to at least consider that the hatred that has convulsed Australia can be explained by external puppeteers, the reality is that the cancer of anti-Semitism in Australia is home-grown.
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