RUTHFULLY YOURS

The standard you walk past, as the famous Australian saying goes, is the standard you accept. Unfortunately for Jewish Australians, the standard set by the Labor government when it comes to anti-Semtism could hardly be any lower.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Australians woke to the news that a Sydney childcare centre had been firebombed and sprayed with anti-Semitic graffiti. Last weekend, two masked figures attempted (and failed) to burn down a synagogue. Theses would once have been significant national events. But not so now, in Anthony Albanese’s Australia. They were merely just the latest of several recent attacks on Jewish property.

In December, Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue, in the prominent and historic Jewish suburb of Ripponlea, was burnt to the ground in possibly the most significant act of anti-Semitism in Australian history. Last week, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, two cars were set alight, many more were graffitied with anti-Semitic slogans, and the former home of Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, was doused in red paint.

Anti-Semitism now pervades Australian society. It began, as most of the world now knows, on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, with crowds celebrating Hamas’s atrocities on 7 October 2023. It blossomed into regular, vicious anti-Israel marches, including one mourning the death of Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader responsible for the indiscriminate bombing of northern Israel. During that time, protesters have routinely damaged the offices of politicians deemed supportive of Israel – and they’ve done so, for the most part, with impunity. By the time the office of Jewish MP Josh Burns was targeted last June, with vandals deploying an age-old anti-Semitic trope by adorning his photograph with Satanic horns, hardly anyone could claim to be surprised.

This resurgent anti-Semitism has varied in scale and nature. Alongside the Third Reich-style attacks on synagogues and prominent Jewish Australians, there have also been myriad more ‘minor’ incidents. Jewish academics have had their talks cancelled. Jewish creatives have been censored, harassed and doxxed.

But what unites all these instances of anti-Semitism has been the pitiful response of the authorities. The 17-year-old who caused around $100,000 AUD damage to Burns’s office is set to avoid a criminal conviction. The same leniency was afforded to the people who breached security at Parliament House, traipsed across the roof and draped the building’s entrance with banners accusing Israel (and Australia) of genocide.

Over the course of six months last year, the anti-Israel mob was even given carte blanche to blockade and vandalise the prime minister’s own electorate office in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Marrickville. Rather than take a stand against this campaign of intimidation, Albanese caved.

No one can accuse this Labor government of endorsing anti-Semitism – Albanese has even appointed a ‘special envoy’ to combat it. But there’s little doubt that it has helped create conditions in which hostility to Israel can flourish, which is in turn used as cover for anti-Semitism.

The role played by foreign minister Penny Wong is particularly significant. She refused to visit the sites of the 7 October massacre, even when she belatedly made her way to Israel. Under her instruction, Australia has consistently voted in favour of UN resolutions whose only beneficiary would have been Hamas. She has equated Israel, the Middle East’s sole democracy, with Russia and China.

After the burning of a synagogue this month, Australian Jews might be tempted to comfort themselves with the thought that things can’t get any worse. But they can. With a federal election approaching in which Labor is expected to lose seats to the anti-Israel Greens and to candidates backed by the recently established Muslim Votes Matter, the chances of the government tackling the rabid anti-Semitism engulfing Australia will become even more remote.

Ryvchin said there is ‘evil at work’ after his former home was targeted. He is right. Australia’s progress on racial equality, from the country of the ‘white Australia policy’ to one of the most successful multicultural societies in the world, has faltered. Jew hatred is now being allowed to flourish unchecked. It’s time to take a stand.

Hugo Timms is an intern at spiked.