Jewish leaders from seven nations stood in the ruins of the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne’s south-east just days from the anniversary of the day hatred came to Ripponlea in the form of 100 litres of petrol and a fire starter.

They came from Canada, the US, Argentina, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia to stand in solidarity and mourn the firebombing, the most dramatic of antisemitic hate crimes in Australia during the wave of anti-Jewish hate that has grown following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the overwhelming Israeli military retribution in Gaza.

On December 6 last year, two members of the congregation were praying in the early hours when they heard loud bangs and discovered to their horror that the Ripponlea synagogue had been set alight.

It is still a shell of a building, though the charred debris has been carted away and the precious artefacts inside have been removed to safety.

The Albanese government has committed $31.2 million to rebuild, which also includes $1.2 million to upgrade security and $250,000 to restore damaged Torah scrolls. Plans are well under way to return the congregants to their spiritual home.

The president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Daniel Aghion, told those assembled that in the year since that terrifying day, the Jews of Melbourne had continued to suffer antisemitic attacks. He accused the Albanese government of failing to act to combat antisemitism, despite having been given concrete steps to do so.

Aghion referred to his organisation’s latest annual report showing there had been 1654 incidents of antisemitism reported in the past year, 738 of them in Victoria.

“Melbourne is now the most unsafe place in Australia to be a Jew,” he said.

The incidents ranged across physical assault, vandalism, abusive messages and graffiti posters aimed directly at Jews. They did not include examples of wider discourse or messages on social media unless they were in the form of direct threats.

The 18 most serious attacks included firebombings and vandalism of Jewish synagogues, businesses and homes.

Aghion called on the federal government to urgently respond to the recommendations of a report delivered five months ago by the government’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, Jillian Segal.

“We would like to see a response to the strategic plan as soon as possible,” he said. “The government has had it for five months now, and there has been not any form of response – positive, negative, nothing. It has been silenced.”

He said Victoria had recorded more incidents of anti-Jewish hate than any other state in Australia over the past two years, and that Australia had suffered the world’s most dramatic rise in the percentage of hate incidents against Jews during that period. An estimated 46 per cent of Australia’s Jewish population lives in Melbourne.

“Australia is leading an international race to the bottom,” Aghion told those present. “That is not the competition that Australia wants to win.”

The Jewish leaders who inspected the burnt-out remains of the Adass Israel synagogue are from seven nations, including Australia, that are home to 90 per cent of the Jewish diaspora.

They represent an organisation known as the J7, formed in 2023 by the United States Anti- Defamation League.

Each said their nations were suffering a dramatic rise in incidents of hate against Jews.

The senior vice president of international affairs of the anti-Defamation League, Marina Rosenberg, said she and her colleagues had travelled from North America, Europe and South America “to express our solidarity and our support with the Jewish Australian community”.

“Unfortunately, you are not alone in your pain, but you are not alone in your resilience,” she said, referring to the Adass community and its religious leaders.

“We are here to show that we are together fighting this tsunami of anti-Jewish hate that we’ve been seeing, not only here in Australia, but all over the world.”

Aghion said the most urgent requirements were in education and efforts to foster community positivity.

“We have warned this government for two years of the critical importance of responding swiftly and strongly to anti-Jewish hatred and the danger of failing to do so. It gives me no comfort to say that we were right,” Aghion said.

He said the figures in his organisation’s latest report on antisemitic incidents were more than triple those from the two years prior to the October 7 attack on Israel, and more than five times the average over the previous 10 years.

“In the more than 35 years that the [Executive Council of Australian Jewry] has been monitoring Jew hatred in Australia, we have never seen figures anything like this,” he said.

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