Andrew Bolt: Jews need Anthony Albanese and his ministers to stop adding to the hate
Anthony Albanese’s visit to the Adass Israel Synagogue was a PR debacle and proof he lacks all moral authority, after failing for so long to act against Jew haters with strength and principle and pandering instead to Muslim and anti-Israel Greens supporters.
Andrew Bolt
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I almost feel sorry for Anthony Albanese. I saw the fear on his face as he finally turned up at the Adass synagogue, four days after it was firebombed, to see more of the mayhem many Jews blame on him.
The Prime Minister also seemed bewildered. Hasn’t he said all the right things?
He’s said this is terrorism. It’s shocking. He’s set up a police task force. He’ll spend $32m to protect Jewish schools and synagogues.
Yet at the synagogue on Tuesday they heckled him. Yelled insults. And Albanese, flustered, panicked. He brushed aside questions from reporters and bystanders and fled to his car.
It was a PR debacle, and – worse – proof that Albanese is broken as a leader. He lacks all moral authority, after failing for so long to act against Jew haters with strength and principle, and pandering instead to Muslim and anti-Israel Greens supporters.
The next day Albanese proved again he’s a busted flush when he went through the same performative ritual, this time after yet another car was torched in Jewish Woollahra, and cars, buildings and pathways daubed with anti-semitic graffiti, including “Kill Israiel” (sic).
“Outrage,” Albanese said. “anti-Semitic.” “Condemn.” “Police.”
But at the end of it, Alex Ryvchin, co-leader of the Executive Council for Australian Jewry, declared: “I don’t want to hear anything from the Prime Minister.” Albanese had missed his chance to lead when it counted, 14 months ago when a Muslim mob disrupted a commemoration of the 1200 Jews murdered on October 7, chanting: “Where’s the Jews?”
Israel’s ambassador also treated Albanese as a spent force. He said he’d discussed this Woollahra attack with NSW Premier Chris Minns. No mention of Albanese.
Like I say, I almost feel sorry for Albanese, so let me tell him what he just doesn’t understand. Anthony, you don’t get thanks for being nice when you offer a glass of water to a Jew you’re burning at the stake.
Jews don’t really want you to turn their schools and synagogues into fortresses. They don’t just want more police to defend them from the bigots attacking them with rocks and sticks, picketing their synagogues, vandalising their homes, abusing their children, occupying their campuses, boycotting their artists, burning the office of a Jewish MP, preaching Jew-hatred in mosques, or yelling they’re “elated” when Jews are massacred.
No, Prime Minister, rather than adding to the police, they’d prefer you and your ministers stop adding to the hate.
We saw Albanese’s problem again on Wednesday. At the very moment he was at the Adass synagogue to show he cared, his Industry Minister, Ed Husic, was ludicrously arguing on Sky News that our 800,000 Muslims faced the same hatred as did our 100,000 Jews.
Look, he said, some person 11 months ago left a container of petrol on a car with a note demanding a Palestinian flag be taken down, and this was “equally bad” as the firebombing of the Adass synagogue.
Then there was Foreign Minister Penny Wong giving yet another speech monstering Israel on the very night before Albanese’s visit.
Her government has already voted against Israel in the United Nations, backed a warrant for the arrest of its Prime Minister for “war crimes”, demanded it stop fighting terrorist armies which attacked it, and banned a former Israel Justice Minister from visiting.
This time Wong implied Israel was a rogue state, bracketing it with dictatorial China and genocidal Russia while demanding it follow the rules. How inflammatory. How offensive.
Wong defended herself by saying criticising Israel was not anti-semitic, but when this government criticises the Jewish state more than any other, even falsely implying it’s guilty of war crimes, no wonder Jew-haters feel justified.
I should mention one other Minister. The day before the Adass synagogue was torched, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced he’d fast-track humanitarian visas for 800 Palestinians rushed in from terrorist-run Gaza.
How does importing more Muslims from that war zone make Jews here safer? I suspect Premier Minns was thinking of our reckless immigration policies when he suggested on Wednesday we could have “a long discussion” about “where this intergenerational hatred and racism comes from, particularly directed at the Jewish community”.
So Albanese can add all the police he likes, but Jews won’t feel safe until his government stops fanning the flames with its attacks on Israel, its tolerance of hate-preachers, and its mass immigration from Muslim war zones.
But does anyone see Albanese agreeing to any of that? No wonder his blah blah gets booed.
Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Jews need Anthony Albanese and his ministers to stop adding to the hate
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