Former PM Tony Abbott urges action on anti-Semitism after Bondi ‘abomination’.
Tony Abbott has branded Sunday’s Bondi terror attack the “ultimate act of hatred” while questioning why authorities have failed to prosecute those expressing “Jew hatred”.
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott wants hate preachers deported and hate marches banned in a stand against anti-Semitism while calling on the nation’s leaders to end two years of “impotent hand-wringing”.
Describing Sunday’s terror attack at Bondi as an “abomination”, Mr Abbott also queried how “someone living in Bonnyrigg had a justifiable need” for high-powered rifles.
In his recently released book Australia: A History, the PM who “stopped the boats” and a wave of illegal immigration more than a decade ago, references the October 7 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and events in this country that followed days later.
He writes about the “notable presence of recent migrants from the Middle East in the pro-Hamas demonstrations that erupted in Sydney and Melbourne” and labels a protest at the Opera House on October 9 where a mob chanted “F*** the Jews”, as Australia’s “Day of Infamy”.
Mr Abbott says a far darker day has now enveloped the country.
“Absolutely,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
“But one leads to the other, in the sense that when you have these unchecked expressions of hatred, sooner or later those expressions of hatred turn into acts of hatred.
“That’s what we saw yesterday, the ultimate act of hatred.
“I guess something that disappoints me is that from October 8 on, we’ve just seen a whole lot of impotent hand-wringing from our leaders at every level.
“Hate preachers haven’t been deported, hate marches haven’t been stopped, and people who are expressing Jew hatred haven’t been prosecuted.
“I just think it’s been a really inadequate reaction to the blatant Jew hatred which has been palpable and just so often expressed over the last two years.”
Mr Abbott said he and others have often spoken against “importing hatreds” from other parts of the world.
“There’s no doubt there’s been a lot of dreadful Jew hating overseas and now we’ve seen the most horrific manifestation of it here,” he added.
“We need to redouble our efforts to promote Australian values and guard against the erosion of those values by ideas which are just completely inconsistent with them.
“Hate preachers should be deported, hate marches should be stopped, expressions of extreme Jew hatred should be prosecuted and we just have to be vastly more vigorous in all of this than we have been over the last two years.
“Why do we have these hate marches? Why should we allow our streets to be taken over by people spewing bile?
“These hate marches have not been manifestations of free speech.
“Maybe the first time you could say it was an exercise in free speech but after that it just became an exercise in active intimidation, of Jewish people in particular, but of all law abiding Australians.”
Mr Abbott said the report from Jillian Segal – the special envoy to combat anti-Semitism – delivered to government mid-year “should have been responded to far sooner”.
But an immediate first step, he suggested, was punishing acts of hatred, including hate speech from preachers.
“I don’t think all of them are Australian citizens,” he said. “Why haven’t the non-citizens been deported and the Australian citizens been prosecuted?”
Mr Abbott also paid tribute to the nation-building contribution of Jewish Australians.
“No one has been better than Jewish Australians at maintaining their community solidarity and, at the same time, making an extraordinary contribution to wider society,” he said.
“When you look people like Sir John Monash, Sir Isaac Isaacs, Sir Zelman Cowen … the record of Jewish Australians is simply stellar and I think they deserve nothing but admiration.”
Originally published as Former PM Tony Abbott urges action on anti-Semitism after Bondi ‘abomination’.
