Challenging ugly face of racism

Johannes Leak’s take.

The proactive response of NSW police when 61 black-clad neo-Nazis boarded a Sydney train a week ago was swift and correct. The heavily disguised, menacing-looking men were quickly moved on and six were arrested. Police should have been similarly conscientious in October when aggressive pro-Hamas supporters burned the Israeli flag and bellowed anti-Semitic slogans in front of the Sydney Opera House. It was October 9, two nights after Hamas terrorists slaughtered 1200 Israelis, including infants and the elderly, and kidnapped another 240. Israel had not yet responded to the attack.

In failing to stop the rally, on a night the iconic building was lit in blue and white as a mark of respect for Israel, NSW police and their minister, Yasmin Catley, showed appalling judgment. The sole arrest was of a peaceful Jewish man, seconds after he emerged from Town Hall station with the Israeli flag wrapped around a pole. Like many Australian Jews (who were advised by police to stay away from the Opera House), he had hoped to visit the Opera House. Like raucous, hate-filled demonstrations, including fireworks, a night earlier in western Sydney, the pro-Hamas gathering at the Opera House was more party than protest, a celebration of the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. It demanded an effective, proportionate response – on the night. Friday’s news, lauded in left-wing, anti-Israel media, that after four months, forensic analysis of audio-video files of the protest has led police to conclude the phrase “gas the Jews” was not chanted, does not redeem the deplorable spectacle in any way. The analysis found that “where’s the Jews?” and “f..k the Jews” were chanted.

Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, says “where’s the Jews?’’ is even “far more menacing and directly threatening” than “gas the Jews”. The chanting “was about ‘let us find these people’, and what they were going to do if they came across some Jews”, he said. “It’s the sentiment, it’s the nature, it’s the tone and tenor of what was intended, and that’s something that’s truly chilling.’’

And multiple witnesses have signed statutory declarations attesting that they heard the “gas the Jews’’ slur. Had police done a proper job on the ground mingling among the crowd, or making their own video, the matter would never have been in doubt.

The claim by the NSW Council for Civil Liberties that the Minns government rushed through changes to the Crimes Act “as a direct reaction to a video which had now been found to be false’’ is ludicrous. As Premier Chris Minns says, the protest was “violent and racist”. And the tirade of hate speech and anti-Semitism that was unleashed that notorious night has reared its ugly head around the nation. The inability of NSW authorities to charge hate-filled extremist preachers, who have urged Muslims to engage in jihad and described Jews as “monsters” and “descendants of pigs and monkeys” who “ran like rats” from Hamas on October 7, defies belief.

Pro-Hamas activists in Melbourne have also got away with pushing their protests to reckless extremes. That includes teachers encouraging children to skip class to attend anti-Israel rallies and the protest in the lobby of a Melbourne hotel where families of Israeli victims of Hamas were staying. It has also emerged that a violent demonstration late last year in the Melbourne suburb of Caulfield, a Jewish stronghold, was based on a false premise – a false claim that a fire in a local burger bar, owned by a man of Palestinian heritage, was a “hate crime’’. Victoria Police debunked the claim this week. Two men, aged 27 and 25, have been arrested.

As the Hamas-Israel war continues, federal and state authorities have a serious responsibility to drive back the encroachment of anti-Semitism in pockets of Australia. Left unchecked, it would be an ugly stain on the nation’s society. Mixed signals by the Albanese government over key issues, such as voting in the UN General Assembly in favour of a premature ceasefire in Gaza, against the US and Israel, have not helped. The government’s response to the ­United Nations Relief and Works Agency is a big test. Australia is one of 18 nations that, correctly, paused funding after the UNRWA sacked nine staff accused of participating in the October 7 attacks. Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s view that the matter be resolved, and aid to the UNRWA be potentially restarted as it is “the only organisation which delivers the assistance and substantive support within the international system” to Palestinians, is a problem. Israeli intelligence estimates 10 per cent of the UNRWA’s 12,000 staff in Gaza belong to or are affiliated with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and half the staff have a close relative active in the militant groups. A better way must be found to get food, water, medicines and other supplies to the starving, suffering civilians of Gaza, whose terrible plight was triggered by Hamas on October 7.