PM must act on rabbi’s wise words

As Anthony Albanese has maintained his underwhelming silence on the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, one of Sydney’s leading rabbis has spoken out bravely on behalf of his people. The Prime Minister must abandon his “very mild” approach to tackling anti-Semitism and condemn hate towards Jewish people more strongly if he wants to protect Australia’s social fabric, Benjamin Elton – chief minister and senior rabbi of The Great Synagogue in Sydney, one of the nation’s oldest Jewish communities – told The Australian on Sunday. It was the strongest intervention by a rabbi to date.

Rabbi Elton said he refrained from commenting on political controversies “but when there’s moral failings or problems in society, (I’m motivated to) ask difficult questions, and to point to a better way forward’’. He was not rebuking Mr Albanese, whom he held in high regard, he said, but he could not understand why the Prime Minister had been unable to find the right language to condemn anti-Jewish hate. While politicians cannot control what every malicious actor does, they can set a tone.

Mr Albanese met Rabbi Elton and other Jewish leaders in May, when he promised to stamp out anti-Semitism. That has not proven to be the case, with blatantly hostile anti-Semitic protests in Sydney and Melbourne since, although anti-Semitic campus protests ended in late May and June. But in late September, loud Hezbollah demonstrations in our largest cities lauded former Hezbollah leader and mass murderer Hassan Nasrallah, whose picture was held up by a child in Sydney.

And last week, life became more dangerous for Jews in Sydney when a car was torched and dozens of others spray-painted with anti-Israel graffiti in the eastern suburbs. It is impossible not to draw comparisons with events in Europe 90 years ago. “Just when we had recovered as a community from the targeting of The Great Synagogue by protesters a few months ago, and when we felt we had moved on from the disgraceful behaviour at the Opera House on October 9 last year, we now find this much more extreme and aggressive attack on our doorstep,’’ Rabbi Elton writes.

Mr Albanese described the incident as “troubling” and “very disturbing”. Those words did not appreciate the disaster facing Jewish communities, the rabbi said. For others, the last straw was Mr Albanese’s silence about the ICC’s issuing an arrest warrant for Mr Netanyahu. Mr Albanese must answer questions on that issue in parliament this week.