I have had a longstanding relationship with Anthony Albanese, as he mentioned during a doorstop interview on Wednesday when he was asked about the government’s response to the current anti-Semitism crisis in Australia.
I readily acknowledge that the Prime Minister has been a sincere and consistent opponent of all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism in particular, across the decades I have known him.
Yet I also have to say that the Jewish community, and many Australians of other backgrounds who have inundated my organisation with heartfelt messages of support during the epidemic of anti-Semitism across the past 15 months, are disappointed at what they see as the hesitancy and inadequacy of the government’s response, and that of our law enforcement agencies.
The measures taken by the government to date include grants totalling $57.5m for community security, an $8m grant to the Sydney Jewish Museum, the appointment of a special envoy to combat anti-Semitism and the passing of new legislation to make our anti-incitement laws more workable, to ban the public display of Nazi and terrorist symbols, the Nazi salute and the trade in Nazi memorabilia.
Most of these are measures that have long been called for by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, and we commend the Prime Minister and the government for implementing them.
On the other side of the ledger, we would much prefer to live in a safe and secure Australia in which security funding was not needed.
Further, as we have told the government and various parliamentary inquiries, some of their key legislative reforms are formulated in a problematic way and will not work in practice.
In addition, the government has never repudiated head-on the fever of anti-Israel and often overtly anti-Semitic rhetoric at our universities, in various parts of civil society and on online platforms.
This is the breeding ground for the hatred that has helped spawn arson and graffiti attacks and countless other forms of anti-Semitism. In fact, some of the government’s recent commentary in the area of foreign policy has had the unintended consequence of making things worse.
Our Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, in recent times has floated the idea of Australia recognising Palestinian statehood “as a way of building momentum towards a two-state solution”, rather than as the outcome of a negotiated peace agreement.
After the past 15 months, it is hard to understand how recognising a Palestinian state without a comprehensive peace deal, while large segments of the Palestinian leadership remain determined to wipe Israel off the map, will do anything other than play to the genocidal aims of these extremists.
There cannot be a Palestinian state without a single central government that is capable of asserting its authority and control over its people and territory.
Instead, we continue to have an agglomeration of terrorist warlords and their supporters, all armed to the teeth and pursuing their disparate agendas, which include repeating the October 7 atrocities against Israel, again and again.
We wait in hope for the government to make strong demands of the Palestinian leadership, including a Palestinian blueprint for a two-state peace, with detailed proposals on borders, settlements, refugees and Jerusalem – not merely the same old maximalist rhetoric.
The Israelis have made three detailed offers for a comprehensive peace, including the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, which have been answered by rejection or silence.
As the government’s discourse on the conflict has become more one-sided against Israel, it has been seized on by anti-Israel groups to awaken and exploit anti-Semitic prejudices as a kind of tactic to silence the Jewish community’s voice, which is overwhelmingly supportive of Israel.
What has followed has been the importation into Australia of an unprecedented level of hatred and violence associated with a foreign conflict.
After the recent abhorrent arson and graffiti attacks against synagogues, private homes, motor vehicles and, most disgracefully, a childcare centre, there now seems to be a new sense of urgency on the government’s part that is belated but nonetheless welcome.
The convening of the national cabinet on Tuesday to deal with the crisis of anti-Semitism in Australia was a step my organisation called for in early December.
National cabinet can provide federal, state and territory governments with the leadership and direction to attack the problem of anti-Semitism in co-ordination.
The decision to establish a national database to track anti-Semitic crime and other anti-Semitic incidents and behaviours is also something we have long called for but needs to go further so that the database tracks all hate-motivated crime, as governments have been doing in Britain, Canada and the US for more than 30 years.
This modest but important measure can be only a first step.
To get serious, national cabinet needs to send out riding instruction to the Standing Council of Attorneys-General, the Education Ministers Meeting and other arms of government to achieve a co-ordinated whole-of government response to anti-Semitism in law enforcement, legislative reform, school education, universities and civil society. There can be no let-up until this current scourge of anti-Jewish hatred is expunged from our public life.
Peter Wertheim is co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
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