Time for the hate enablers to hang up their skates

The NSW Labor government, under the leadership of Premier Chris Minns, has done well in responding to the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia in recent times. Picture: Gaye Gerard

And so it has come to this. France hosted a successful Olympic Games, centred on Paris, in mid-2024. However, Ice Hockey Australia has abandoned world championship matches scheduled to be played in Melbourne in April and May 2025.

IHA officials are not saying much about this issue; neither is the Victorian Labor government, nor Victoria Police. But media leaks reveal that IHA president Ryan O’Handley advised the International Ice Hockey Federation in late December that the World Men’s Division II (Group A) championship would be cancelled on account of security concerns. The matches were to feature Australia, Belgium, Serbia, The Netherlands, United Arab Emirates and – yes – Israel.

In a leaked email, O’Handley told his international board that, in Melbourne, “anti-Israel protests and activities have escalated significantly since we were awarded the championship and there are now significant concerns regarding safety and security of the event”. Victoria Police has said that while it had provided advice about protest activity in Melbourne, the decision to cancel the matches was made by IHA.

For its part, the Victorian government, through a spokeswoman, has said the decision to cancel the event was made by the organisation. In other words, neither the Victorian government nor Victoria Police is willing to accept any responsibility for IHA’s decision.

Yet neither will say the cancellation is unwise. Victoria Police told Sky News it advised IHA about “current protest activity” in Melbourne.

Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler was quoted in The Australian Financial Review on January 6 saying “if decision-makers give in to the tactics of intimidation by anti-Israel extremists, it will continue to change the face of Australia”.

Quite so. Across recent decades, France has experienced a number of terrorist attacks by Islamist radicals. But France’s central and regional governments decided to host last year’s Olympics, even after the anti-Israel demonstrations following the Hamas-Israel war. The Victorian government, however, appears to have made no attempt to encourage IHA to go ahead with its original plan.

Anthony Albanese told Nine Network’s Today show on Tuesday that IHA’s decision was an “unfortunate” one and said ice hockey was a sport most Australians were unfamiliar with. That’s true. But it is also true that the sport has a large following in North America and parts of Europe.

The current batch of high-profile anti-Israel demonstrations in Australia began on October 9, 2023 – before Israel responded to Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel. This included the demonstration at the Sydney Opera House that featured anti-Israel and anti-Semitic chants. The protesters combined Islamists and green-left radicals along with supporters of the Palestinian cause. There were also large demonstrations in Melbourne that continued longer than in Sydney.

However, it should be pointed out that anti-Semitism in Australia did not suddenly come to a head in early October 2023. On September 23, 2023, this column referred to the decision of Debra Sue Mortimer, the Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia, in the case of Kaplan v State of Victoria.

Joel Kaplan was one of five Jewish students at Brighton Secondary College in Melbourne – a government school administered by the Victorian Department of Education – who experienced anti-Semitism by fellow students. In a withering judgment, Mortimer was highly critical of the management of this issue, between 2013 and 2020, by not only BSC but also the Victorian Department of Education. In the event, substantial damages were awarded to Kaplan and his colleagues. In view of the weight of the evidence, it is surprising that the Victorian Labor government defended the case (at considerable cost to the taxpayer) rather than settle out of court.

On August 7 last year, Melbourne-based ABC TV News Breakfast presenter Michael Rowland said that he “was horrified to read an account of a local Muslim leader in Middlesbrough (Britain) having to stand guard at the local mosque to protect it”.

Rowland seemed blissfully unaware that, for many years, there have been guards outside Jewish synagogues, schools and institutions in Melbourne and Sydney. This security has been upgraded, with some federal government funding, in recent times.

This followed the firebombing of the synagogue in the Melbourne suburb of Ripponlea that received international coverage. It was one of the reasons cited by IHA in its advice to ice hockey’s international body that the matches scheduled for autumn should not be held in Melbourne. It’s understandable why the likes of O’Hand­ley do not believe that is safe to invite sporting teams, including an Israeli one, to Australia.

The NSW Labor government, under the leadership of Premier Chris Minns, has done well in responding to the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia in recent times. The same cannot be said of the Victorian Labor government of Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan. The reaction to the international ice hockey decision was weak. The Allan government could have instructed Victoria Police to provide a safe environment for the occasion. The evidence suggests that this did not occur.

Labor has been out of office in Australia for much of the time since the end of World War II. One of Labor’s most significant contributions during this time was the role played by prime minister Ben Chifley and his attorney-general and external affairs minister Bert Evatt in the lead-up to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

On Tuesday, the Prime Minister announced that Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus would soon make an official visit to Israel. Dreyfus, who is Jewish, spoke out against anti-Semitism during a speech at the Sydney Institute on September 5 last year. He said it was “the responsibility of every part of Australian society to fight against anti-Semitism” and acknowledged that “more needs to be done”.

The Dreyfus visit has raised some criticism, with suggestions that Albanese or Foreign Minister Penny Wong should go instead. But the trip has been welcomed by Australian Jewish leaders such as Colin Rubenstein and Alex Ryvchin. Who knows? It could help to repair the Australian-Israel relationship, which has deteriorated since Israel’s current defensive war against its many enemies – led by Iran.

Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.