Strong response to anti-Semitic rallies in Australia is the only option, writes Peta Credlin

People of middle eastern appearance were bashed and chased by gangs of thousands durring the Cronulla riots of 2005.

Not long after the Cronulla riots in 2005, the Howard government introduced a citizenship test to try to ensure everyone settling in this country understood what was ­expected of them.

Question 18 of the current ­official practice version of the test asks: “Can you encourage violence against a person or group of people if you have been insulted?” The correct answer, of three alternatives, is: “No, it is against Australian values and the law.”

Question 19 asks: “Should people tolerate one another where they find that they disagree?” The correct answer is: “Yes, peaceful disagreement reflects Australian values in relation to mutual respect.”

To pass the test and be eligible for citizenship, newcomers are supposed to answer correctly all five of the Australian values questions, of which these two are in the practice version. Clearly, sentiments such as “gas the Jews” and “f--k the Jews”, as thousands of people chanted in the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House shortly after the Hamas atrocity in Israel, don’t conform to the values that are supposed to characterise this country.

Some of those proclaiming such race hate would have been Australian born; while others would have been mere residents and, therefore, never exposed to a values test. But many would have been recent citizens, Australians of convenience perhaps, who ­assented to something they didn’t believe in order to gain a privilege.

While history shows there have been racial uprisings in the past (think the Irish rebels at Castle Hill in 1804), there’s really no precedent for the current levels of racial and religious violence.

The fact tens of thousands of Australians now feel strongly enough to join protests, chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, effectively calling for the destruction of Israel in a new holocaust, is hardly consistent with the mutual respect and tolerance that many of them have supposedly signed up to, let alone the decency and respect that previously characterised Australian society.

That’s not to give the Israeli military a leave pass to ignore ­civilian casualties in their drive to destroy the Hamas leadership and to neutralise its terrorist army. But these protesters, many it seems relatively new Australian citizens, are not simply urging a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza; they’re on Hamas’s side in its ­relentless bid to destroy Israel.

What have we done to our country in accepting migrants so at odds with mainstream Australian thinking?

Palestine supporters rally outside the Sydney Opera House.

In a powerful and prescient speech delivered a few weeks prior to October 7, British Home Secretary Suella Braverman, ­herself the child of Mauritian and Kenyan immigrants of Indian background, attacked multiculturalism as it’s practised in most Western countries. “Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism” she said, “have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades.”

“Multiculturalism,” she said, “makes no demands of the incomer to integrate.”

“It has failed,” she said, “because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it. They could be in the society but not of the society. And in extreme cases, they could pursue lives aimed at undermining the stability and threatening the security of our society.”

Former PM John Howard has recently made much the same point, telling the Alliance of Responsible Citizenship conference in London that he’d “always had trouble” with the concept of multiculturalism because it meant “we try too hard to institutionalise differences rather than celebrate what we have in common”. His view was “if people want to emigrate to a country”, then they must “adopt the values and practices of that country”.

But that’s hardly what’s happening with at least some of our recent immigrant communities. Nearly all of those found guilty of terrorist offences in Australian courts have been recent immigrants from the Middle East.

Britain's Home Secretary Suella Braverman

And while there are plenty of neo-Marxist academics who see the Israel-Palestine issue through the prism of “white privilege” or “colonial oppression”, many of the angry protesters now flooding Western cities have been from recent immigrant communities that plainly don’t think their Australian or British citizenship means respect for a fellow democracy where the rights of women, gays and other minorities are taken seriously. Indeed, the Israeli parliament is comprised of MPs of almost every faith, including Jews, Muslim, Christians and more; as well as a solid representation of men and women, while most of Israel’s neighbours remain in the dark ages.

One way to limit the impact of unintegrated minorities would be to reduce immigration across the board. This would also have the advantage of alleviating the downward pressure on wages, the upward pressure on housing costs, and the massive pressure on infrastructure produced by current immigration at record levels. But what’s really needed is a much stronger expectation of people that, whatever their background, to use Tony Abbott’s term, they’ll join “Team Australia”. That doesn’t imply migrants should forget their homelands or abandon old values. It clearly does mean, though, a readiness to adhere to Australian law.

Another problem we must tackle head on is mosques and ­Islamic centres that spew violence and hate under the guise of religious preaching. In Britain and France, the failure of successive governments to take this threat seriously has enabled some Islamic institutions to become de facto radicalisation centres and we cannot allow that to become further entrenched here. Entities of concern should all be audited, sermons translated and assessed for hate speech and any government support or charitable status urgently reviewed.

Jihad Dib

We must also call out the false flag of all-but-non-existent “Islamophobia” trotted out by politicians of the Left whenever they’re forced to condemn demonstrable and rampant anti-Semitism. The hypersensitivity to Islamophobia, as opposed to anti-Semitism, shown by leaders from US Vice-President Kamala Harris to NSW minister Jihad Dib reflects the diffidence, verging-on-self-loathing that our New Left progressive establishments have for societies like ours that are far from perfect but, nonetheless, are the best ­societies that mankind has yet produced; and in which Jewish people have long been respected high achievers.

As global challenges escalate, the sooner we snap out of this ­cultural confusion the better it will be for almost everything. A good start would be identifying those who’ve taken part in the ­recent anti-Semitic protests, prosecuting those who are Australian citizens and deporting those who are not.