Australia has been weak when we needed to be strong

Former federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg in Be'eri Kibbutz in southern Israel, where more than 100 people were murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7.

As we approach the first-year anniversary of the October 7 attack we see a region on fire.

Israel, a country a third of the size of Tasmania and with a population of less than 10 million, is simultaneously fighting enemies on seven fronts – Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and the puppetmaster Iran – countries and territories with a combined population of more than 200 million people.

It’s a lopsided conflict in which Israel is outmanned but not outsmarted. With the aid of the Americans and very few others, Israel has used technology and ingenuity to inflict a serious blow on Hezbollah and Hamas.

While the fightback has come at an enormous cost, with innocent lives lost on both sides, there is for Israel no other way. A lost war would be its last war – put simply, Israel cannot afford to lose.

As Israel’s formidable former prime minister Golda Meir once quipped, “We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle … we have no place to go.”

OCTOBER 7: A YEAR ON

‘They’re here’: a family’s tale of escape as Hamas terrorists attacked

The October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel shocked the world. In this gripping first-hand account, Amir Tibon describes how his family’s safety hung in the balance for hours.

The real-life horror movie our politicians refuse to see

Raw footage, running for about 45 minutes, captures the unspeakable horror of October 7: innocent people being murdered, beheaded, hunted down, raped, kicked, bashed, burnt alive. Here’s what Australia’s leaders had to say when I asked if they had seen it.

To the political left, some kids matter more than others

In my life I never imagined a situation where the government of a free, functioning democracy such as Australia would be unable to tell right from wrong. Would be so comfortable walking in step with the wicked, unable to take a stand against evil.

Notes from a long war: Israel one year on from the October 7 massacre

This war on the ‘villa in the jungle’ was launched to test a thesis. It has been disproven at a very high cost.

In exile: how Jews became a perpetually persecuted people

Without a homeland, their community was at the mercy of monarchs, popes and prime ministers. For the writer, tracing the history of Sephardic Jews in Europe was to walk in the forever-moving footsteps of his forebears.

It’s a harsh reality that peace­niks may find hard to accept but Iran, the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah do not recognise Israel’s right to exist.

How can you make peace with people who wake up each morning seeking to destroy you?

It is why this conflict need not be overcomplicated. It is a battle of good v evil. Democracy v theocracy. Between those who celebrate life and those who celebrate martydom and death.

If that weren’t clear from the sadistic actions of Hamas on October 7 and the barbaric treatment of the hostages, more than 100 of whom have yet to return including many women, children and the elderly, I don’t know what is.

One would hope that such horrific events would bring moral clarity from our leaders, but here in Australia the opposite has been the case. The Albanese government has abandoned Israel, reversing more than seven decades of bipartisanship stretching from Evatt to Menzies, Hawke to Howard and most recently Gillard to Morrison.

Australia’s response has been characterised by doublespeak and equivocation, with the government unable to stake out a clear moral position and hold it with conviction. The result has been to project weakness abroad and create a leadership vacuum at home. Australia is less safe as a result.

On the same day of the October 7 attack, with the blood of the innocent victims not even dry, Foreign Minister Penny Wong was calling for Israel’s restraint. Since then she has led pious calls for a ceasefire that in the absence of Hamas’s defeat would lead it to regroup and, in the terror group’s own words, go again.

When Israel is again attacked by Iran we hear Wong say Israel has a right to defend itself, but with no clarity as to what that statement really means. Does it mean when 200 Iranian missiles rain on your cities you have a right to send 200 back the other way?

With our current government you just don’t know. It seems its problem is that in principle it supports Israel’s right to self-defence but in practice it does not.

The real question for the Australian government is: What would it do if an event such as October 7 happened to us?

On the same day of the October 7 attack, Foreign Minister Penny Wong called for Israel’s restraint. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

It’s obvious. The government would have no option but to respond with everything at its disposal. In such a situation, former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson told me for my Sky News documentary, his advice to the government would be to go after the culprits for as long as it takes, wherever it takes, with whatever it takes.

In the days following October 7 world leaders descended on Israel to offer comfort and support, but not our Prime Minister – he kept his distance. While our Foreign Minister would eventually visit Israel, she avoided paying her respects at the site of the atrocities in the south of the country.

Notwithstanding the fact a Sydney grandmother, Galit Carbone, was murdered by Hamas at Kibbutz Be’eri, it is unthinkable that our Foreign Minister would bypass the World Trade Centre if she visited New York in the aftermath of 9/11.

So, too, at the UN under this government we have broken with our allies the US and Britain, supporting resolutions that haven’t even called for the return of the hostages and the surrender of Hamas.

The Australian government’s perceived indifference to Israel’s fate has been matched by a worrying indifference to the fate of the local Jewish community and, with it, our treasured social cohesion.

The protests started on Sydney streets just hours after the attack on October 7, with crowds celebrating Hamas’s crimes, soon followed with chants of “F..k the Jews” by a rampaging mob on the steps of the Sydney Opera House.

A protest on the forecourt of The Sydney Opera House following the attack on October 7. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Jeremy Piper

These demonstrations led to no criminal sanction, and the images from those notorious events reverberated around the world for all the wrong reasons.

It didn’t stop there. During the past 12 months there has been an explosion of anti-Semitism in Australia, with one example after another of unacceptable conduct.

Riots in the predominantly Jewish suburb of Caulfield in Melbourne following false allegations that Jews were responsible for burning down a burger joint.

The doxxing of 600 Jewish creatives with some of our leading artists, including the award-winning musician Deborah Conway, being cancelled for their views.

The boycotting and vandalising of businesses, simply because they are owned by a Jew. And in some cases – for example, at Officeworks – Jewish customers being refused service.

The intimidation and harassment of Jewish students and staff with some Jewish schools now advising students to avoid wearing their uniforms outside of the school grounds for fear for their safety.

The camps of hate at our universities have been a disgrace, with student activists so emboldened they even publicly profess their “unconditional support” for Hamas, a listed terrorist organisation.

There have been far too few university leaders prepared to speak out with Professor Peter Morgan, who is not Jewish, a notable exception. He saw first-hand the intimidation in his classroom, saying “the issue at the University of Sydney was clear: the targeting of Jews on the basis of ethnicity” with the vice-chancellor having “acted too little and too late”.

Whether it has been in the workplace or the classroom, on the stage or in the street, a conflict thousands of kilometres from our shores has made us feel much less safe here at home.

Anti-Semitism has become normalised, and it’s not just the Jews who are the victims – it is Australia that pays the price.

We must take notice when the likes of former governor-general Sir Peter Cosgrove said of recent events in Australia, “Hitler would be proud.”

If we are going to turn the tide on anti-Semitism we need leaders who are prepared stand up and be counted in defending the values of our country.

The law must be enforced, people must know it is not free speech to spew hatred and it’s not OK to wave the Hezbollah flag and call for the destruction of the State of Israel.

Surely, as Julia Gillard has said, we here in Australia are better than this.

Josh Frydenberg is the former federal treasurer. Together with Sky News he produced a documentary, Never Again: The Fight Against Anti-Semitism. This is an excerpt from a speech he will deliver in Melbourne at an October 7 commemorative service.