PM, this violence and racism can’t go on any longer

An anti-Semitic attack that targeted the former home of Alex Ryvchin. Picture: OnScene Bondi

This wave of terror in our suburbs against ordinary Australians is unprecedented. Our country has never been like this before.

The stomach churns at the knowledge anti-Semites, living among us, feel emboldened to brazenly commit extreme acts of violence targeting Australian Jews.

What gives these criminals the right to harass our community, set fire to cars and splash red paint on the front of homes, as took place in Sydney’s predominantly Jewish suburb of Dover Heights in the early hours of Friday morning?

Some criminals are so proud of their hatred against their fellow Australians that they don’t make any serious attempt to disguise their face.

It’s a rebellious challenge to police; a reflection on the lax law enforcement that’s been left wanting on this issue over 15 long months.

The wave of midnight crime targeting Jews is an obscene violation of our safety in Australia, and it has to stop.

We all know how it came to this – weak political leadership and infrequent police arrests and convictions ever since the Opera House protest on October 9, 2023.

Police wasted resources nitpicking the precise anti-Semitic phrase that was uttered during that hate-filled rampage that took place at our national icon, rather than make a series of arrests that would have set the tone that racism will unequivocally not be tolerated.

Hate preachers were also given the green-light to incite racism. No laws broken, nothing to see here, carry on.

For unfathomable reasons, police and politicians looked the other way, naively hoping the threats to the Jewish community would simply disappear. That they wouldn’t be required to take any meaningful action or think too deeply about how to stop the racism against Jews from exploding.

Albanese’s top government ministers, even recently, insisted on speaking about Islamophobia when asked about the anti-Semitism crisis.

This downplayed the devastating reality that there was a genuine racism emergency unfolding against Jews.

It reflected their lack of concern about the problem. And if they couldn’t speak about anti-Semitism publicly without mentioning Islamophobia, even when pressed with tough questions in media interviews, then they certainly weren’t dedicating their time at cabinet to worrying about how to tackle the scourge.

This should have been the top priority for the Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke but, of course, Jews aren’t his constituents in his western Sydney marginal seat, so it seems to us that our safety matters less to him.

Albanese appointed his own hand-picked anti-Semitism envoy, Jillian Segal, but then has rejected the advice she’s given him, showing the appointment was a political stunt rather than a serious attempt to deeply address this crisis.

Then Prime Minister ignored Segal’s suggestion for a judicial inquiry into anti-Semitism on university campuses, where a whole generation of students are being indoctrinated to hate their fellow Australians of the Jewish faith.

He has also ignored her demand, supported by Peter Dutton, to convene a national cabinet on the anti-Semitism crisis.

And worse, Albanese and his ministers, predominantly Penny Wong, continue to fan the flames of anti-Semitism by repeatedly criticising Israel, which only emboldens the aggressive pro-Palestinian activists.

They should calm the tensions by immediately stopping their public inflammatory criticism of Israel, that’s both obsessive and inaccurate.

If Albanese’s government had focused their public commentary on Hamas over the past 15 months, and put the spotlight on the plight of the hostages, particularly a baby and a little child, demanding more often the terror group release them, this may have set a different tone that didn’t paint the Jewish homeland as the aggressor.

It would have been genuine leadership and temperatures on our streets may have been calmer.

Instead, we see Albanese in one breath criticise Israel and in the next call for calm on this issue on our Australian streets.

Can’t he see this inconsistent messaging is part of the problem? It doesn’t work.

As Prime Minister of Australia, not Gaza, his only duty is to keep Australians safe, not solve the wars in the Middle East where he has zero influence.

Yet, with each anti-Semitic attack, Albanese addresses the issue by repeating the same lines in the same drone-like voice.

The words, repeated so frequently, become meaningless. Just lines. I can recite what Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is going to say in my sleep. We condemn all acts of anti-Semitism. There’s no place for this in our country. Yawn. The dreary lines, trotted out, have lost their impact, if they ever had any.

It’s time for genuine action. There’s been enough condemnation at daily press conferences.

The weak messages from politicians who criticise the Jewish homeland are clearly not an effective deterrent.

We know it’s not working because the same criminal acts are repeated, week after week, and they’re escalating in frequency and intensity.

With each attack, Australian Jews are feeling more and more terrorised.

No Australian should have to live in daily fear for their safety, irrespective of religious beliefs.

We urgently need minimum sentences across the country for perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence. We need police to catch the offenders and enforce the law.

We need the Prime Minister to come out strongly and say that anyone who targets the Jewish community will do jail time – and he needs to make sure there’s a nationally-consistent approach to the law. Anything less is allowing the status-quo to continue. This is no way to live in what’s meant to be a peaceful and safe country.

Prime Minister, this can’t go on any longer. All Australians have all had enough of this unacceptable violence and racism. It’s un-Australian.

Sharri

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