Labor‘s lack of political and moral courage in combating anti-Semitism

Anthony Albanese has failed to provide adequate community and social leadership responding to the tide of anti-Semitism unleashed by the Middle East conflict on October 7.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry chief executive Peter Wertheim. Picture: John Feder/The Australian

Anthony Albanese’s commitment to social cohesion and Australia’s multicultural project looms as a key test for the government and the nation in 2024.

So far, the Prime Minister has failed to provide adequate community and social leadership responding to the tide of anti-Semitism unleashed by the Middle East conflict on October 7.

There can be no doubt the abuse of Jews by radical hate preachers in recent weeks – likening them to the “descendants of pigs and monkeys” – amounts to an unforgivable breach of Australian multiculturalism.

Yet this obvious point has not been made forcefully enough by federal Labor. The reality is the federal government has been tepid in responding to rising anti-Semitism and has rarely framed it as a long-term threat to multicultural society.

State governments and police have also been unable to meaningfully penalise those who do the wrong thing, warning recent anti-Semitic diatribes from Islamic clerics in southwest Sydney have not crossed into the realm of criminality.

Australia has been exposed as ill-equipped and impotent in addressing a key challenge to its standing as one of the world’s most successful multicultural nations.

It is therefore understandable the Jewish community has begun investigating what legal steps it can take to protect itself. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has bluntly warned it is no longer “going to wait” for governments and police to stand up to “hatemongers”.

This points to a moral and political failure which must be rectified in 2024, with ECAJ co-chief executive Peter Wertheim warning hate preachers must be “confronted and stopped now before the damage it has done to social cohesion becomes irreparable”.

In short – in the absence of a co-ordinated national response led by federal Labor – the Jewish community is warning Albanese Australia’s multicultural experiment could be set back for a generation.

Leader of the House Tony Burke. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Labor frontbencher Tony Burke, one of the government’s strongest pro-Palestinian ministers whose seat of Watson has a large Muslim population, last week rebuked sheik Ahmed Zoud for giving a sermon in his electorate calling Jews “monsters”. While a welcome step, it hardly amounts to the government sending a decisive message to the Australian community that anti-Semitic sermons from radical Islamic preachers have no place in this country.

This should have been the constant political refrain of Multicultural Affairs Minister Andrew Giles and Albanese himself.

It is clear changes are needed. There are already two key opportunities this year for the government to take real policy steps to defend Australian multiculturalism.

The first is its response to the Multicultural Framework Review – expected in March – and the second is its proposed religious discrimination bill. Both will become markers that speak to the true character of the Albanese government.