Rise of local terror demands better from our leaders

Students arrive at Mount Sinai College in Maroubra in Sydney’s east for their first day of school on Friday. Picture: Julian Andrews

The scourge of anti-Semitism in Australia has become a runaway train that now demands a radically escalated counter-terror mindset from federal and state governments, police and spy agencies.

It is no longer good enough to be playing perennial catch-up to a growing list of racists and terrorists willing to kill, harm or denigrate Jewish Australians. Authorities need to treat this fast-growing threat with the same sort of proactive urgency as it responded to the deadly spate of Islamic State-inspired terror attacks here from 2014 to 2018. We have yet to see that sort of urgency.

That reign of local ISIS terrorism was eventually snuffed out by a massive police and intelligence apparatus, which clicked on to a war footing when the lives of Australians were being threatened and lost in attacks such as the Sydney Lindt Cafe siege. This unprecedented wave of anti-Semitic attacks deserves nothing less from politics, law enforcement and intelligence.

The appalling revelation this week of a caravan loaded with explosives and anti-Semitic messages is the latest, most frightening escalation of attacks that have already seen a Melbourne synagogue torched and the repeated arson of Jewish schools, childcare centres and homes.

What is painfully clear is that the anti-Semites are winning the battle for now, yet it is essential for the social fabric of this country that they end up losing this war.

So far there have been too few arrests to show for the number of attacks perpetrated. The terrorists who torched the synagogue in Melbourne’s Ripponlea late last year remain on the run, as do the majority of arsonists in other attacks, while mystery continues to surround the circumstances of the explosives-laden caravan.

Authorities will deny that they need to do more than they are already doing. Politicians and police insist they are leaving “no stone unturned”, and that a small army of officers in various taskforces is working “around the clock”. But so far the results have been disappointing, and it is clear that more can be done.

Anonymous criminals hiding behind masks and full-length clothing have been able to carry out these attacks mostly without being brought to justice.

This imbalance needs to be addressed through a huge increase in surveillance, uniformed police, CCTV coverage and intelligence that can pre-empt attacks and arrest plotters. If this could be done to cripple ISIS-inspired terrorists a decade ago, why can’t the same scale of operations be conducted now to tackle those now targeting Australia’s Jews?

Sadly, the relative lack of arrests reflects the fact leadership at all levels – from the Albanese government, to state governments, universities and other institutions – has been disgracefully slow to recognise and act on the rise of anti-Semitism since it first erupted at the Opera House protest in 2023, just days after the October 7 massacre of Israelis by Hamas.

This failure to take the scourge of anti-Semitism seriously lasted far too long – even when Jewish leaders were giving everyday examples of it. Only recently have we seen a belated realisation and acceptance that this must be tackled before lives are lost. But because authorities were slow to react, they are much further behind in the battle. Now we are seeing the same sort of copycat attacks we saw during the ISIS terror years, giving the problem a momentum of its own.

It’s not good enough for governments and law enforcement to talk big now about the evils of anti-Semitism. They need to accelerate their response to make up for the lost time in this fight – lost time they are responsible for.