Synagogue firebombing: A slippery slope to an ugly Australia

The sight of the burnt-out prayer hall in Ripponlea, the beating heart of this country’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, is something that should horrify every decent Australian. And yet it won’t.

Police and fire crews outside the Ripponlea synagogue on Friday. Picture: NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

The firebombing of a Melbourne synagogue is a tipping point for Australia and a moment of shame for those who have allowed anti-Semitism to fester through inaction.

The sight of the burnt-out prayer hall in Ripponlea, the beating heart of this country’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, is something that should horrify every decent Australian.

And yet it won’t because far too many have used the conflict in the Middle East as a cowardly excuse to normalise an ancient bigotry that should have no place in this country.

While only the perpetrators of the synagogue crime know their true motive, the blame for the explosion of anti-Semitism in Australia since the October 7, 2023 massacre of Israeli Jews by Hamas is a multi-headed beast.

It starts with a failure of leadership, from the Prime Minister to the Greens to state premiers to university vice-chancellors to law enforcement.

Leadership has repeatedly been absent when it was needed most, from the flag-burning anti-Semitic protest at the Sydney Opera House where Jews were told to stay away, to the growing tolerance of anti-Semitic chants and racist signs on campuses, and in weekly street protests across the country.

Governments, federal and state, have been paralysed by inaction, as the activist rump of the pro-Palestinian movement casually slid – in front of our very eyes – from acceptable political criticism of Israel’s Netanyahu government to blatantly anti-Semitic calls for the destruction of Israel and the harassment of Jews.

Those in power have chosen expediency over principle by failing to loudly condemn without qualification this surge in anti-Semitism.

As a result, a broad cabal of liberal Australia – from university and high school students and teachers to local councils, to artists and musicians, to the Greens and the Labor Left, as well as activist Muslims – has acted as if it had been given tacit permission to blur the lines between legitimate political criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism.

Examples abound. School kids in Melbourne were encouraged by their schools to skip classes so they could protest and call for the eradication of Israel, while the state’s Labor Premier did nothing.

University students on campus encampments around the country went beyond the bounds of anti-Israeli government criticism to taunting Jewish students with chants such as “f..k off Zionists” while vice-chancellors did nothing.

This slow normalisation of anti-Semitism has been insidious, fuelling online hate campaigns, verbal and physical abuse of Jews on the streets, and harassment and boycotting of Jewish businesses and artists simply because they are Jewish.

Jewish leaders have been warning for many months that it was only a matter of time before this new-found acceptability of low-level anti-Semitic behaviour would trigger something far more frightening.

And so it has, with the firebombing of one of the country’s busiest and most important synagogues, in the heart of the ultra-orthodox Adass community in Ripponlea.

The irony is that the Adass community, a deeply religious sliver of the broader Jewish community, is an insular group comprising primarily followers of faith who do not take public positions on politics in the Middle East or in Australia.

Their synagogue was targeted simply because they were Jews.

We’ve heard this story before and we should never forget the reason so many Jews came to Australia after the Holocaust was so they would never have to hear it again.

This shameful crime should be a wake-up call to all Australians that disagreements on global politics can never be used as a figleaf for racial hatred.

Leaders of governments, institutions and organisations need to do so much more to make sure this attack is a one-off and not a slippery slope to an uglier Australia.