Victoria fails to stem the explosion of anti-Semitism in the state

To claim that there’s a gap between the Allan government’s actions and the comprehensive proposals set out by Jillian Segal, would be a mistake. There isn’t a gap; there’s an abyss.

Fragmented into a bewildering galaxy of warring identity groups that lacks any unifying ideal, today’s left is bound together solely by its shared hatreds.

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Last week, after a potentially fatal arson attack on a synagogue and an assault on an Israeli restaurant, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan finally seized the initiative.

Declaring “there is no place for anti-Semitism”, she proudly announced that she was establishing a taskforce. What daring! What boldness! And what originality! The perpetrators must be quaking in their boots.

But the reality is that there is a place for anti-Semitism in Australia: it’s called Victoria.

To claim that there’s a gap between the Allan government’s actions and the comprehensive proposals set out by Jillian Segal, the federal government’s special envoy to combat anti-Semitism, would consequently be a mistake. There isn’t a gap; there’s an abyss.

That abyss hasn’t emerged by accident. It comes from persistently ignoring unpleasant truths. If Allan is genuinely committed to “truth telling” she should start by acknowledging the truths she has long sought to avoid.

The first and most obvious is the role that significant elements in the Muslim community have played in the current wave of anti-Semitism. That Muslims are fully entitled to have and express strong views about the Middle East scarcely needs to be said. It is clear, too, that there are real differences within Islam and within Islamic communities themselves.

But recognising those differ­ences cannot be an excuse for ignoring the anti-Semitism that has marched hand-in-hand with the growth in Australia’s Muslim population.

That development should have come as no surprise.

Surveys consistently find that between 65 per cent and 90 per cent of respondents in Muslim majority countries are deeply anti-Semitic, with many believing, for example, the so-called blood libel, which alleges that Jews murder children so to make ritual use of their blood.

Equally, in western Europe Muslims are up to six times more likely than non-Muslims to consider Jews untrustworthy, arrogant, aggressive and money-grasping – and the gap is even greater in terms of the strength with which those views are held.

Australian governments allowed those prejudices to be imported into Australia. They then let Islamists entrench and inflame them. Yes, it is hard to reason people out of ideas they haven’t been reasoned into. But, as Segal points out, far too little was done to nip them in the bud, so they have festered and spread.

And even when the prejudices turned into action after October 7, 2023, our governments baulked, mainly out of political opportunism, at holding those who spread the poison to account.

How, to take but one example, did the Victorian government react when a prominent member of its Multicultural Commission – whose mission is to promote tolerance – reposted a social media claim that the IDF has a deliberate strategy of killing Palestinian babies so as to eliminate the Palestinian people? It said nothing and did less.

It would be, however, a serious error to focus only on the Muslim element in the explosion of anti-Semitism. Rather, if that element mattered, it was largely because of its confluence with the political left.

Flowers left at the door of the synagogue that was firebombed. Picture: NewsWire/ David Crosling

Fragmented into a bewildering galaxy of warring identity groups that lacks any unifying ideal, today’s left is bound together solely by its shared hatreds. Moreover, whatever those groups’ weaknesses, they are first-rate haters, who never tire of venting their adolescent fury.

The ancient Greeks, who thought deeply about rage, believed it differed fundamentally from ordinary anger. Anger had a defined focus; rage was labile, readily shifting from one object to another. Characteristic of personal immaturity, it was by its nature opportunistic, rushing to the target of the moment, like a child rushing to a new toy.

Nowhere was that dynamic clearer than in Victoria, where the left was stronger and more firmly socially embedded than in the other states.

It was in Victoria that the politics of hatred kicked off, with the prosecution – or better, persecution – of Cardinal George Pell setting the ball rolling. After that there was no stopping the lynch mobs as the normalisation of hatred spawned the excesses of #MeToo, the rise of extreme climate activism, the brutal suppression of dissenting opinion during the pandemic and the vilification of those who advocated a No vote in the voice referendum.

Special Envoy to Combat anti Semitism, Jillian Segal during a press conference on Thursday. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

Time and again, Victoria’s Labor government deployed massive resources of public funds and coercive power on the haters’ side, adding to their momentum.

It was therefore utterly predictable that once the war in Gaza broke out – giving the extremists an irresistible target and allowing them to add an Islamic component to their disparate coalition – the politics of hatred would soar to new heights, fuelling the escalating attacks on Jews.

But when it came to protecting the Jewish community, the power and resources of the Victorian government – which had no qualms about spending $2.1m of taxpayers’ money defending a school principal against claims he had refused to curb persistent anti-Semitism – all too often vanished.

Rather than assuring public security, as Segal urges, there was neglect aggravated by ineptitude.

How is it, for example, that the perpetrators of the arson attack on Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue remain at large? And how is it that only three charges have been laid against those allegedly involved in the assault on the Miznon restaurant, when two dozen people appear to have been involved?

Allan argues that her government has merely respected the right to protest. But even putting aside the blatantly selective nature of its respect for that right, it is beyond question that the right to protest has never conferred a right to threaten, harass or attack.

Nor has the freedom of association ever encompassed preventing others from peaceably associating, be it in a restaurant or a place of worship.

On the contrary, as Higgins J determined, as far back as 1922, in Melbourne Corporation v Barry, a claim “on the part of persons so minded to assemble to the detriment of others having equal rights (has) no authority whatever in favour of it”.

The government therefore had an obligation to prevent so-called protests that were merely vigilante actions aimed at intimidating, if not destroying, their victims. Shirking that obligation, it allowed them to proceed, with the Miznon incident being just the latest outrage.

At the same time, the government stood passively by as cultural and educational institutions caved into plainly anti-Semitic demands, normalising attacks on Jews. Those institutions, Segal proposes, should forfeit public support; there isn’t a single instance in Victoria where that occurred. Little wonder, then, that the situation deteriorated so badly. But faced with that deterioration, all Allan has done is to postpone, yet again, the decisions the situation demands.

But it may already be too late. Too late to stem the hatred, to which she has given free rein. Too late to restore confidence, which has been shattered by her government’s refusal to act. And worst of all, too late for the truth, which has been drowned in the euphemisms, cliches, lies and empty promises that are the death rattle of a once great state.