PM Albanese, those words don’t mean what you think they do

“HATE IN OUR STREETS” declared the bold headline today, reporting on the recent attacks on a Melbourne Synagogue and a Miznon restaurant — both on Friday night. The story implies that this is news. Letter-writers are calling this a turning point. We know better.

The hate was in our streets on October 9, 2023, after Hamas’s murderous rampage and before any response from the IDF. Protesters shouted antisemitic slurs outside the Sydney Opera House. In the following months, there was deep debate as to what they actually said. Don’t get so worked up, they said. The protestors didn’t shout “gas the Jews” — they only said “F**k the Jews” and possibly “Where’s the Jews?”

We know better. If it looks like a duck and it quacks, it’s a duck. We’ve seen antisemitism long enough to know — and feel — what it looks like. We know better the path from words to actions.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at the time that antisemitism “has no place in Australia.” And he has said exactly the same thing after every subsequent incident.

As the weekly protests outside the state library escalated from pro-Palestinian rhetoric to anti-Zionist to antisemitic, he said it again. And again. As the protests moved to graffiti in Jewish areas and on Jewish schools, to taunts and threats against visibly Jewish people in the streets, to boycotts against Jewish-owned businesses and artists, and then to arson against homes and against places of worship, he said it again.

The government’s response has been the same mealy-mouthed words, over and over. They have remained the same, while the protestors kept escalating. Our leaders have abrogated their responsibility to keep citizens safe. We are not safe. We don’t feel safe. It seems that antisemitism does indeed have a place in Australia.

They cannot see a link between their bothsidesism when it comes to the conflict and their public disdain for Israel, and the steady increase in public expressions of antisemitism. But we know better.

The “hate on our streets” started after the October 7 attacks, but before then, it was “hate in their hearts.” People didn’t start hating us after Israel launched its attack in response to Hamas. The hate was always there — dormant for a couple of generations since the Holocaust because it wasn’t appropriate to express. The hate was just waiting for an excuse to come out and find a bigger voice.

It has again become fashionable to hate Jews. And while the left warned us for years that the threat of antisemitism was from the far right, the fashion is actually now coming from the intersectional, neo-Marxist, anticolonial left. And the path from words to action is playing out in front of us.

I was born in Australia, and it holds a place deep in my heart. It welcomed my parents and so many other immigrants after the war, a period in which the Jewish population doubled. They came to “the lucky country” to start afresh after the devastation of war. Many of them were successful, and gave back in spades to their new country. Gratitude is part of our Jewish DNA. Reciprocal gratitude is a virtuous cycle.

While I hold our government in contempt, how do we as a people respond? That part is easy.

We’ve been dealing with this for centuries, starting in Egypt: “But the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out” (Exodus 1:12). Our shuls will surely be packed to the rafters this Shabbat in a show of solidarity. Haters are gonna hate, but our Jewish spirit is indomitable. Am Yisrael Chai!