A fortnight ago, I wrote in these pages that there are two ways to discuss immigration. In good time, civilly and constructively. Or too late, angrily and hatefully.
With Australia teetering on a millisecond, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has dithered and left it too late.
He missed the moment on October 9, 2023, the day after Hamas slaughtered 1200 civilians in Israel. That night, the NSW government lit up the Sydney Opera House sails in Israeli flag blue and white. But instead of Jewish mourners grieving the victims of the bloody assault, the forecourt was occupied by a few hundred pro-Palestine marchers. Their presence made it too dangerous for the Jewish community to attend.
Anthony Albanese visits the memorial at Bondi Pavilion on Monday. Credit: AAP
I went along to observe that evening and took video of the crowd chanting Allahu Akbar (God is greatest) and “f— the Jews”. As I filmed, some participants hurled lit flares at the Opera House sails. The police caught the flares and extinguished them without further consequence. A tepid response from the government, framed against the backdrop of a national icon, which now reads like a metaphor for how the prime minister has handled the escalating violence ever since.
Albanese prevaricated when antisemitism on university campuses became more aggravated, searching for a politically palatable response. This masthead revealed that university protest groups had been infiltrated by Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic fundamentalist political organisation. Rather than calling out the dangerous radicalisation, the prime minister hid behind bureaucratic process, reviewing instead of acting upon the “prevalence, nature and experiences of antisemitic activity at universities”.
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Throughout the past two years, antisemitic graffiti, vandalism and arson attacks have been carried out against Australia’s small Jewish population. A childcare centre and synagogues were set alight, Jewish-owned businesses were attacked, and two nurses told an Israeli on social media that they would kill Jewish patients who came into their care. Again, Albanese hit the ground reviewing, appointing an envoy to report on antisemitism rather than take responsibility for acting on existing reports.
When a march against the war in Gaza across the Sydney Harbour Bridge was infiltrated by Islamist elements, who brazenly held a placard of Iran’s repressive Islamic leader behind the marchers at the vanguard of the crowd and waved flags linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Albanese acknowledged that many Australians felt affected by the situation in Gaza. While the prime minister emoted, ABC reporters identified one of the flag-wavers in the crowd. It was hate preacher Wissam Haddad, whom the ABC identified as exploiting the pro-Palestine movement to support the Islamic State terror group ISIS. There is no evidence that Haddad was involved with last Sunday’s attacks.
Shortly after, it was revealed that Iran’s radical Islamist regime was funding and fuelling antisemitic graffiti, vandalism and firebomb attacks. Nonetheless, the Albanese government went ahead with recognising Palestine, still governed by Iran-supported Hamas, as an independent state.