{"id":526005,"date":"2026-03-08T04:09:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T04:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/526005\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T04:09:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T04:09:19","slug":"donald-trump-officials-asked-why-australian-jews-arent-carrying-guns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/526005\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump officials \u2018asked why Australian Jews aren\u2019t carrying guns\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MichaelSave<\/p>\n

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Washington: Trump administration officials asked a visiting Australian Jewish leader whether Jews were seeking to be armed following the Bondi Beach terrorist attack<\/a>, as the White House continues to take a significant interest in the spread of antisemitism in Australia.<\/p>\n

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin met US officials, including President Donald Trump\u2019s antisemitism envoy, Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, during a visit last week, and briefed staff at the National Security Council, the State Department and Congress.<\/p>\n

He said he received several questions in meetings about gun ownership in Australia and whether the Jewish community was proactively looking at taking up arms.<\/p>\n

\"AlexAlex Ryvchin said Trump administration officials showed interest in whether the Bondi Beach event was sufficiently resourced and \u201cleft vulnerable\u201d by being unarmed.James Brickwood<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to say to them, \u2018Look, that\u2019s just not part of our culture\u2019,\u201d he said in an interview in Washington. \u201cAustralians don\u2019t think, \u2018I better arm myself\u2019. We\u2019re not Second Amendment people; it\u2019s not part of the mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the Minns Labor government in NSW is examining whether it should allow the Community Security Group<\/a>, a non-profit Jewish security provider, to carry additional arms following the December 14 massacre, in which 15 people were killed at a Hanukkah celebration.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Community<\/a><\/p>\n

Under the group\u2019s licence, personnel are allowed to carry pistols when protecting schools and synagogues, but not at public events.<\/p>\n

Ryvchin said the Trump administration officials showed a lot of interest in whether the Bondi Beach event was sufficiently resourced and whether it had been \u201cleft vulnerable\u201d by being unarmed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe American approach, being a very individualistic society, is: What are you guys doing? Rather than waiting for the police to protect you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut [it] makes you think: Are we still living in an old world, thinking that threats are contained and police and ASIO have everything under control when they clearly don\u2019t?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not saying the solution is for Jews to arm themselves, but I think we need to modernise our thinking about the threats and how to meet those threats.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaploun, who was confirmed as Trump\u2019s antisemitism envoy just days after the Bondi massacre, says the US president is closely watching how Australia responds to the worst-ever terrorist attack on its soil.<\/p>\n

In January, he told The Australian there were concerns within the administration that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had turned a blind eye to antisemitism. \u201cThere was a level of apathy and just no interest to deal with it until a tragedy occurred,\u201d Kaploun told the newspaper.<\/p>\n

Ryvchin said Kaploun continued to follow the issue intensely. \u201cHe\u2019s extremely animated by what he perceived as failures on the part of the government to protect the Jewish community,\u201d Ryvchin said.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Former<\/a><\/p>\n

The federal government has called a royal commission into antisemitism, as well as a review by retired public servant Dennis Richardson<\/a> into potential failures by Australia\u2019s intelligence and law enforcement bodies.<\/p>\n

It also passed some of the most significant changes to Australian gun laws since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre<\/a>, including enhanced background checks, tougher importation laws and a new national gun buyback scheme.<\/p>\n

Another part of the government response enacted new laws against extremism, antisemitism and hate speech<\/a>. Parts of the draft bill attracted criticism from the Trump administration; Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers said it was \u201cclumsy\u201d and could have let extremists off the hook while banning legitimate criticism of Islam.<\/p>\n

Ryvchin said that US officials did not raise concerns about free speech during their meetings, but the issue came up when he met with the United Nations in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the missions to the UN were very curious about that question, about how you repress violent speech and incitement without limiting legitimate free speech,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, it\u2019s not complicated \u2026 Street chants about Zionists being terrorists is not a form of free speech, in my opinion. It\u2019s a clear form of incitement and demonisation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked whether restricting speech \u2013 such as banning phrases like \u201cglobalise the intifada\u201d \u2013 might lead to violence as an act of rebellion, Ryvchin said he didn\u2019t believe that was how extremists thought.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Protesters<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI think that they go as far as they\u2019re allowed to go,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not talking about legitimate gatherings to express a political position. We\u2019re talking about gatherings to burn flags and threaten the Jewish community.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s a permissive attitude towards that, or if people say \u2018it\u2019s just a critique of Israeli policy, it\u2019s just the expression of a political position\u2019, they go further and further and further.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryvchin, who was invited by the World Jewish Congress, said his mission in the US was not to criticise the Albanese government, but to relay that there were warning signs ahead of the attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis wasn\u2019t a spontaneous attack. This wasn\u2019t isolated. This wasn\u2019t two lone individuals. They came from an ideology. They were radicalised,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\"MichaelMichael Koziol<\/a> is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-526005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}