At a time of intense trauma for the Jewish community in Australia, a small section of the crowd at Sunday’s vigil booed the Prime Minister over the government’s manifestly inadequate responses to the orchestrated surge in antisemitism over the previous two years. The criticisms of the government are legitimate; the booing was not the right way to express them, and should not have happened.
Yet in the midst of our community’s grief and anguish, we are appalled that a national figure like Wayne Swan chose to re-tweet another person’s post which seized on the booing episode to try to diminish and delegitimise the outpouring of sympathy our community has received from the Australian public.
The tweet, and the implied endorsement of it, was a subtle form of dehumanisation which exemplifies the sewer of antisemitic hatred that has blighted Australian society for the last two years and which helped spawn the murder of 15 innocent people at Bondi Beach.
Swan’s subsequent justification for the re-tweet and his claim that it was in support of national healing and unity, is risible.
He should resign as President of the ALP and the Prime Minister should disown him.