For the past couple of years, leaders in Australia’s Jewish community have been seeing a rise in antisemitism and urging the country’s leaders to act.
But Australia, like other countries grappling with a resurgence of what’s been called the “oldest hatred” since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, has been slow to react to the threat, Jewish leaders said Monday.
The country saw its deadliest mass killing in nearly 30 years, with the massacre of 15 people this past weekend during a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach.
“We’ve seen every manner of exclusion, abuse, attack, harassment, threats, fire bombings, burning of synagogues,” said Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. “This country has changed fundamentally in two years, and it’s culminated now on the beach.”
In the aftermath of the shooting, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his National Cabinet vowed Monday to eradicate the “evil scourge” of antisemitism and take other steps like further tightening the country’s already stringent gun control measures and establishing a centralized National Hate Crimes and Incidents Database.
A Hanukkah menorah is projected onto the sails of the Sydney Opera House after the attack.David Gray / AFP via Getty Images
Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles said Albanese and the Australian government have, thus far, been “all talk and no action.”
“This is not the first incident of this kind in Australia, just the worst,” he said. “Warm words of embrace are just not going to cut it. We’re looking for action, changes of policies.”
Rabbi Menachem Gluckowsky, the deputy chief justice of the Chabad Rabbinical Court in Israel, echoed Cooper.
“I think it’s a wake-up call for Australia for sure,” Gluckowsky said. “I think it’s a wake-up call for all countries. This is not just our battle. It’s not just a battle for the Jewish people. This is a battle on evil. Just because you feel you’re right, you can’t gun down people cold bloodedly.”
Gluckowsky likened the Bondi Beach attack to the pogroms that European Jews endured for centuries. He said governments worldwide, and especially in the West, have been slow to respond to rising anti-Jewish hatred.
Community members gather for a vigil near Bondi Beach in Sydney on Monday. Audrey Richardson / Getty Images
Both Gluckowsky and Cooper contend that pro-Palestinian demonstrations have fanned the flames of antisemitism. And Australia’s decision in September to formally recognize a Palestinian state was a “signal” to terrorists determined to attack Jews, Cooper said.
“They have allowed Jews to twist in the wind,” Cooper said.
In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Monday, Albanese was asked whether he saw any link between the recognition of a Palestinian state and the Bondi shooting.
“No, I don’t. And overwhelmingly, most of the world recognizes a two-state solution as being the way forward in the Middle East,” the prime minister said.