The aftermath of the Bondi Beach Massacre in Australia has forced the people to face some hard truths.
“I’m horrified and devastated that this happened, but not shocked,” Lynda Ben-Menashe, president of the National Council of Jewish Women Australia, told The Times of Israel. “Over the past two years, antisemitism has been rising by the month, and the government has not listened to our pleas. When there is no visible consequence to incitement, violence always ensues.”
More than almost any other Westernized country, Australia has suffered from a particularly violent form of antisemitism since the attack in Israel on October 7, 2023. Only France has perhaps seen more antisemitic violence than Australia.
What's telling is that France and Australia are led by governments that have shown a troubling failure to condemn antisemitic rhetoric and hateful acts of violence strongly. While French politicians posture and declaim against antisemitism, Jews in France "live behind barbed wire and pray in synagogues behind army barricades," writes City Journal's Misha Saul.
In the wake of the October 7 attack on the Jewish homeland, Australia has seen a massive spike in antisemitic attacks.
In the two years since October 7, Australia has seen a sharp rise in anti-Jewish incidents - more than 3,700. That's according to an advocacy group, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. And the pace of incidents during that period was five times what it was in the decade before Hamas attacked Israel.
Many of these attacks occurred in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 terrorist attack, before Israel had fully mobilized, so it's not a reaction to Israel's controversial conduct during the war with Hamas. This is simple, blatant, nauseating antisemitism of the type that was prevalent in the years before World War II, when openly antisemitic prime ministers in Austria and elsewhere carried out measures to eliminate Jews from business and social life.
As Western leaders tiptoe around pro-Hamas protesters, worried they will be accused of being "Islamophobic" and concerned with appearing to suppress free speech, the Hamas supporters take full advantage of the "hands off" approach by governments and openly call for genocide.
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Former Biden administration special envoy to combat antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about this newfound boldness on the part of protesters:
On October 9, 2023, two days after the Hamas attack on Israel, where, in front of the iconic Sydney Opera House, protesters marched, chanting, you know, globalize the intifada, which most Jews interpret as harm Jews everywhere - from the river to the sea. Some say they chanted, gas the Jews. That's up for debate. But the thing that struck me most is their chant, where are the Jews? Where are the Jews? And I was reminded of that last month when I watched the clips outside of Park East Synagogue in New York, where, again, they chanted the chants that we've gotten used to, which are horrific. But then they also said, make them afraid. Make them afraid.
City Journal's Misha Saul, an Australian Jew, says Jews are reacting to the attack with far more gumption than the government.
We will not cower. We are not Jews with trembling knees. We are Australians. We love the Australian nation and believe in the Australian project. All we want is to send our kids to school, to contribute to this country, to pray in our synagogues, and to enjoy the natural gifts that God has so richly bestowed upon this nation.
Australia is an island nation. We should have total control over our destiny.
The brave bloke who disarmed one of the attackers will never have to buy another beer in his life. He’s a hero Australians will rightly love to get behind. But it would have been even better if his heroism had been unnecessary—if he could have just continued to enjoy his Sunday at the beach.
Australians have a choice to make about what kind of society we want to have, and that starts with determining whether we will permit such evil to come and fester here.
Unless the Australian government gets serious about immigration controls, evil will take hold and grow, finding fertile ground among the same sort of violent extremists who carried out the attacks on Sunday.
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