Australian Jews Under Multifaceted Pressure

Australian Jews Under Multifaceted Pressure

For those of us keeping tabs on antisemitism and anti-Zionism, the Bondi Beach massacre didn’t come as a surprise. In the aftermath of the 2023 Simchat Torah massacre, Australia emerged as the most inhospitable diaspora. On October 9, when the IDF was still clearing southern Israel of the Gazan butchers, a crowd of over a thousand Muslims—some believe that the future Bondi Beach assassins were among them—gathered at the steps of the Sydney Opera House, chanting “Gas the Jews” and “Where are the Jews?” More than two years of physical attacks on synagogues, Jewish schools, and neighborhoods followed. Jewish neighborhoods and businesses have been tagged with threatening messages, and Muslim nurses confessed their desire to poison Israelis and deny treatment to Jews.

Bondi Beach should be regarded as the tip of the iceberg of the sustained campaign of pressure on Aussie Jews. That pressure didn’t let up after the terror attack; there is no sign of it resolving, and nobody has a plan to alleviate it.

For instance, the popular Sydney casual diner Lox in A Box, owned by Bondi Beach survivor Candy Berger, was targeted with online review bombs—most of them written by individuals whose given names appear to be variations on “Mohamed”. The reviews were eventually removed, but Ed Halmagyi, another Jewish Sydney restaurateur, announced that he would be closing his eatery after two years of intimidation because he doesn’t believe he can keep his patrons safe. Is Australia a place where a Jew can make a living?

A community can dig in and weather ISIS attacks, but it can’t survive a denied livelihood. It looks increasingly likely that we are witnessing the end of Australian Jewry.

In a pattern that became familiar in the aftermath of the Simchat Torah massacre in southern Israel, antisemitic public pressure escalated immediately after the terror attack. For instance, during the vigil for the victims held at the location of the slaughter one day after, the pro-Palestinian activist Michelle Berkon demanded the removal of Israeli flags. Protesters have been “taunting” the Bondi vigils with calls of “globalized intifada”. According to the Jerusalem Post, antisemitic incidents rose sixfold following the terror attack. New South Wales police say that they are unable to protect Jews if they were to hold a Bondi vigil.

The government’s reaction has been underwhelming. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, appears to have visited only a single injured survivor in the hospital—Ahmed al Ahmed, one of the heroes who disarmed the elder terrorist, preventing a larger slaughter. While the rest of the killed and wounded were Jews and Christians, Al Ahmed happened to be a Muslim.

The narrative advanced by the powers that be is “Muslims are not terrorists.” To signal that there is nothing to fear from Islam, Albanese promised to fast-track Al Ahmed’s relatives’ family reunification applications. Likewise, the Federal Police commissioner, Krissy Barrett, went as far as to claim that the Bondi terror attack was not inspired by Islam.

Al Ahmed deserves to be celebrated, to be sure, but the media cynically exploits his courage to avoid unpleasant questions about Aussie multiculturalism. That multiculturalism has no interest in the story of Gefen Bitton, the critically wounded Israeli who helped Al Ahmed to tackle terrorists, or the Holocaust survivor Alexander Kleytman, who gave his life shielding his wife from bullets, or the fourteen-year-old Chaya Dadon, who is recovering from the wounds she suffered covering younger kids with her own body. Is she not a model feminist? Does Jewish heroism have relevance in Australia?

The narrative consistency pushed by the Labor government down under is a variation on “lets not overreact and take it out on Muslims” popular in the U.S. after 9/11. In his initial statement, Albanese said:

Yesterday was a dark day in our nation’s history.

But we are stronger than the cowards who did this.

We refuse to let them divide us.

Australia will never submit to division, violence or hatred – and we will come through this together.

Since then, it’s been an endless barrage of “we will not let hate divide us. But Australia is already divided by antisemitism, and the country picked a side in September this year when, amidst the Israeli effort to uproot Hamas in Gaza, it recognized the State of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly.

Albanese proposed some measures to prevent future Bondi Beaches, but they do very little to assure Jewish survival in Australia. He intends to further tighten the gun laws and announced a buyback, for instance. But his country already has a draconian weapons regime, where it is difficult to legally obtain firearms.

A more creative solution would be to grant Jews a special privilege to bear. It’s not a liberal solution, but we live in the age of group rights, and the Jewish need for self-defense has been established.

Tightening speech laws is another idea entertained by the authorities. New South Wales proposed to outlaw ISIS flags and “globalize the Intifada” chants. According to a recent poll, a majority of Australians support such measures, and the Jewish community is onboard. While it’s somewhat reassuring that the authorities are now listening to the Jewish concern that mass anti-Israel demonstrations are precursors to antisemitic violence, English-speaking countries rarely enforce speech laws in favor of Jews. Great Britain notoriously imprisons its indigenous citizens for memes while anti-Zionist hate speech goes unpunished. In Australia, the cops approached the activist Drew Pavlou, demanding that he remove an innocuous post about Bondi, Pavlou explains.
The December massacre heightened sympathy towards Jewish neighbors, so “kill Zionists” graffiti might look unacceptable for the time being. But the feeling will wear off and antisemitic agitation will be the norm once again. It’s needless to say that horrific terrorist acts like, for example, 9/11 can be staged without mass demonstration in support of the slaughter.

The above-mentioned poll revealed that the Australian people broadly approve of tightening immigration laws. It’s not just a matter of philosemitic attitudes, but of survival—consider the case of the Australian Palestinian Action Network president Nasser Mashni, who proclaimed at a recent rally: “Melbourne is ours, Australia is ours, the world is ours!”

Opposition politician Pauline Hanson of the Put Australia First One Nation party was warmly greeted at the Bondi December 16 impromptu vigil. One Nation proposed limits on migration and deportation of illegal immigrants and criminals.

It sounds like a fine program, and it’s feasible, but for Jews, it might be too little too late. One of the Hanukkah murderers is Australian by birth—and so are, presumably, many individuals who haunt Jews on social media and in real life. They won’t change.

What’s going on in Australia is a soft deportation of Jews. Instead of arranging for a costly, logistically complicated, legally a mess and, for the time being, prohibitive politically population transfer, Australia is creating conditions that make it impossible for Jews to stay—turn up the social pressure, deny livelihood, and from time to time kill—and the besieged community will self-deport.

American Jews must watch the events down under carefully because we are not too far behind the trend. If the Australian Jewish community is tiny and its disappearance will go mostly unnoticed—I guess they weren’t a good fit with Australian multiculturalism—the diaspora in America is most numerous and prominent in the world. When anti-Zionism comes for us, the American character of our nation will change tremendously.

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.