Action now
Our Prime Minister insists he has done everything he can to curb the problem. ECAJ co-CEO Alex Ryvchin says he can do more.

Three antisemitic attacks in 24 hours.
Two shules daubed with swastikas. An arson attempt on one of them. The same street in a suburb where Jews live, and that houses a Jewish school, vandalised for the second time in a week with hateful messages. “Gas the Jews” scrawled on a wall in an inner-Sydney suburb just days later. Welcome to Australia in 2025.
The world has noticed. The Jerusalem Post editorialised this week that Australia “has a serious antisemitism problem”, while an Anti-Defamation League poll found that one in five Australian adults “hold significant antisemitic beliefs”.
Our Prime Minister insists he has done everything he can to curb the problem. ECAJ co-CEO Alex Ryvchin says he can do more.
Then there is the matter of how the government’s policies and statements on Israel in the past 15 months – which have damaged a bilateral relationship that Jewish Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has jetted off to Jerusalem to try to repair – have contributed to the environment in which antisemitism has festered.
Peter Dutton has promised he will tackle the problem should the Coalition win the next election, which must be held by May.
But no matter who is in power after Australia goes to the polls, we cannot wait for May. We need action now. Scratch that. We needed action in October 2023.
That lack of action has given a social licence to those who wish our community harm, in turn damaging social cohesion, with antisemitism special envoy Jiillian Segal warning democracy itself is at stake.
Federal MP Julian Leeser has suggested that offenders found to have engaged in these kind of attacks should do time. It’s a reasonable suggestion. The government last year rejected Leeser’s calls for a judicial inquiry into antisemitism on campus. They need to listen to him now.
On another note, as speculation grows that a hostage-ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is imminent, we hope that it is not another case of false hope. Kfir Bibas, taken at nine months old, will turn two in the dungeon tunnels of Gaza this weekend.
It is long past time for him and his family, and all the Israeli hostages that are being held, to be released.
comments