Envoy’s plan to begin the fightback

Since October 7, the Jewish community has harboured a belief that the government was never really up for the fight against antisemitism.

At times, it seemed to treat it as a nuisance rather than a moral imperative. The only real question was whether this anaemic approach was driven by ideology or hard political realities, or both.

Now the two most senior ministers in the federal government, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Home Affairs, have given a powerful, eloquent and sincere affirmation of their revulsion at what is being done to Jewish Australians and pledged to banish this contemptuous hatred to the dark corners of paranoid delusion and low bigotry, where it belongs.

They have shown that they get it. They understand that the extreme anti-Israel activists are not freedom fighters or peaceniks. They are a threat to us all.

After 21 months of boycotts, death chants and blazing streets and synagogues, many in the community and wider society will regard the government’s embrace of the special envoy’s plan to combat antisemitism, a comprehensive and thoughtful plan engaging government and civil society, as hollow.