Victorian Premier apologises to Jewish community
On the third anniversary of October 7, Ben Carroll tells Mount Scopus students 'we did not do enough to help you'
Victorian Premier Ben Carroll has apologised to the Jewish community, telling students at Mount Scopus Memorial College on the third anniversary of October 7 that governments had failed them.
“I want you to know that as a country, and as a state, we did not do enough to help you,” he said on Wednesday. “I want you to know that I am sorry.”
Speaking at the Besen Centre on the school’s Gandel Campus, Carroll said the Hamas attack had been “an attack on Victoria” as well as on Israel, because what followed “didn’t stay overseas. It came here.”
He traced a line “from the fields and towns of Southern Israel, to a synagogue in Ripponlea, and to a Sydney beach on a summer’s day”, referring to the Adass Israel Synagogue arson and last December’s Bondi Beach terror attack.
Carroll, who has been Premier for 72 days, said the attack on Israel’s existence had been followed in Australia by an attack on Jews’ connection to it. “Whatever the name, the target is the same: the bond between Jews and their homeland.”
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