Antisemitism, a serious problem in the Labor party for at least 20 years, is damaging our international reputation and could now attract the disapproval of our leading ally. In its current advanced stage, Labor’s antisemitism has unleashed  individual antisemitism. This is grossly irresponsible.

Exposed in 2004 by the highly respected former Hawke government minister, Barry Cohen, the Labor leadership was warned twenty years ago, that antisemitism was already rampant in the party. As Cohen described it, this operated in a pincer movement against any Labor MP daring to support Israel.

On one side was the ominous, hard-left faction, reclassifying Jews as oppressors, even in their very own ancient homeland.

On the other, there was a bevy of opportunist MPs who only supported the hard left on Israel to keep the votes of an ‘increased number of Arab voters’.

Despite Cohen’s comment being widely reported, the leadership denied there was a problem.

There was indeed and it has worsened.

It was around the time of Cohen’s call that I first saw security guards posted at the entrances to two Sydney synagogues. On enquiry, I was shocked to learn guards were also being put into Jewish kindergartens.

There was also a news report about two demonstrators explaining why they had stoned Sydney’s St Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral. ‘We thought it was a synagogue,’ they said in justification.

The point is that Labor’s leaders should have done what Hawke would have done, and solved the problem. Instead, they let this fester for two long decades.

Yet the Jewish community, old as it is and small as it is, and often with links to Labor, has made a significant and disproportionate contribution to the nation’s law, medicine, business, politics and government, including two governors-general, the armed forces, including one of our greatest generals, the arts and sports and as benefactors and generous supporters.

They do not deserve to be the subjects of an irrational and evil hatred, especially one which the civilised world solemnly promised would never be repeated.

Despite the contributions of Australian forces to the liberation of what was to become Israel, and which under the Balfour Declaration was destined to be a homeland for the Jews as the original inhabitants of Judea and Samaria, and despite the great support of the founding UN General Assembly President, Labor’s Dr H.V. Evatt, Labor has unleashed a heightened antisemitism in Australia.

This is to satisfy the hard left (home to Prime Minister Albanese and Foreign Minister Wong) and to preserve the exercise of powers, from external affairs to immigration and to law and order, not for the traditional ‘peace, order and good government’ but for the corrupt purpose of maintaining and increasing the Muslim vote.

Consider, for example, what followed when in 1990 ALP minister for immigration Chris Hurford tried to deport antisemitic cleric Sheik Taj El-Din Hilaly for being against ‘Australian values’.

The prime minister, Paul Keating, removed minister Hurford and Hilaly was then given permanent residence .

Consider also the extraordinary effect the perceived need to keep the Muslim vote can have in the determination of Australia’s foreign policy. In 2012, prime minister Julie Gillard decided to follow Australia’s bipartisan policy and vote against Palestinian delegates receiving UN observer status. Foreign minister Bob Carr dissented and persuaded caucus to reverse the PM’s decision. The crucial question was said to be, ‘How can we defend this policy from  the steps of the Lakemba mosque?’

After Hamas terrorists took hostages and brutally tortured and murdered men, women, children and even babies during the 2023 surprise Hamas attack on Israel, the NSW Police ushered a mob to Sydney’s Opera House where they rioted, engaging in the vilest of antisemitic abuse and violence.

The only arrest was of a Jew carrying an Israeli flag.

As mentioned here before, the NSW Police adopted what smelt of a distraction that nothing was being done, probably encouraged from on high.

This apparent distraction was to settle the question no one in Sydney was asking, did the mob chant, ‘Gas the Jews?’

Despite large numbers of people there having heard precisely that, we were given details of a high police exercise with an acoustic expert which established that what the mob was chanting was the unlikely and unidiomatic, ‘Where’s the Jews?’

I would have no doubt that had they wanted to chant this improbably polite question, it would have been delivered as, ‘Where are the Jews?’ with the ‘are’ almost suppressed.

And as too improbable, surely the commissioner and minister were aware of this distraction and approved it, at least in the sense that they did not veto it.

Notwithstanding Premier Minn’s regular strong words of comfort to the Jewish community, the fact that no action was taken against the lawbreakers suggests both the Albanese and Minns governments would have been kept informed about this and obviously did not object to this ploy.

This demonstrates the pattern followed by Labor at all levels. This is to tolerate antisemitism, except when action is wholly unavoidable, a practice followed in several universities. This extends to allowing regular pro-Hamas demonstrations (described as pro-Palestininan) in the cities, with the Albanese government engaging in criticising and opposing Israel in the UN and other bodies, and in the openly biased International Criminal Court, both even when Israel’s very survival is in question.

Labor claims to be a friend of Israel.

How fortunate we were that we did not have similar friends in the second world war.

The point surely is not to undermine Israel internationally, to apply the law equally and, where the law is deficient, as long claimed by the Minns government, have parliament sit until new laws are enacted, with mandatory sentencing, and in the meantime, to limit lawful demonstrations to, for example, occasional addresses in the Domain.

Instead of this, Labor clearly has a policy of playing to what it believes to be the Muslim vote.

This can only last until the Australian people withdraw their mandate or the Trump administration becomes aware of the deceitful game Labor is playing.