For the Australian PM, playing tennis and campaigning in marginal Labor seats takes a clear priority over doing anything meaningful to reassure Australia’s Jewish community.
Anthony Albanese might have been dragged, kicking and screaming, into finally admitting that the firebombing of a Melbourne synagogue was an act of terrorism, but don’t expect him to lift a finger to show any real concern. For Albanese, it’s only ever all about clinging to government by any means necessary. So if it comes to prioritising either Australia’s terror-besieged Jewish community or shoring up Labor’s vote in WA, well, sorry Jews – you lose.
Mr Albanese, in Perth for a series of events across marginal West Australian seats, was a last-minute attendee at the bar mitzvah at the Perth Hebrew Congregation in Menora on Saturday morning.
Well, gee, wasn’t that big of him?
To really rub salt into the wound, in echoes of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau whooping it up at a Taylor Swift concert while anti-Semitic riots raged in Montreal, Albanese chose to play tennis at one of Perth’s most exclusive clubs. Oh, and pose for selfies.
Rather than change his plans and travel to Melbourne and visit the site of the Adass Israel synagogue fire bombing, Mr Albanese has stuck with his planned appearances in Perth over the weekend. WA is shaping as the key state for Mr Albanese’s re-election hopes, with Labor’s ability to retain the seats it gained in 2022 likely to determine whether the party can hold on to power.
Unsurprisingly, many of Australia’s Jewish community are outraged by the obvious snub.
Opposition legal affairs spokeswoman Michaelia Cash, the most senior Liberal figure from WA, said she was aware of unease among the Jewish community over the Prime Minister’s appearance.
“Members of the Perth Jewish community who were at the event Mr Albanese attended say they were not happy and were ‘amazed at his chutzpah for attending’,” Senator Cash said.
Above all, don’t expect Albo to cop to any blame.
“They say that he didn’t acknowledge that the Labor government’s actions since October 7 have contributed to what is now happening to the Jewish community in Australia.”
And they’re still at it.
Senior Labor minister Chris Bowen has been grilled for raising anti-Semitism with Islamophobia during a heated interview on ABC.
What a completely and utterly disgusting thing to say.
Are mosques being firebombed? Are Muslims having to hide their identity for fear of being attacked in the streets? Are mobs of baying Jews parading through the streets of Australian cities every week, bellowing ‘Gas the Muslims!’? Are Muslim schools having to hire armed guards?
Bowen seems to think so. Or, at least, he clearly wants to encourage glass-jawed Muslims to keep up their mendacious self-pity act. Bowen attacked opposition Home Affairs spokesman James Paterson for – correctly – stating that anti-Semitism was obviously far more rampant than so-called ‘Islamophobia’.
Something so obvious that even the ABC has to admit it.
Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas quickly corrected Mr Bowen […]
“Are you saying they are at the same levels because we’ve just seen a targeted attack on a synagogue,” he was asked.
Australia’s Jewish community is clearly fed up with Labor’s gutless pandering to the virulent anti-Semitism of the Greens and the Muslim community.
Labor MP Josh Burns has defended the federal government’s position on stamping out anti-Semitism, one day after being booed by the Jewish community at the centre of a suspected terror attack on the Adass Israel synagogue in Ripponlea.
Mr Burns absorbed the fury of the crowd at a Jewish vigil on Sunday, and apologised for his party’s handling of the months-long anti-Semitism crisis.
Burns, it should be noted, is a Jewish MP, whose own office was also firebombed – months ago – an act neither the Labor government or police will acknowledge as terrorism.
“One of the things I’m doing is leading an inquiry into anti-Semitism on our university campuses. This has been a place where Jewish kids are hiding their identity.”
So, like Jacinda Ardern, they’ll respond to a crisis by appointing a select committee to hold an inquiry into the working group conducting an assessment into the inquiry. Which is the same as doing nothing at all.
Burns and the rest of Labor are playing the same two-faced game as Bowen.
“The special envoy which was appointed by us and will work into the next federal election.”
Which ‘special envoy’? The one for anti-Semitism, or the one they announced simultaneously, into ‘Islamophobia’?
There’s no level this government won’t sink to, to desperately cling to the votes of Muslims in the Labor strongholds of Western Sydney.
