Who would have thought, back in the 2000s, that the Howard years would seem like a golden age of good governance? Or that John Howard would teach the self-appointed moral elite what ethics and leadership really mean?
Yet, here we are. Labor, whose past great leader warned that, “If the bell is allowed to toll for Israel, it will have tolled for us all”, are not just gutless and useless in the dismaying rise of anti-Semitism, but actively complicit. Both from a fanatic conviction in the darker regions of its membership, and from a purely, indefensibly cynical self-interest.
Former Liberal prime minister John Howard says Anthony Albanese bears much of the blame for rising levels of anti-Semitism, saying a failure to denounce in unequivocal terms the horror of the Hamas attack on Israelis on October 7 had set the wrong tone for the country. But the Prime Minister rebuked the claim, saying he and his government had called out anti-Semitism “when we see it” and such behaviour was “completely not acceptable”.
The problem is that Albanese has deliberately blindfolded himself against, not just the violent anti-Semitism bellowing in the streets and university campuses, but within his own party.
When a Muslim mob rampaged at the Opera House, celebrating October 7 and chanting “Gas the Jews!”, where was Albanese? Nowhere to be seen or heard.
Indeed, it took him nearly a day to even respond to October 7. Neither he nor his foreign minister have even deigned to visit Israel in the months since.
Where was Albanese when his own MPs chanted “From the River to the Sea”? Pretending he didn’t hear a thing. The most trenchant criticism he could come up with was that it was “not acceptable”.
Mr Howard said the country needed to utterly reject anti-Semitism but that Mr Albanese had failed to set the right tone from the start.
“One thing we must unite on is to completely repudiate any return of anti-Semitism,” Mr Howard tells former Liberal treasurer Josh Frydenberg in a documentary on anti-Semitism to be screened on Sky News Australia on Tuesday.
“I believe that if from the beginning that these horrible events of the 7th of October had been denounced in unequivocal terms, no buts, maybes, no equivalence, none of that, from the very beginning, you would not have had these outbreaks, because part of the role of being a leader of a country is to set a tone.”
Albanese has set the tone, alright: every anti-Semitic enormity from Muslims and leftists will be tacitly tolerated, if it helps his odious government cling to power.
Every step of the way, Albanese has pandered to Muslim anti-Semitism. He might have muttered some grudging “condemnation” of Hamas at first, but quickly pivoted to rewarding the blood-soaked savages of Gaza by trenchantly criticising Israel and backing a “Palestinian” state.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said it was outrageous that there seemed to be a tolerance for a degree of anti-Semitism in Australia today […]
“I thought that opportunity was there for the Prime Minister to do the same in the aftermath of what we saw on the steps of the Sydney Opera House,” Mr Dutton said.
“I thought the absence of that leadership and the weakness demonstrated in the days following, the equivocation, the moral equivalence demonstrated by the Prime Minister, I think that allowed the bar to be raised in the minds of some people who have hate in their hearts, that they can practise anti-Semitism.
“The Prime Minister didn’t call it out in a way that should have been the case, and I think that has set us on a dangerous path since then.
“I think he’s let our country down and he’s certainly let the Jewish community, and therefore all Australians, down as a result of his approach and the lack of leadership.”
The Australian
Albanese is a contemptible worm.
