The Australian Government Allowed Hate Speech Against Jews and Israel; Then a Synagogue Was Burned

Vandals defaced a synagogue in the Australian city of Melbourne in late November, with the phrases “Free Gaza” and “Jews kill babies.” A week later, in early December, two masked individuals deliberately burned down a different Melbourne synagogue, according to local police, who declared it to be an act of terrorism.

For Jews worldwide, it’s a short ride from inflammatory rhetoric to synagogues in flames.

Jacinta Allan, the premier of the state of Victoria, where Melbourne is located, described the arson as an “act of antisemitism.” And Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, “I have zero tolerance for antisemitism. It has absolutely no place in Australia.”

But this is far from an isolated case in the country. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry reported more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, more than quadruple the number over the previous 12-month period.

Just days ago, another antisemitic attack took place in Sydney. 

On October 9, 2023, two days after Hamas launched the bloodiest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, demonstrators gathered outside the Sydney Opera House to bash Israel, with some shouting blatantly antisemitic slogans. There was some debate as to whether they were shouting “Gas the Jews” or “Where’s the Jews?” But after the Hamas massacre, the distinction means little.

Just days before the Melbourne arson attack, protestors, allegedly without permits, gathered across from The Great Synagogue of Sydney to protest an event commemorating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Technion, Israel’s premier research university. For nearly three hours, the Jewish people there were locked down inside the synagogue out of fear for their personal safety.

The demonstrators shouted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan calling for the ethnic cleansing of Israel. The protestors held signs accusing Israel of war crimes, and claiming that the Australian prime minister has blood on his hands for not halting Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

Then, when a Jewish man unfurled an Israeli flag across the street, facing Palestinian flags and banners calling for sanctions against Israel, the anti-Israel mob began aggressively shouting “shame” and “murderer” at him. Yet the police detained the pro-Israel pedestrian for endangering the peace by “antagonizing” the mob, not the unauthorized assembly.

In effect, the protestors used the pretext of human rights to harass Jews outside a synagogue. And several supposed human rights groups are producing materials that help protestors justify their hatred of the Jewish State and its supporters.

During this time, the Australian government has grown increasingly critical of Israel and its defensive war against Hamas — which culminated in Australia’s decision to reverse decades of policy, and vote for an extremely anti-Israel measure at the United Nations.

The same week as the Sydney synagogue heckling and the Melbourne synagogue arson, Amnesty International, the once-respected human rights organization, released a report contending that Israel had committed acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

This erroneous conclusion is flawed for several reasons. First, it rests on expanding what it calls an “overly cramped” standard for determining genocidal intent, the core of the crime. Second, it frames the war as an Israeli assault on Gazans even though Hamas initiated the fighting. Third, it misrepresents data about food insecurity in Gaza, which actually shows that Israel has taken significant steps to stave off starvation.

Fourth, it accepts Hamas’ overall casualty figures while omitting the number of Hamas fighters killed in the fighting, which — even using Hamas’ false numbers — would show a civilian-to-combatant death ratio in line with urban combat, not genocide. Fifth, it discounts Hamas’ use of human shields as a contributing factor to civilian deaths. And sixth, it dishonestly edits quotes from Israeli officials to suggest that they had genocidal intent when the opposite was true.

In truth, there’s many more than six reasons why the report is false and genocide isn’t happening; but no amount of the truth will convince people who are pre-determined to find Israel guilty.

This isn’t an exercise in seeking the truth. Amnesty produced its 296-page report with the intent to punish Israel and — by extension — its supporters. The report attempts to cast Israel as a uniquely evil state that must be dealt with accordingly.

This approach to the Jewish State feeds into a long history of antisemites casting the Jews as villains. In what has become known as the blood libel, medieval Christians in Europe accused Jews of killing Christian babies to use their blood for their Passover matzah. This framework justified all sorts of injustices against Jews, who were seen as bloodthirsty baby killers.

The details may have changed, but the accusations remain the same. The protestors outside synagogues in Australia, Amnesty International, and possibly the arsonists in Melbourne decry the Jewish State as a bloodthirsty child killer and want to stop it. Those casting aspersions against Israel are not overzealous defenders of human rights. Rather, they are modern purveyors of ancient blood libels portraying Jews — and now the Jewish State — as an embodiment of evil that must be destroyed. Australia and other nations should treat these vilifiers accordingly.

David May is a research manager and senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Follow David on X @DavidSamuelMay. Follow FDD on X @FDD.

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