As Australians mourn the murders committed on Sunday, December 14, by individuals motivated by ISIS ideology, the Prime Minister has pointed to gun laws rather than confronting a deeper failure of leadership in addressing extremist hatred.
Earlier this year, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess told Parliament that antisemitism is the agency’s top priority in terms of “threats to life”. Yet over the past two years, the Albanese government has failed to take clear and decisive action against those who fuel hatred against Jewish Australians, or to hold them publicly to account.
The government’s recognition of Palestine on September 21, 2025 illustrates this failure. While it stated that “the terrorist organisation Hamas must have no role in Palestine”, it did not acknowledge Hamas’s explicit denial of Israel’s right to exist, nor set out any accountability measures to ensure terrorist groups are excluded in practice. Against a backdrop of increasing antisemitic rhetoric and violence, this matters.
My father fought in the Middle East and Palestine during World War II, against an ideology that sought to dehumanise and murder people, many of whom were Jewish. He, and those who fought beside him, would be appalled that the current leadership in Australia has allowed for conditions in which such hatred can take root. History has a word for violent campaigns against Jewish communities: pogroms. Tragically, Australia is now confronting its own version of this reality, despite repeated warning signs.
Until the Prime Minister takes concrete action, publicly naming and denouncing those who promote hatred, imposing real consequences, and reconsidering Australia’s recognition of Palestine unless terrorist groups are demonstrably excluded, his words will ring hollow to Australians who expect leadership that doesn’t deflect and is grounded in action, not rhetoric.
Kerry Watts, Wee Waa
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