PAUL MURRAY: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did nothing to stop this festering un-Australian hatred

Having separately fled the Soviet Union’s growing menace against Ukrainian Jews for a life in Australia, Michael and Valentyna eventually met in Sydney and soon after had a daughter they hadn’t planned.

Last weekend, that child, known to the nation only as Matilda, became the youngest of the victims of the Bondi Beach massacre, aged just 10.

Valentyna already had a son, Vadym, born in Ukraine and the new baby was named, as Michael said, because she was “our first Australian”.

A few years after Matilda’s birth, the couple had another daughter, calling her Summer. How bloody Australian.

Last Sunday, the six-year-old played with her older sister in a petting zoo at the beach after having their faces painted and eating donuts.

Then Summer watched Matilda die after being targeted by the Australian-born son of another migrant, one who allegedly swore allegiance to Islamic State, not the country of his birth.

The two girls were the daughters of parents who migrated to Australia in the 1990s for a better life and decided to integrate into our society.

And there’s the difference.

“We came here from Ukraine ... and I thought that Matilda is the most Australian name that can ever exist,” Michael said. “So just remember the name, remember her.”

We should. And what giving her that name meant.

The slaughter of Australian Jews at an iconic beach is a vivid example of what happens when a nation loses grip on its shared social values.

For many Australians of my generation, the fabric of this country is now unrecognisable from the one in which we grew up, bolstered and enhanced by post-war migration.

Such comments are discarded by many young people — and attacked as racist by the new wave of Marxists who influence them — merely proving the point.

They don’t respect or understand the success story of Australia emerging as a new nation during the 1900s, nor those who helped it prosper. They want to cancel that history and rewrite it on misplaced perceptions of “diversity”.

Every society has its flaws and many mistakes were made as this one transitioned, from colonies that had been inhabited unchanged for 60,000 years by a collection of indigenous people, to a modern democracy with one of the highest living standards in the world.

However, a nation in which that history is taught to its children as a shameful period can develop a sense of self-loathing.

And when its political leaders don’t require new arrivals to build on our success by adopting inherent and distinctive national values as the price of remaining here, the downward spiral accelerates.

To those who question what those Australian values might be, it could start with the concept of a “fair go”. That meets the usual legal test of reasonableness.

And not being a fanatic. Neither political, nor religious. Not preaching hate.

It would be a mistake to paint Australia as ever being a homogeneous polity. And yes, minority voices often found it difficult to be heard — as they always do.

But it did have a sense of cohesion, a shared social fabric adopted by a broad majority of its citizens, either home-grown or recently-arrived, and a commonality of purpose well into the start of this century.

Michael Gawenda was editing The Age in Melbourne during some of the 10 years I was editor of this newspaper. We differ politically, but share a love of journalism and free speech.

In July, he wrote a moving article based on his book, My Life As A Jew, in which he bemoaned that “the golden land that Australia once was for the Jews is not coming back anytime soon.”

“I fear that the hostility to Jews has become almost acceptable, even among people who once considered themselves to be supporters of the Jews,” Gawenda stated.

“I think the time when Jews felt they could openly be Jews, express themselves as Jews, celebrate their contributions to Australian life, without fear of the consequences, that is the past and the past can never be reclaimed.”

That is exactly what the Jewish community was trying to do at the Chanukah celebration at Bondi Beach last weekend.

It took me back to my childhood in my maternal grandfather’s beach shack at Palm Beach, where our family friends, the Silberts, descended from Russian Jews, also had a holiday home.

Each summer my parents would be invited by Eric and Joan Silbert for drinks and I would be fascinated by the menorah on the table, the multi-branched candlestick central to every Jewish family’s festivities.

The three Silbert kids had the job of explaining to the Murray offspring what Chanukah was all about — and how it differed from Christmas — while our parents socialised.

Those memories seem idyllic. So divorced from the nation now thrashing around trying to explain what happened at another beach last weekend.

Anyone who wants to measure Anthony Albanese’s culpability as our Prime Minister might consider one simple but critical lack of leadership — distressingly among many.

For more than two years — unknown to many Australians — pro-Palestinian protesters laid siege to Albanese’s electorate office in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville.

From early 2024, just months after the October 7 massacre in Israel, the anti-Israel and increasingly Jew-hating protesters hindered electors from entering.

After some months, many of his electorate staff began to work remotely — on police advice — because of the harassment and by this September the office, which had operated for more than 30 years, was closed.

What a moral capitulation.

While most Australians defend a democratic right to protest, this siege was completely unreasonable. Also illegal.

Under section 149.1 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code, it is a criminal offence to obstruct, hinder, intimidate, or resist a Commonwealth public official in the performance of their functions. And it is a contempt of parliament to interfere with the free performance of an MP’s duties.

But Albanese never confronted it head-on. Why? Was he more interested in Labor’s Muslim vote in western Sydney?

Why wouldn’t those who bitterly oppose Israel — and use it as a proxy for hating Jews — not feel empowered by Albanese’s impotence?

And why didn’t Albanese more forcefully defend the rights of his own electors to seek his assistance as their democratic right — a far more important one than that of protesters whose concerns were on the other side of the world.

It was no surprise that similar mobs of Jew haters kept up the drumbeat every weekend with protests across Sydney, interfering with the rights of everyone else who just wanted to move about the city freely.

In this way, as ASIO boss Mike Burgess has noted, the anti-Israel mantras morphed into something much more dangerous. All Jews were held responsible for the wrongs they vented against the Israeli Government.

Global intifada became the ominous chant. And hatred of Australian Jews increasingly became normalised.

For most Jews, the Israeli flag is a symbol of their ancient homeland. But for the pro-Palestinian mob it was something to revile. And that hate was extended to everyone associated with it.

SBS covered the siege of Albanese’s office on February 19, 2024, just five months after the slaughter of 1200 innocent Jews in the Hamas pogrom.

One of the organisers, Sarah Shaweesh, said the group behind the picket had been there every Thursday for four months but had decided to ramp up the movement with a 24/7 sit-in.

“Anthony Albanese was one of us,” she said. “Twenty, 30 years ago he used to take to the streets of Sydney. We have videos of him protesting and calling himself a friend of Palestine.

“Many people when it came to the election voted him in because they believed in his work. He … needs to … remember who he used to be.”

The shaming and harassment seems to have worked. Albanese eventually reversed Australia’s position on Palestine, spurning our longstanding support for Israel.

When the office was closed, SBS reported it had been spray-painted with the words “Free Gaza” and “Free Palestine” in what NSW Police said was an “act of malicious damage”. No prosecution.

The report quoted Albanese saying “aggressive protesters have repeatedly blocked access to the electoral office for people seeking assistance”.

“It shares a car park with the church, and it became untenable for people to use their own car park at the church,” Albanese said.

“There were people being abused going to funerals.

“And it just does my head in that people think that a cause is advanced by that sort of behaviour.” A cause?

But he never demanded the police clear the mob and prosecute the offenders. He didn’t raise the issue as a breach of his parliamentary privilege.

This failure tells you everything you need to know about the Prime Minister’s approach to the mounting crisis of Jew hate when it was on his doorstep.

Albanese took no action. He showed no leadership. He let it happen.