CAMERON MILNER: Hatred flourishes as the world watches on

Let’s hope that after a second firebombing of a synagogue in Melbourne Anthony Albanese’s Labor Government finally gets there’s an anti-Semitism crisis on their watch.

The acts of terror being experienced by Australia’s Jewish community are in large part to the climate of casual acceptance cultivated by the current crew of ministers.

Albanese’s own acquiescence now looks like contributory negligence. The activists and the fire bomber of the East Melbourne synagogue would all know that the Prime Minister chose to keep playing tennis at Cottesloe even as the Addas synagogue lay smouldering from the first arson attack last year.

It must’ve been galling for Mark Dreyfus — who was Labor’s only Jewish Cabinet minister before he was dumped in May — to have to act as Immigration and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s chaperone at the scene of the most recent fire bombing of a Jewish place of worship.

Burke clashed with Dreyfus previously, and along with Foreign Affairs Minister Wong, has been a cheerleader within Cabinet for rewarding Hamas with an immediate promise of Palestinian statehood even as the terrorist organisation steals food from Gazans and holds Israeli hostages.

Anti-Semitism is scourge that requires relentless vigilance to hold it at bay. It’s always been at the edges of hatreds such as neo-Nazism and rank racism.

It can’t be allowed to fester and grow as it has under Albanese’s watch. Yet that is exactly what we are now seeing on Melbourne’s streets.

Old hatreds are having a new dawn because the perpetrators think they can get away with it. They see weakness among Labor’s leadership and are taking their queue to wage acts of terror, not just against Jewish Australians but against all Australians.

It’s been fuelled by the constant weekly rallies of hard Left activists, pro-Palestinian, Israel-hating mobs that swarm through the streets of Melbourne on Sundays making the centre of the city simply unsafe.

These activists chant their genocidal rants of “from the river to the sea”, while police give them guided tours, even in one case last year directing them to pass a synagogue.

It’s not like Albanese can plead ignorance.

From the day after the atrocities of the October 7 terrorist attack that say women raped, children burned and innocents slaughtered, our own Opera House was desecrated by an angry mob allegedly shouting “gas the Jews”.

Week after week, month after month. Now, close to two years on, should we be surprised that some think it’s OK to firebomb a place of Jewish worship?

Albanese has feet of clay and can’t bring himself to swift and decisive action, even on anti-Semitism.

He can mouth the words, but it’s his inaction that speaks volumes.

It’s also not as though leaders from the Jewish community such as Sharri Markson, Josh Frydenberg, Alex Ryvchin, Mark Leibler and Mark Dreyfus haven’t spoken up and called for decisive action.

In a recent documentary, former Labor PM Julia Gillard noted that Hitler’s holocaust didn’t start overnight. It came on the back on years of incitement, vandalism and ultimately terrorism directed at Germany’s Jewish citizens.

Perhaps even more prescient is Churchill’s famous quote, based on Thomas Jefferson’s from a century before: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”.

Albanese and his praetorian guard seem determined to trash Labor’s heritage of leaders like Gillard and Bob Hawke standing shoulder to shoulder with Jewish Australians.

Just as Albanese was trashing our US alliance on Saturday night — even as his only plan for our nation’s defence rests with Scott Morrison’s AUKUS plan — the PM can never bring himself to speak against anti-Semitism without adding a caveat.

Even as he attempts to condemn these attacks he dives for his talking points and has to mumble something about Islamophobia, as if there’s some equivalence.

Ugly and angry mobs aren’t gathering every week in our nation’s second largest city to go and attack Halal restaurants and mosques.

The PM’s excuses have only encouraged the extremists to be more extreme in their attacks on Jewish Australia and by extension the rest of Australia.

This is also not something occurring in Europe, the UK or Canada. Israel’s Prime Minster is right to call out Australia’s appalling recent history of acts of terror.

Albanese’s weakness has allowed the voices of hatred to flourish in our community.

Penny Wong’s actions in punishing Israel and handing hope to Hamas don’t go unnoticed by these hate groups. Even though most will see through Tony Burke’s self-serving support to keep local votes in Watson through his pro-Palestine stance, these groups still see it as an endorsement.

This isn’t an inherent Labor problem. NSW Premier Chris Minns’ zero tolerance approach to racism and hate crimes provides a great contrast to the weakness on display from Albanese.

Labor might revel in small target strategies and not standing for anything, but surely on racism even Albanese can draw an unequivocal line.

Albanese needs to grow a spine and stand up once and for all to these terror attacks in Melbourne.

He needs to act decisively and deliberately for as long as it takes. Jewish Australians are watching along with the rest of us in Australia, but so too now is the rest of world.

The time for more words has ended, the time for defined action against anti-Semitism is now upon as a nation. It’s time for the PM to finally show some real leadership.