Commentary by ECAJ co-CEO Alex Ryvchin originally published in The Australian on 13 January 2024.

How Mr Albanese and others in his gov­ern­ment respond to what Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry, described in The Weekend Aus­trali­an as “a lot of anger in the community about the federal government’s handling of what has become an antisemitism crisis” presents the gov­ern­ment, and more broadly the Labor Party, with a profound, seminal challenge.

The link between the growth of gross antisemitism sweeping Australia, and Israel’s brave fight for survival against terrorism in a war it did not start, is incon­tro­vert­ible. Antisemitism and the government’s handling of the crisis cannot, as former treasurer Josh Fry­den­berg said at the weekend, be other than a central issue in the election. No amount of harking back to his student days is likely to help Mr Albanese explain his government’s failure “in not recog­nising the dis­tinct­ness of antisemitism, the con­nec­tion between hatred for Israel and hatred for Jews, and the need to fight it through clear rhetoric and early inter­ven­tion”, as Mr Ryvchin said.

Bob Hawke, in 1974, had no dif­fi­culty in doing so when he saga­ciously declared: “If the bell tolls for Israel, it won’t just toll for Israel, it will toll for all mankind.”

Fifty years on, there is little sign of the strong, coherent lead­er­ship Hawke showed in recog­nising the con­nec­tion between antisemitism and the Jewish homeland’s fight for survival. Instead, there appears to be a wet lettuce leaf policy approach. Mr Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, while con­demning antisemitism, have lost no oppor­tun­ity to criticise and condemn Israel, our close ally for 75 years, making clear their distaste for the Jewish state and casting Australia’s vote with its adversar­ies at the UN. When she finally went to Israel last January, long after many other Western leaders had gone there to express support following the October 7 massacre, Senator Wong shied away from visiting the sites of Hamas’s bloodbath, where other foreign leaders had gone.

In Australia, the government’s lack­a­dais­ic­al, dis­join­ted and uncon­vin­cing response to the most hor­ri­fy­ing slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, and its con­sist­ently strong con­dem­na­tion of Israel over its fight for survival in a war it did not start, has seemed to spur the evil forces of anti-Semitism in our midst. That is the legacy Mr Albanese will have to defend at a time when many Aus­trali­an Jews are so dis­tressed they are talking about migrating.

Their fears are exacer­bated further when, as we reported at the weekend, extremist groups within the Labor Party – such as the Labor Friends of Palestine – are even incensed by the intended “fence-mending” trip to Israel that Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, the government’s most prominent Jew, is finally about to make.

Mr Albanese and his col­leagues would be foolish not to heed Mr Ryvchin’s per­cept­ive warning that “Jewish Aus­trali­ans have never before voted on the basis of which party will do a better job of keeping us safe and which party will support Israel when the chips are down”. But that is the prospect the Albanese gov­ern­ment faces. As Mr Fry­den­berg said, since October 7 the Prime Minister has “vacated the space” on antisemitism. He has failed to follow the sensible lead­er­ship over Israel provided by Hawke and Julia Gillard, and Australia’s future as a tolerant society is on the line in the election.

Sadly, Mr Fry­den­berg could not be more correct as the election draws closer. Meeting the profound, linked chal­lenges of anti-Semitism and the Jewish homeland’s fight for survival against terrorism will need more than Mr Albanese recalling his student days.