Since Octo­ber 7, the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty has har­boured a belief that the gov­ern­ment was nev­er real­ly up for the fight against anti­semitism.

At times, it seemed to treat it as a nui­sance rather than a moral imper­a­tive. The only real ques­tion was whether this anaemic approach was dri­ven by ide­ol­o­gy or hard polit­i­cal real­i­ties, or both.

Now the two most senior min­is­ters in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter for Home Affairs, have giv­en a pow­er­ful, elo­quent and sin­cere affir­ma­tion of their revul­sion at what is being done to Jew­ish Aus­tralians and pledged to ban­ish this con­temp­tu­ous hatred to the dark cor­ners of para­noid delu­sion and low big­otry, where it belongs.

They have shown that they get it. They under­stand that the extreme anti-Israel activists are not free­dom fight­ers or peaceniks. They are a threat to us all.

After 21 months of boy­cotts, death chants and blaz­ing streets and syn­a­gogues, many in the com­mu­ni­ty and wider soci­ety will regard the government’s embrace of the spe­cial envoy’s plan to com­bat anti­semitism, a com­pre­hen­sive and thought­ful plan engag­ing gov­ern­ment and civ­il soci­ety, as hol­low.

More still, will bor­row the phrase spo­ken by the “Son of Sam” killer upon his belat­ed arrest by the NYPD, “What took you so long?”

But the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and all Aus­tralians need to draw upon one of our defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics, fair­ness, and give the gov­ern­ment a fair go.

They have before them a roadmap to lead this coun­try back to what it was and what it should always be, a peace­ful, self-con­fi­dent, ratio­nal and decent coun­try, the envy of the world.

The imple­men­ta­tion of the spe­cial envoy’s plan to com­bat anti­semitism is not a gift or a ser­vice to Jew­ish Aus­tralians. We are a hearty and sto­ic peo­ple and have learned to fend for our­selves.

It is need­ed for Aus­tralia.

A coun­try where cars are rou­tine­ly daubed with racist slo­gans or where schoolkids can be racial­ly abused and ridiculed by par­ents on the side­lines of sport­ing fields or in shop­ping malls; where jack­als hopped up on the death chants and poi­son of vicious street ral­lies can con­trol the streets and send din­ers scram­bling into the night in ter­ror; where an increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple believe puerile, imbe­cil­ic con­spir­a­cies that the Jews did 9/11, faked Octo­ber 7, con­trol our banks, media and gov­ern­ments, and can’t tell the dif­fer­ence between a grind­ing war Israel did not want or choose and a geno­cide, is not a healthy soci­ety.

It is not a ratio­nal soci­ety. And unhealthy and irra­tional soci­eties cease to pro­duce great minds, great dis­cov­er­ies and inno­va­tions, and they do not sus­tain great stan­dards of liv­ing.

Like every plan, the spe­cial envoy’s plan will be judged by the suc­cess of its imple­men­ta­tion. It will require not only the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to act, but state gov­ern­ments, uni­ver­si­ties, schools, cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, social media plat­forms, and fam­i­lies and indi­vid­u­als.

But this does not get the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment off the hook or abro­gate its cen­tral role in guid­ing our coun­try back to some­where bet­ter than we are now. It has to lead this fight­back.

Nor can the media and com­mu­ni­ty cease its work in advo­cat­ing and shin­ing a light on what has been hap­pen­ing and what we have become.

It will be for us, all of us, to hold gov­ern­ments and insti­tu­tions account­able, and to give fair cred­it where it is due.

The Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty is deliri­ous­ly patri­ot­ic. We adore this coun­try. Part­ly this comes from first­hand or fam­i­ly expe­ri­ence of far less­er places, the Sovi­et Union, apartheid South Africa, Nazi-occu­pied Europe.

Part­ly, it comes from hav­ing con­tributed so much to the suc­cess, wealth and inge­nu­ity of this coun­try.

This is why amid an out­break of hatred that few fore­saw or imag­ined, the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty has stayed, and indeed become more Jew­ish and more Aus­tralian. But this expe­ri­ence has also matured our souls and hard­ened our minds.

We know we are fight­ing for Aus­tralia, and the spe­cial envoy has pre­sent­ed a win­ning bat­tle plan.