Will Australia now take anti-Semitism seriously? |
After four days of looking like a rabbit in the headlights, embattled Australian prime minister, Labor’s Anthony Albanese, finally started to act like a national leader willing to do what’s right. Yesterday, Albanese announced his government’s response to a plan to combat anti-Semitism proposed by his hand-picked special envoy on anti-Semitism, Jewish community leader Jillian Segal.
Albanese has had Segal’s report since July. His response yesterday, which effectively accepted the envoy’s 13 recommendations, was tardy but substantial. Most importantly, the Australian government accepted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism – a definition that boils down simply to hatred towards Jews, without qualification – as the basis of policy and legislation for federal and state governments.
The prime minister also announced reinforcement of Australia’s hate speech laws to vilify and penalise hate speech promoting violence and aggravated penalties for preachers and leaders promoting violence. That includes online threats and harassment. Hopefully, all these measures will outlaw demands to ‘globalise the intifada’, as happened so barbarically in Bondi last weekend.
Albanese looked all at sea in struggling to read the anger of Australia’s Jews
Australians have looked on in astonishment recently as Britons are arrested and jailed for tweets and various hate speech laws – Lucy Connolly’s jailing was big news........