When Chanukah Light Meets Australian Darkness |
At 6:47pm on the first night of Chanukah, Bondi Beach felt unrecognizable. For a moment, it recalled something far darker, a modern-day Port Arthur. A day off the eleven year anniversary since the Lindt Café siege at Martin Place, something fundamental in Australia has broken. Will Australia ever be the same again or has it lost its soul for good?
ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess had warned an attack was probable. One of the suspects was already known to authorities. Yet the warning went unheeded, and nothing was done. This was not an isolated failure. It sits within a broader climate emboldened by political appeasement.
Barely 48 hours after the October 7 attacks in Israel, when 1,200 were murdered and 250 taken hostage in Gaza, mobs openly chanted “gas the Jews” and “f*** the Jews” outside the Sydney Opera House with no consequences. The entire world was shocked. The Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, travelled to Israel to reinstate funding to UNRWA, even after Israel presented evidence of UNRWA staff involvement in the atrocities, yet did not visit the massacre sites. The IRGC has been linked to the firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue, and one alleged perpetrator is out on bail. Calls to “globalize the intifada” echo in Australian streets as if they were harmless slogans. Hate speech is not free speech. Tolerating it invites terror.
Indeed, the government has done more than........