Australia's Albanese grapples with fallout after Jewish massacre

A day after the deadliest domestic terror attack in Australia’s history, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese faced criticism he didn’t do enough to combat rising attacks on the Jewish community nor swiftly enact recommendations from the nation’s antisemitism envoy released five months ago.

Albanese -- who shrugged off criticism of his handling of escalating antisemitic attacks on his way to a landslide election victory in May -- focused most of his response Monday to strengthening gun laws while also urging Australians to rally around the Jewish community and protect social cohesion.

In a press conference late Sunday, after 15 people were killed and dozens hospitalized in an attack on a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, he had faced pointed questions about whether his government had done enough to tackle antisemitism, replying “we have taken it seriously, and we’ve continued to act.”

Opposition Liberal leader Sussan Ley, who had pledged “full and unconditional support” to Albanese’s government, leveled sharp criticism Monday. “There is palpable anger because antisemitism in Australia has been left to fester,” she told reporters. “We’ve seen a clear failure to keep Jewish Australians safe. We’ve seen a clear lack of leadership.”

She offered to reconvene parliament to pass any legislation needed to implement the July 10 antisemitism report’s recommendations, which included risk-grading campuses, tying compliance to funding, updating hate-speech laws and improving law-enforcement responses.

David Littleproud — leader of the National Party, which is part of the opposition coalition — said in a statement that “we cannot continue to ignore the rise in antisemitism that has been allowed to seep into Australia since 7 October, 2023,” referring to an attack on Israel by Hamas.

Since that attack, which killed about 1,200 people, and Israel’s military campaign to root out Hamas from the Gaza Strip that’s killed about 70,000 people, incidents of antisemitism have increased in Australia, including arson attacks and vandalism. It’s also sparked rallies in support of Palestinians, which have often generated accusations of amplifying antisemitic messages or showing support for Hamas.

“As time passes and more information becomes available, the real question will have to be around whether or not sufficient work was done to address the rising tide of antisemitism across Australia,” said John Coyne, director of the National Security Program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Josh Frydenberg, treasurer in the former center-right government who lost family in the Holocaust, said leaders had failed to protect the community. “Yesterday was the tragic culmination of that unprecedented failure of leadership,” Frydenberg said in televised comments.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ascribed the attack to Australia’s call for a Palestinian state. “You did nothing to curb the cancer cells that were growing inside your country. You took no action,” Netanyahu said during a government meeting on Sunday.

That one of the gunmen had arrived in Sydney in 1998 on a student visa while the other, his son, had been investigated by authorities in 2019 for his association with an Islamic State cell, will also likely inflame an increasingly heated debate in Australia over immigration.

Like many western democracies, Australia is seeing a surge in support for populists, with polls putting the One Nation party at a record vote. Its leader, long-time anti-immigration campaigner Pauline Hanson, was suspended from the Senate last month after appearing in the upper house chamber in a burqa, which she wants to ban in the nation.

Even with that increasing support, One Nation is set to be largely confined to the senate as compulsory voting and a preferential system make it tough for minor parties to win seats in the lower house, where government is decided. Yet the populist shift still has scope to influence policy as the nation’s two major parties reshape their agendas, including calls from both to scale back immigration.

A post-pandemic surge in migration that coincided with a renewed spike in inflation has seen support for bringing in more people into Australia decline. Recent opinion surveys showed a majority of Australians now believe immigration is too high.

“There is a tremendous amount of polarization and fragmentation, and this leads people to develop grievances,” said Michael Zekulin, a senior lecturer at the Australian National University’s School of Politics and International Relations.

“You take all of these things, add in things like social media and add in the vitriol and algorithms that drive extremist content and narratives, and the bottom line is unfortunately there are people that will choose to take action,” he said.

In an emergency meeting of state and federal leaders on Monday, ministers agreed to strengthen gun laws by accelerating work on a National Firearms Register and limiting the number of firearms to be held by any one individual.

The father was licensed to own six “longarms” weapons and was a gun-club member, police said, adding that he held a firearm permit for a decade.

Rising antisemitism

Just two days after the Hamas militants’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, a demonstration outside the Sydney Opera House saw protesters chant anti-Israel and antisemitic obscenities while some flew Hamas and Hezbollah flags. The Opera House at the time was projecting the blue and white of the Israeli flag onto the sails of the building in memory of the Israelis murdered.

Several synagogues in Australia, along with Jewish businesses and homeowners, were targeted last year amid the rising deathtoll and destruction in Gaza.

In October 2024, two masked men torched Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Bondi, home to many Jewish Australians, after dousing it with accelerant. The following month, assailants sprayed anti-Israel graffiti and set a vehicle alight in Woollahra — a suburb with a large Jewish community — damaging more than 10 cars and several buildings.

Last December, offenders broke into the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea, Victoria, and spread accelerant in what police described as a probable terrorist attack. Days later, another graffiti-and-arson attack targeted a street in Woollahra that perpetrators selected because it was considered a Jewish area.

Australia needs a major investigation of the 18 months leading up to the Bondi attack — in addition to the event itself — as it has probably now “crossed the Rubicon” on free speech and needs to redefine what represents hate speech, politically motivated violence and terrorism, said Coyne at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

During that period, “awful but lawful” was used by some groups to protest and spread antisemitic messages, yet this didn’t hit a threshold for prosecution, according to Coyne.

Australia’s antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal, who in July released the recommendations to combat antisemitism, said the Bondi attack hadn’t come without warning signs.

“It’s been seeping into society for many years and we have not come out strongly enough against it,” she told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio, adding the Jewish community is “terrified” and some people don’t want to leave their homes.

“The messaging has not been sufficient, and the education has not been sufficient for people to understand what antisemitism is and how it destroys the community,” she said.