The Bondi Beach attack was all-too-familiar for Jewish people | News World

Jews were murdered in cold blood in Sydney yesterday. Jews were killed in Manchester two months ago. It appears to be never ending. 

Synagogues on five continents have been burned since 7 October 2023, and despite the degrees of concern, the response simply doesn’t cut it.

A standard, depressing theme in responses by Jewish communal leaders and other spokespeople to the horrific antisemitic terror attack in Manchester, was that the community had seen this coming. 

That it wasn’t unexpected, and yet Australian Jews were saying the identical: ‘None of us were surprised’. 

There isn’t any excuse now, governments can now not say they didn’t see this coming. With two attacks in quick succession and all of the warnings, words alone won’t cut it next time.

Jews know the warning signs. At times of economic and political uncertainty, populations change into stressed, populists make the most, democracy comes under threat, and Jews are the canary within the coalmine. Whether it’s recent educational programming, immediate deployment of counter-extremism measures, motion is required. 

Before, during and after the shocking scenes on Yom Kippur in Heaton Park, my colleagues and I even have been warning institutions within the UK that the extent of vitriol, and a failure to moderate language and behaviours was prone to fuel radicalisation. 

The broader context has been a sustained and unrelenting rise in antisemitic incidents with the very best number ever recorded coming after the October 7 attacks two years ago.

Now that the worst has happened, yet again, it’s time for all of those who now we have been raising our serious concerns with to take immediate motion –and transcend warm words.

There’s an incredible deal to do, and countless attacks prove the genie is well out of the bottle. 

Specifically, the Government needs, urgently, to deliver a technique for tackling extremism. 

Each day young people, specifically, are being radicalised online, of their bedrooms and elsewhere. 

The Heaton Park synagogue terrorist didn’t get up sooner or later and judge to kill Jews, he was inspired by someone – and authorities have to work faster than they’ve done up to now to seek out out who. 

Likewise, the undeniable fact that a father-and-son duo are suspected of carrying out the Bondi Beach attack proves that this poison is spread through generations.

The Government must bring the relevant experts and departments together, and commit much more resources to developing a technique which takes in approaches to non-violent extremism. 

A response with teeth that, for instance, sees religious leaders spreading hate held accountable, and one which delivers education at source to vulnerable young people. Something that builds on the Prevent strategy but learns from its failings.  

Definitely, Australian Jewish leaders have pointed to similar concerns in regards to the Australian Government’s failures to take heed to them – incitement on the streets going largely unaddressed. 

We want a complete Government and whole society approach and meaning each industry, each employer, taking responsibility for addressing anti-Jewish racism. It also means the regulators that work to maintain organisations and industries in check play a key role. 

The health regulator, the General Medical Council, was severely criticised by the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, for a failure to adequately understand or address antisemitism. 

Ofcom has come under fire for its lack of ambition in tackling online harms; the Electoral Commission has loads more to do in ensuring our elections are protected, fair, and don’t see candidates or their supporters intimidating others amid heightened community tensions. 

In cultural spaces too, we’re platforming too many extremists. Only recently Piers Morgan hosted American Far Right agitator Nick Fuentes who described Hitler as ‘very f***ing cool’.

Morgan is widely seen to have ‘won’ the talk, but it surely still made a lot of us uneasy to see such a nakedly bigoted figure given a high profile appearance.

I could go on, highlighting failures to act across the health, employment, cultural, educational and other spheres.

Parliament too must play its role. In recent times, MPs and peers have invoked antisemitic conspiracy theories, engaged in Holocaust inversion and joined platforms alongside antisemites.  

Whether it’s a Peer making reference to supposed Jewish wealth, or an MP comparing the situation in Gaza to the Holocaust, all of it adds up. 

So too, the febrile debate in regards to the Gaza conflict has seen the spread of misinformation within the Chamber, including a retracted statement in regards to the variety of babies that were on account of die in two days in Gaza. 

After all, Palestinian suffering have to be a spotlight of attention but Israel being debated greater than the NHS should sound an alarm bell too. 

Where Parliament leads, society often follows, and whilst people have the suitable to protest, it’s depressing that in marches across the country – including the day after the October 7 attacks, before the Israeli response, and again after the Manchester attack – antisemitism was openly on display. 

Those holding antisemitic banners and placards weren’t condemned enough, chants not dampened, and anti-Jewish racism not disavowed from the stage or by organisers. It means Jews feel compelled to cover their identities, challenge colleagues for grotesque social media distortions or just leave. 

It means too often Jewish individuals are consoled when incidents like Bondi Beach occur, but might be ignored when less outstanding examples of antisemitism happen. 

The worldwide Jewish community is small, but overrepresented in terms of targeted hate speech online. This contemporary type of the standard antisemitism is, in lots of cases, not illegal, so the case for removal becomes lost in debates about freedom of expression, and put into the ‘too hard’ basket, and so we come full circle.  

Tackling antisemitism requires leadership, not platitudes. Complaints processes and proactive initiatives have to be fit for purpose. 

Yesterday, leaders put out statements condemning the attack on Jews in Australia. Today, far too many will simply proceed as normal, leaving Jews within the UK less protected. 

Putting this within the ‘too hard’ box will now not do. Though the sympathetic messages, and notes of solidarity within the wake of the Manchester and Sydney attack were welcome, what is required is zero tolerance demonstrated through practical motion.

Do you might have a story you’d prefer to share? Get in contact by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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