Do words have any meaning? Most people think so, which is why there is an endless debate about which words should be permitted by law, which should be a matter for the law, and which words should be debated in the realm of manners.
Where does “Gas the Jews” fit into that? There are contexts where those words could be in the realm of manners. For instance, somebody might use them in a comedy club, doing a routine about forbidden statements. But how about using them immediately after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? How about if the words are used on the streets by a mob—not in a spirit of jest, but of intent?
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That’s what happened outside the Sydney opera house on October 9, 2023—two days after Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists invaded Israel, slaughtered 1,200 people, and took another 250 hostage. The people in the mob outside the opera house that night were not objecting to the war that resulted from that massacre. They were not trying out some new comedy material. They were using the massacre of Jews as the impetus to stand in their own city, oceans away, and advocate for the gassing of Jews.
Of course, the Australian authorities did not take any meaningful action regarding that protest. No more than they chose to take action against the numberless protests in major Australian cities since October 2023 in which protesters have chanted “Globalize the Intifada” and much more.
Which is not to say that the Australian government are free-speech absolutists. They are not. Nor does Australia have an equivalent of the First Amendment which strictly protects Free Speech, even up to the point of incitement. On the contrary, the Australian authorities are among the toughest in the world when it comes to policing speech.
Just this past June, Australia barred an Israeli called Hillel Fuld from coming into the country. Fuld is a pro-Israel activist whose brother Ari Fuld was stabbed to death by a jihadist terrorist in 2018. Ari Fuld was a hero in his life and in his final moments when, taking on the terrorist, he saved many more lives. But the Australian authorities were persuaded that the brother of the slain Ari could cause a risk to “health, safety or good order” in Australia. And so, he was barred from entry.
It is worth digesting that for a moment. A man whose brother was killed by a terrorist should not enter Australia because he could potentially alert people to the threat of Islamist terrorism. Which could in itself cause public disorder.
Not to become too personal about this, but I’ve had a similar experience with the Australian authorities. When I last did a speaking tour of theaters in Australia, in the summer of 2024, I received a letter warning me about the terms of my visit. Though they granted this British-born, American-based author the right to speak in Australia, they made it clear that if I said anything, or was even reported as having said anything, which could cause community tensions (a supremely vague concept), then I would instantly have my visa revoked and be removed from the country.
This is standard in modern Australia. Yet calls for “Jihad,” “Intifada,” “gassing,” and more have been tolerated and gone unpunished.
It is not just the Israeli government, but Jewish groups inside Australia that have been begging the Australian authorities to take threats against the Jewish community seriously. After all, the threats long ago became real. During the last two years, synagogues and other Jewish sites in Australia have been repeatedly assaulted. In December 2024, a Melbourne synagogue was firebombed. Jewish businesses have been attacked. And Jews have been the targets of constant harassment.
Then this past weekend came the terrorist attack on Bondi Beach in Sydney. It is the most serious terrorist attack in the nation’s history.
There will be plenty said in the coming days about why the two Pakistani perpetrators (father and son) were allowed into the country and how they were able to buy guns. There will be many questions raised about how their shooting spree could go on for almost ten minutes and why the Australian police were so unprepared for it. There will be questions about why a Jewish event celebrating Hannukah on the beach was not better protected, given the escalating risks against Australian Jews. And there will be official expressions of mourning for the 15 victims counted so far, ranging from a ten-year-old girl to an elderly Holocaust survivor who died sheltering his wife.
But the main question is why the Australian authorities did not take the concerns of Jewish Australians seriously, and why indeed they spent the last two years pandering to the ever-growing contingent of Muslim immigrants and others who have clearly been on the path to radicalization. It will not be enough for them to say that they did not know.
Far from tamping down the problem, the Anthony Albanese government has been viciously maligning Israel since October 7, 2023. It has expressly tried to stop people from correcting those denigrations. It has allowed mass incitement every week on Australian streets and tried to bar those who oppose such incitement.
If anyone thinks that this is an edge case, they do not need to look simply at the blood spilled on Bondi Beach. They merely have to ask a question many of us have asked for the past two years: What other group would expect to be treated like this?
In 2019, there was a terrible attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, by a lone gunman. It was a vicious, appalling attack. Outpourings of sympathy issued from all communities.
But imagine for a moment that there had not been. Imagine that immediately after that attack there had been huge crowds of Australians outside the Sydney opera house calling for Muslims or Arabs to be “gassed.”
Does anyone think that the Australian authorities would have taken this lightly? Does anyone think that if there had been anti-Muslim or anti-Arab demonstrations on the streets every week for the two years following the 2019 attack—expressly celebrating the attack and calling for it to happen again—that the Australian authorities would have stood by, or actually placated the mob? To ask the question is to answer it.
In the meantime, Jews in Australia will be asking the same question that Jews in New York and around the world are asking. And they will be facing the same conundrum that Jews around the world now face. If they are in Israel, they are attacked. If they are outside Israel, they are attacked. And if they are in New York or other cities outside Israel, feeling increasingly unsafe and wondering whether to move to Israel, then—as happened at Park East Synagogue in New York City last month—they will be attacked as well.
The problem has been in plain sight all along. It’s shameful that so many people in positions of power decided to metaphorically shoot the messengers, while all the time clearing a path for the real-life shooters to take aim, and fire.
Top Photo by Saeed KHAN / AFP via Getty Images
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