Can we skip the niceties, and just cut to the chase?
Islam has become a major problem in this country.
And our politicians - despite all their fine sounding words - have neither the moral clarity nor the courage to do anything about it.
Mainstream Australians were shocked to see Muslims gathered on the steps of our Opera House last year to celebrate the October 7 slaughter of 1200 Israelis.
Most of us were still trying to get our heads around events in the Middle East. Comprehending how people - living among us - could cheer for the atrocities was beyond us.
And so our authorities lied to themselves, and to us.
The mob on the Opera House steps hadn’t chanted “gas the Jews”. They had chanted “where’s the Jews”, which was entirely different.
What we thought we heard was not incitement to violence. We had, instead, heard a polite inquiry into the whereabouts of the local kosher store. Yes, that must have been it.
NSW police spent months - and God knows how much taxpayer money - employing expert analysts to prove that no crime had been committed. If only they would do that after catching me speeding. But I digress.
Hizb ut-Tahrir organised a rally in Lakemba on October 8 so that they could let off fireworks to celebrate dead Jews.
Sheik Ibrahim Dadoun said he was “elated” and “smiling”, telling a crowd that October 7 was a “day of victory”.
Anthony Albanese condemned the sheik’s words. But the sheik claimed he had been taken out of context. And so everyone shrugged, because shrugging was easier than admitting what we had heard with our own ears.
Islamic preachers in Western Sydney, encouraged by the latitude afforded their brothers, started preaching increasingly incendiary messages.
In a sermon delivered at the Al Madina Dawah centre in south-west Sydney, Brother Ismail was filmed calling young people to jihad.
“There is no other way to defend Muslims,” he told the crowd. “Jihad is the solution for the ummah (community).”
Such was his confidence, he dared authorities to deport him.
The government looked the other way.
And NSW police, after taking weeks to contemplate Brother Ismail’s comments, finally announced they fell below the threshold of hate speech.
Who knew that winning lotto was easier than being charged with hate speech in this country.
If you’re allowed to call for jihad it begged the question, where is the line?
The answer, of course, is that you cannot say transpeople have a mental illness. Say that and you’ll be hauled before an anti-discrimination tribunal faster than Brother Ismail can say ‘Allah Akbar’.
But if you call for jihad?
Meh.
The Muslim extremists, having been given a mile, kept taking inches.
Posters calling for Jewish hostages to be released were torn down - and that was kind. Posters left on walls were covered in excrement.
Jewish Australians began to complain to authorities that they felt unsafe in their own country.
The Government responded by warning that Islamophobia and anti-Semitism were equally problematic, despite the fact Muslims were not being doxed, chased out of the CBD or picketed at their stores and places of worship.
A group of Israelis - whose family members were being held hostage by terrorists in Gaza - visited Australia in November to raise awareness of their loved-ones’ plight.
Details of their accomodation were leaked and a mob of 200 pro-Palestinians descended on the delegation’s Melbourne hotel.
The visiting Jews hid in a local police station until it was safe to go back to their beds at the Crowne Plaza. Ah yes, Melbourne - last year ranked the world’s third most liveable city.
Unless you’re a Jew, that is.
The PM condemned the protest. Which was something. But, of course, like all his proclamations, amounted to nothing.
Meanwhile, keffiyehs started appearing everywhere - school teachers, actors, musicians, thousands of people marching weekly through capital cities. All wearing the scarf of choice for Arab terrorists.
University students set up encampments, demanding institutions cut ties with Israel.
When Jewish students complained they felt unsafe navigating hundreds of rabble rousers supporting Hamas, they were told to suck it up.
Sydney University Vice Chancellor Mark Scott said he could not close the encampments because, as a jelly fish, he simply didn’t have the backbone. Those were not his exact words, of course. I’m paraphrasing.
Mark Scott ended the fiasco by finally doing a deal with Muslim students that would allow them to have input into future university investments. He never told Jewish students about this.
Recently he admitted he had “failed” his Jewish students. But he had not failed them so much that he felt any need to resign his $1m a year job.
A Canberra University student was expelled for telling ABC radio that Hamas deserved unconditional support. She was later readmitted to the university and, at last check, was running for student president.
While all of this was going on, our government was doing its best to condemn anti-Semitism without condemning it too much.
Albanese and friends understood that a little bit of Jew hatred was useful for retaining seats in Western Sydney.
And so they supported Israel’s right to self defence while condemning Israel every time it exercised the right to self defence.
They demanded Hamas release the hostages while suggesting it didn’t matter whether the hostages were released before, or after, Palestine received UN recognition and its own state. You can’t be too fussy when it comes to hostages, after all.
When Israel assassinated the head of terror group Hezbollah, Muslims took to our streets waving Hezbollah flags and holding portraits of Hasan Nasrallah.
Isn’t it a crime to support a terrorist organisation?
Well yes, but the laws are complicated.
And no-one in the government has thought to do anything about those laws.
So the flag of terrorist group Hezbollah is flown in Australian streets and will likely soon be flying from the Harbour Bridge because why the hell not?
A year has passed.
And where do we now find ourselves?
Pro-Palestinians will hold major marches around the country this weekend to commemorate the October 7 slaughter of Jews.
Everyone is appalled, of course. And none of that will matter.
Anthony Albanese, and even Penny Wong, have tut-tutted the protest organisers, like parents who warn a misbehaving toddler there will be consequences; but there never are.
Jewish Australians watch on in horror.
Mainstream Australians wonder what happened to their country.
Muslims - with their hatred of Jews and their desire for a worldwide Caliphate that reduces non-Muslims to second-class citizens - become increasingly emboldened.
The government’s strategy seems to be to hope that the situation will magically resolve itself - much like their housing strategy and their cost of living strategy.
But whatever magic our country once had now seems like a distant memory.
Anti-Semitism is being driven by the Muslim community and embraced by the progressive left.
The Federal Labor Government are trying to sit this one out. But in a battle between good and evil, to sit idly on the sidelines is to condemn the country to hell.
"Albanese and friends understood that a little bit of Jew hatred was useful for retaining seats in Western Sydney."
Albanese is totally and utterly devoid of any principles. He is, by far, the most unworthy PM this country has ever had!!
This breaks my heart. In one essay you have brilliantly summed up the entire apathetic, useless, shit show that this government is. I feel for my mother who is a holocaust survivor. I grew up thinking she wasn’t one because she was not in a ghetto but she was driven out of Vienna as a three year old. She still remembers her parents bribing a German officer on the border - and so she spent the best years of her life as she puts it, going to school in Zurich but they came here in the end as refugees to seek a better life. I think to myself - this is what she has to live with as an 89 year old woman! How appalling. How sickening. I don’t sleep. The city is a revoltingly filthy centre stage for these disgusting pitiful useless pieces of crap enabling them to voice their hate, their support of terrorists although explicitly illegal. They’ve been enabled even patted on the back in order to do so.
Tomorrow along with I hope many other Jews and non Jews we will show up proudly holding a peaceful vigil. I’m petrified inside. I feel physically ill.
I’m Jewish and proud. I’ve never worried about whether someone is Jewish or not. But now I feel like I have to explain myself. But I’m not going to and I don’t have to. I’m an Australian. An Australian Jew