‘A comprehensive failure of leadership’
The former federal treasurer described the extent of antisemitic activity in Australia since October 7 as "a comprehensive failure of leadership".
A CAPACITY crowd packed Melbourne’s Temple Beth Israel (TBI) on Sunday, as the synagogue and Zionism Victoria co-hosted the first Australian public screening of Josh Frydenberg’s landmark documentary on the current explosion of antisemitism around the nation.
On a panel after the screening of Never Again: The Fight Against Antisemitism, the former federal treasurer described the extent of antisemitic activity in Australia since October 7 as “a comprehensive failure of leadership”.
To drive home the points starkly made in his Sky News Australia documentary, Frydenberg shared the podium afterwards with Maggie May Moshe and Joshua Moshe, who were forced to close their gift shop in the northern Melbourne suburb of Thornbury after hostile, antisemitic attacks.
Frydenberg’s chilling compilation of violent, hate-filled choruses at the Sydney Opera House and outside a Melbourne synagogue have been must-see viewing for Jewish Australians and the wider community since its premiere on May 28.
Scenes of mob antisemitism against familiar backdrops – and film footage of death and destruction in Gaza – were interlaced with interviews of prominent Australians.
John Howard lamented a lack of leadership in Australia since October 7. Julia Gillard warned Jew hatred historically had ended in the Holocaust. Former Defence chief Dennis Richardson and former governor-general Sir Peter Cosgrove saw a threat to the national fabric.
Michael Gawenda, past editor of The Age, lamented the betrayal of Jews by the left. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and others declared themselves “Zionist”.
Josh and Maggie Moshe described their exit from Thornbury’s high streets in terms painfully reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s, while University of Sydney student Freya Leach spoke of attending and studying on her campus amid the daily roar of antisemitic slogans.
But screened in public, Frydenberg’s frightening essay on Australian Jew hatred, ignorance, boycotts, doxxing and libels about Zionism, appeared to grow in scale.
“This is different to watching it on my phone,” one audience member said afterwards.
The screening drew audible reactions from the audience at TBI, especially after sequences from Frydenberg’s interview with PM Anthony Albanese.
The PM’s responses were empathetic as he declared his revulsion of antisemitism and condemned the chant “from the river to the sea” as a declaration of annihilating Jews and Israel.
But pressed by Frydenberg, his unlikely interviewer and a recent political adversary, on what further steps his government should take, Albanese doubled down on Australia’s obligation to oppose antisemitism, but did not propose concrete steps to combat it.
From that gulf between how far the PM was prepared to go and Jewish community expectations of him and his government to act, murmurs of frustration rumbled across the auditorium numerous times.
Frydenberg had approached Sky News and no other outlet, and had committed to fronting the program. He said Sky News “to their credit believed in the project from day one”. He said the piece was made “for the simple purpose of taking to the rest of Australia what we all know to be true, which is that this has occurred in our country, in our time, and it has to stop”.
“For the Jewish community, this has provided … a lot of comfort that we’re being heard. But for the non-Jewish community, it’s waking them up … to this unacceptable conduct in Australia [and] to the failure of leadership.”
View Never Again: The Fight Against Antisemitism at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngva62KPv4
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