Australian Jews have seen a lot of antisemitism in their country over the last two years, and little in the way of a serious action by their prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who just today, finally conceded that, “more could have been done.” 

That admission follows days of searing criticism of his administration’s shockingly weak response to the deadly attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney, Australia’s famed Bondi Beach last Sunday by a father-son team of terrorists influenced by the Islamic State. And weak it was. 

In the immediate aftermath of the massacre Mr. Albanese’s main proposal was to strengthen already restrictive gun ownership laws. His defense minister promised the government would police everyone’s speech even more than it currently does (especially the Nazis’), and a Labor MP suggested Aussies should “detoxify” the way they view others because, as she put it, “diversity in this country is our strength.”

In short, the Albanese ministry is offering nothing more than a list of the ways in which law-abiding Australian citizens would have to change themselves in response to others’ assault on them. No suggestion was made that those who spawned the killers and their evil ideology would have to adjust their behaviors and their thinking.

Today, as Australian police arrested a group of men from Melbourne suspected of traveling toward Bondi Beach on suspicion of planning yet another violent attack, and as Australians of all kinds are loudly voicing their concerns about their safety and what their government is doing to secure it, Mr. Albanese offered up a 5-point plan for “combatting antisemitism” that he hoped would show more political muscle. It too falls flat.

All five points have to do with limiting “hate speech” — only one references “hate preachers,” a neutral nod to Australia’s many imams who call for violence in their mosques and on the streets, and who face few consequences. 

Australians already have “hate speech” laws. When enforced, which isn’t often, they do little to combat “hate” — just ask Pro-Palestinian activist Hash Tayeh who this week won his case in a Melbourne court. 

Mr. Tayeh’s chant of  “All Zionists are terrorists” was not deemed necessarily “offensive” by the magistrate. Anyway, “Hate” is always in the eye of the beholder which is why wars on “hate speech” are never about controlling hate, and always about controlling citizens — just ask anyone in Great Britain.

Australia’s former treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, spoke directly to Mr. Albanese through the cameras at a memorial for the victims of the Bondi Beach attack on Sunday: “your government has failed us,” he said. “You sit in a chair. It’s time you earned that title. If you don’t want to do the job, give it to somebody who will.” 

Australians, now more than ever, need national leaders who have the will to preserve their way of life and to defeat those who threaten it. Unfortunately, they have Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party.

As in many other Western nations, Australia’s ruling class is infected with a distinctly Western, 21st-century strain of civilizational self-loathing that interrupts the instinct for self-preservation. 

It’s a disease contracted in captured educational systems and exacerbated by morally bankrupt cultural institutions and media outlets. It’s a mental illness that encourages integration of others’ shame-labels into the national identity — colonialist, racist, misogynist — and causes otherwise rational people to welcome into their midst those who hate them as much as they were taught to hate themselves.

Neutered by self-loathing, Australia’s Labor leadership won’t defend what it doesn’t value.

Many Australian Jews claim that Mr. Albanese doesn’t value them. They criticize his failure to act against the rash of antisemitism that has spread across the country since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Others point out that the prime minister has no plans to attend any of the funerals of the victims of the Bondi shooting and has to date visited none of the wounded in hospital besides Ahmed al Ahmed, the Muslim hero who disarmed one of the terrorists.

Australian Jews shouldn’t take it too personally — the prime minister doesn’t seem to value other Australians either. After all, the terrorists didn’t attack a group of Jews in a synagogue — they chose to target them on Australia’s most iconic beach, during the summer holidays, two weeks before Christmas, in broad daylight. The killers’ message wasn’t just for those celebrating Chanukah — it was for the entire country: Jews may be the number one targets, but they aren’t the only ones. 

No one gets to enjoy a sunny day by the sea. This was as much an assault on Australia and its Western way of life as it was on its Jews, and Mr. Albanese is doing nothing serious to stop it from happening again. He doesn’t have it in him.

“Pro-Palestinian” protesters marched down the streets of Bondi Beach on Tuesday, a few blocks away from the site where their fellow Palestine-sympathizers murdered innocent men, women and children just two days earlier. 

Some might say that they didn’t change the venue of their “protest” or delay it by a week because of their disdain for their fellow Australians. It is probably equally fair to say that they knew they wouldn’t have to change a thing — because of Australia’s disdain for itself.

In the 4th century B.C.E. the Stoic philosophers spoke about the natural impulse for self-preservation. In the 17th century, John Locke wrote that self-preservation is “the first law of human nature.” In 2025 we have Mr. Albanese. 

There is nothing “natural” about the societal suicide over which he is presiding. The enemies of the West know it, and they are taking full advantage of it — and the Jews are taking the first bullets because of it.