WA Jewish leader slams Albanese’s inaction and warns PM he’s not welcome at Perth synagogues

Anthony Albanese is no longer welcome at Perth synagogues, according to senior Jewish leaders who say that sadness and anger over the Bondi attack has now turned into fear. The political debate over how to respond to the targeted shooting that left 15 innocent people dead, has deepened a rift between parts of Australia’s Jewish community and the Prime Minister even as he called for the nation to unite in grief. Mr Albanese was booed when he attended a memorial in Bondi a week after the massacre. Jewish Community Council of WA President Michael Levitt said the local community’s sense of security, and their faith in government to protect them, has been shattered. “I do not expect ordinary Australians to die in my ditch. The ditch is there, it’s our ditch. “But we do expect the people that run the country to stop fuelling the flames and to do its level best to prevent that, and we don’t believe that they’ve done that.” Mr Albanese previously met with Jewish leaders in Perth — in the aftermath of the firebombing of Melbourne’s Addas Israel Synagogue — in December 2024. Dr Levitt described the reception for the Prime Minister then as “cold, but polite and he was accorded to respect” despite mounting concerns over anti-Semitism. But now? “He would not be allowed in,” Dr Levitt said. “He wouldn’t want to come in, it would be awful. “There’s so much of a belief that he hasn’t listened. It’s one thing to have got it wrong, but to have got it wrong and then just doubled down.” The Albanese Government has promised tougher gun laws and a crackdown on hate crime and radical preachers, but has been resisting mounting calls for a Royal Commission to investigate the response to anti-Semitism across Australia. A report by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry warned a year ago that threats, vandalism and assaults that they deemed “anti-Jewish” had surged 464 per cent in WA. Dr Levitt and others believe that “astonishing inaction” after a protest outside the Sydney Opera House, days after the October 7 attack by Hamas, allowed anti-Semitism to spread. Claims that the crowd chanted “gas the jews” or “f*** the jews” were unsubstantiated, but NSW Police said video evidence confirmed they chanted “where’s the jews”. “That’s what they’re saying to me, that’s saying to my wife, my kids, my grandkids, and what happens? Absolutely nothing. That is OK, apparently,” Dr Levitt said. Speaking to The West Australian more than a week after terrorism struck Bondi, Dr Levitt said some Jewish Australians were preparing an “exit strategy” to escape Sydney and Melbourne. In Perth, he said there’s a growing sense of fear despite consistent shows of support from Premier Roger Cook and WA Police. “One of the synagogues here has a daycare centre,” he said. “It’s the only Jewish daycare centre in Perth but half the kids that go there aren’t Jewish because they live locally. And last week we had parents, non-Jewish parents, just pull their kids because . . . why would I send my kids to a target.” Dr Levitt is urging WA to follow the New South Wales Government’s lead and ban phrases like “globalise the intifada” at protests and urged the public to call out anti-Israel speech — if it targets Jews. He said violent language cannot be normalised, but insisted Australia’s Jewish and Muslim communities can — and have — lived together in harmony. But the Bondi attack has sparked a new debate over migration, fuelled by party politics, and calls for deportation of radical Islamists. “This is not a matter of friction between faith communities. It isn’t. It’s about a strategic adversary that we have invited in,” Dr Levitt said. “It mostly exists in Sydney and Melbourne, and the Jewish community sees a clear difference between that strategic adversary, that radical Islamist ideology that’s hell bent on destroying Jews. “These (Bondi gunmen) are not mad men. They’re angry men. They’re angry men, breastfed on hatred. “The big challenge we’ve got is calling out extremist Islamist ideology. That is the trouble, and people are squeamish about it. “It’s an ugly reality, and trying to fix it is unbelievably difficult . . . it’s not about stopping migration, but it’s about setting rules around what what being in Australia is meant to be.” A “values test” before migration has been proposed by high-profile Liberal MP Andrew Hastie, but Dr Levitt agreed that would be subjective and hard. Instead he wants values enforced once migrants are in Australia, that it starts with words and that everyone can help lift the standard. “What I would wish is that if people hear old tropes about Jews, that they’re all mean with their money, and all the stuff that’s kind of rooted in Gospel, speak up . . . and then just close that conversation down, that would be good,” he said.