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Canberra Once Aligned with the United States on Middle East Issues, Including Israel, but Prime Minister Albanese Has Hewn a Different Path
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been slow to condemn antisemitism and attacks on Australia’s Jewish population.
As Jewish families across Australia celebrated the first night of Hanukkah, shots rang out at Bondi Beach in Sydney. The target was a party, per New South Wales Premier Chris Minns, “[on] the first day of Hanukkah. What should have been a night of peace and joy celebrated in that community with families and supporters, has been shattered by this horrifying evil attack.” The death toll as of this writing is 12, including one shooter. Police identified one of the shooters as Naveed Akram.
Minns’ statement is notable for its contrast with the immediate reaction of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. In the aftermath of what was clearly a targeted terrorist attack on Australia’s Jewish community, Albanese released a statement labeling the attacks “shocking and distressing.” Albo, as he is known, was quick to sympathize with “every person affected.” Who was that “every person”? Beachgoers? Surfers? The target was a “Hanukkah by the Sea” celebration of the Jewish festival of lights. But for Albanese, a mention of Jews was one word too many in a seventy-word statement. (He later condemned the attack on the Jewish community.)
Here’s the problem: Albanese and his Foreign Minister Penny Wong have done their utmost in the twenty-six months since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel to signal their uninterest in the well-being of Jewish communities, in Israel, Australia, and beyond. Like their political counterparts in Europe and the United States, Laborites in Australia have turned on Israel and Zionists everywhere. And like the fringes of the left in the United States, Spain, England, Canada, and France, they have gone further, aligning themselves with Israel’s enemies.
The surfacing of Jew-hatred in Australia has been notable, even by international standards. Aussie Jews, like much of the world’s Jewish communities, believed the pieties about “never again,” but were rudely awakened when a post-October 7, pro-Palestinian march in Sydney began chanting, “Gas the Jews.” A synagogue was firebombed in Melbourne. The leader of one of Australia’s most prominent Jewish organizations had his former home vandalized and burned in Sydney. Two Sydney nurses were caught on video threatening to kill Jews. Universities have, as in the United States, worked assiduously to isolate Jewish students.
The difference between Australia and, say, the United States, is that the government has played a significant role in the alienation of Jews. As a president of Harvard University might say, it’s all about the context. And under Albanese, the context has been a growing hostility to the State of Israel and its supporters. Australia recently repatriated its own “ISIS brides,” and has welcomed pro-Hamas activists, yet banned supporters of Israel, including former Israeli government ministers.
At the United Nations, where Canberra once voted regularly with the United States on Middle East issues, including Israel, Albo has also hewn a different path. After supporting a series of steps elevating Palestinian status inside the world body, all the while insisting this was not about recognizing a Palestinians state, in November 2024, the Aussie government for the first time voted to support a resolution recognizing the “permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”
After further steps breaking with Australia’s pro-Israel history, in September 2025, Canberra recognized a “State of Palestine.” Per Albanese, “This is the world saying that the cycle of violence has to stop.” But Albanese offered few concrete demands about how the “cycle of violence” should stop, insisting only that Hamas could have no role in a future “Palestine,” and that “reform” was needed in the Palestinian Authority.
For Australia’s Jewish community, Albo’s decision to recognize “Palestine” was of a piece with his increasing discomfort with Jews and Zionists. The prime minister dithered for days before visiting the site of the synagogue firebombing. And in the face of other clearly antisemitic attacks, he was equally eager to insist that it was criminals, not antisemites, who were responsible. Yet the reality was far more complex: In fact, criminals were being recruited by the Islamic Republic of Iran to terrorize the Jewish community in Australia.
Notably, I understand that the prime minister and his foreign minister were reluctant to hold Iran accountable for the string of anti-Jewish attacks and were forced into revealing Tehran’s role only when Aussie intelligence threatened to make the revelations itself. In the face of incontrovertible intelligence, Albanese was ultimately forced to expel the Iranian ambassador and then labeled the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.
Sadly, however, the ship has sailed for Australia’s Jews. As in France, where Muslims outnumber Jews by at least ten-to-one, Muslims in Australia now outnumber Jews by eight-to-one. That demographic reality has political implications, and Labor appears to understand them all too well.
