Media Releases

Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council Executive Director Colin Rubenstein said, “The Australian Jewish community emerged from Yom Kippur with the terrible news emanating from Manchester. Our hearts go out to our Jewish brethren in England, who have yet again been confronted with violent hatred, this time on our most holy of days.”

Dr Rubenstein continued, “As deep as our sorrow is, it does not come with any sense of surprise. For two years, we have been warning about the consequences of the violent rhetoric that has been emerging from the intersection of the anti-Israel hard left, Islamists and the antisemitic hard right. Our political leaders have often avoided confronting this wave of verbal hatred. And while they rush to condemn violent attacks, they never bother making public the obvious connection between violent rhetoric and the actual violence that inevitably emerges from it.”

“Time is well past”, Dr Rubenstein concluded, “for our political leaders to start pushing back very strongly against hate. Against hatred of Israel, hatred of ‘Zionists’ and hatred of Jews. When our leaders look the other way, the seeds of violence grow.”