Zionism Endangers Jewish Safety
Blind allegiance to Israel fuels backlash, conflates faith with colonial violence.
Australia’s political leadership continues to show why its ignorance and blind allegiance to Israel, is contributing to an unsafe Australia for Jews.
Following last night’s disturbing arson attack on the East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation and a separate protest at an Israeli restaurant in the CBD, Australia’s political leadership has once again demonstrated a dangerous and willful ignorance of the broader global context in which these events occur and why?.
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, joined by former Liberal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Victorian MP David Southwick, was quick to frame both incidents as evidence of a wave of anti-Semitic hate sweeping through Melbourne. “This is not protest. This is hate,” Ley posted on social media, refusing to entertain any explanation beyond the familiar moral binary: Jews are victims, and any anger directed toward them is irrational hate.
However, her posturing ignores one crucial fact - people are not protesting Jews or Judaism—they are protesting the violent actions of the State of Israel, which for 22-months has engaged in what countless international legal experts, UN officials, and human rights organisations have described as genocidal warfare against the Palestinian people. If Australia’s political leadership is genuinely interested in preventing violence and making Australia’s streets safe for all communities, they must start addressing the root cause of the problem—Israel’s continued genocidal brutality and the global political class’s complicity in it.
The narrative pushed by Ley, Frydenberg and others erases this essential context. It naively assumes Israel’s war on Gaza is irrelevant to events in Australia. It pretends people who are angry at the bombing of hospitals, the starvation of civilians, and the mass graves of Palestinian children are simply racist mobs looking for Jewish targets. That’s as insulting as it’s dangerous. It fails to distinguish between Judaism—a religion—and Zionism, a political ideology rooted in settler-colonialism.
To conflate the two, as Zionist propagandists have long done, deliberately endangers Jewish communities worldwide by forcing them to carry the political burdens of a foreign state. This isn’t just cynical—it’s a provocation – manufacturing the very anti-Semitism it claims to oppose.
Attacking any place of worship or a civilian business is unacceptable. However, what’s equally unacceptable is using events to silence legitimate protest or shield the State of Israel from accountability for its crimes. Ley wants Australians to believe the act of protesting an Israeli-owned business—one tied to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an organisation accused by over 170 global humanitarian groups of complicity in Israel’s military operations and slaughter of Palestinians—is somehow akin to Kristallnacht.
The comparison is obscene, and it exemplifies why people like Ley aren’t only ignorant fools but forfeit the right to be holding any office or position of any sort. Susan Ley and the rest of her political colleagues are dangerous.
The restaurant protest, staged by members of “northernnaarmaction4palestine,” targeted the political affiliations of the restaurant’s Israeli owner—not his religion, not his ethnicity, and certainly not the Jewish community at large. To ignore this distinction is to cheapen the very concept of anti-Semitism and to deflect from a much-needed reckoning with Australia’s foreign policy failures. Its hard to be anti-Semitic to a group of people who aren’t Semites.
Australia whose government, led by both major parties, hasn’t only failed to condemn Israel’s massacres in Gaza but has actively abetted them through diplomatic protection and arms trade. Penny Wong abstains on ceasefire resolutions. Anthony Albanese shakes hands with war criminals. Peter Dutton demands support for a nuclear apartheid state. And now, Sussan Ley uses the suffering of her own Jewish constituents as a shield to protect the Israeli regime from criticism.
It's precisely this blind allegiance that puts Australian Jews at risk.
Using Jewishness as a cover for crimes against humanity, people of conscience will respond. When global institutions fail to hold Israel accountable, the streets become the only venue left for outrage. And when Australia’s leaders criminalise Palestinian grief while glorifying Israeli aggression, they do more to foster resentment and division than any angry protestor ever could.
This isn’t to justify violence. It explains it. If Australia’s ;olitical leadership is serious about ending hate, they must start by ending hypocrisy.
Not all Jews support Zionism. Some of the fiercest critics of Israel’s actions are Jewish scholars, rabbis, activists, and Holocaust survivors. They understand, as many Australians are starting to, that Zionism isn’t Judaism. One is a political ideology premised on dispossession and ethno-nationalism; the other, a faith grounded in justice, compassion, and community.
When goons like Frydenberg claim that criticism of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic, they erase this vital distinction and betray their own community’s diversity. More worryingly, they help Israel export its conflicts into diasporic spaces, placing Jewish people worldwide in harm’s way.
Those genuinely concerned about Jewish safety in Melbourne and elsewhere, they must hold the political leadership to account. Demand they stop using your faith as a smokescreen for imperial violence. Reject the conflation of your identity with the actions of a state committing ethnic cleansing in your name.
The tragedy isn’t only a synagogue was attacked—we continue to allow the policies and propaganda that make such attacks more likely to go unchallenged. Australians aren’t fools. They see what’s happening in Gaza. They see through the spin. And they know true peace doesn’t come from censorship, repression, or nationalism masquerading as victimhood.
Justice begins with truth.
The Israeli government’s military campaign in Gaza has not only drawn widespread condemnation for its devastating humanitarian toll but has also placed Jewish communities worldwide in an untenable position. By persistently equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, the state and its staunch supporters have created a dangerous dynamic in which legitimate political opposition is silenced while genuine anti-Jewish bigotry is cynically instrumentalized. This conflation does not serve Jewish safety—it endangers it.
One of the most disturbing consequences is the growing hostility faced by Jewish individuals abroad, regardless of their actual stance on Israel. Those who remain silent risk being lumped together with the Israeli state’s actions, while those who vocally defend its policies further reinforce the perception that Jewish identity and Zionism are inseparable. This false linkage plays directly into the hands of both the Israeli government and actual antisemites, who thrive on the narrative that Jews everywhere bear responsibility for Israel’s conduct.
Yet this crisis also presents an opportunity—and an urgent imperative—for Jews in the diaspora to challenge this damaging conflation. While many have long criticized Israel’s policies, the current moment demands broader, louder dissent. Staying silent is no longer neutral; it enables the assumption that Jewish communities universally endorse or excuse Israel’s actions. Organized Jewish opposition to the war, occupation, and apartheid policies would not only help reclaim the distinction between Judaism and Zionism but also weaken the weaponization of antisemitism as a shield for state violence.
The reality is that Israel’s conduct is not just a threat to Palestinians—it is a self-inflicted crisis for Jewish people globally. The more the state claims to act in the name of all Jews, the more it fuels backlash against them. Breaking this cycle requires Jewish communities to actively, publicly reject the idea that Israel speaks for them. Otherwise, they remain trapped in a narrative where their safety is held hostage to a government whose actions they may not support. The path forward must include both solidarity with Palestinian liberation and an insistence that Jewish identity cannot be reduced to a political allegiance—least of all to a state committing atrocities in their name.
They conflated all Palestinians with Hamas who they demonized as terrorists when they were/are actually freedom fighters. So it’s only karma that all 🧃 are stigmatized by the actions of israelis, given israel is a jewi$h ethnostate. Moreover, isreali jewi$h actions over the past 75+ years have been abhorrent. No sugar coating now that the world sees the truth. They all aided, abetted and tacitly supported that evil state.