REPRISE: How the West has failed its Jewish communities

The arson attack on a synagogue in Australia is the latest example of a Western country failing its Jewish community. It was all too foreseeable.

Melbourne's Adass Israel Synagogue in flames.

This a reprint of June 6 story. Much has changed since then, but it is sadly as relevant now as when I penned it.

On Friday morning, two masked men set a synagogue ablaze in Melbourne, Australia, (my hometown, in fact, though I have been out of the country for decades) in the latest antisemitic attack in a Western liberal democracy.

The attack was shocking, but not surprising.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Daniel Aghion said, "None of the Jewish community is surprised. We've known this has been coming."

Likewise, Australia’s opposition leader Peter Dutton said, “I want to pretend that this wasn’t expected or couldn't be predicted, but I can’t do that to the Australian people. We have seen the rise of antisemitism in our community since October 7 of last year in an unprecedented way.”

While the Australian Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has harshly condemned the attack and antisemitism, he does not seem to understand - and refuses to acknowledge - his government’s role in stoking it, failing to tackle it, and normalizing it.

This seems to be a common affliction among the Western leaders, so I wrote this article to explain precisely how many Western governments’ rhetoric and policies towards Israel fuel this antisemitism. It is disgraceful that this is not obvious.

It looks at the US, UK (where the government has changed), Canada, Australia, Argentina, and France.