Friday, November 10 was the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass or the November pogrom, when Nazi paramilitary forces, Hitler Youth, and sympathisers smashed and burned thousands of Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues across Germany and assaulted and arrested tens of thousands of Jews.

In a distressing echo of history on that day, which was also a Sabbath, a pro-Palestinian mob travelled halfway across Melbourne to Caulfield, the heart of the city’s Jewish community, to shout hate-filled slogans, wave placards comparing Israel with Nazis, threaten the public, and chant, ‘Israel, USA, how many kids did you kill today?’ Members of a nearby synagogue had to be evacuated after police said they couldn’t guarantee their safety.

Antisemitism has taken off in Australia since Hamas launched its blood-soaked attack on Israel six weeks ago reaching levels never before witnessed here. How did it get so bad so fast?

Things got off to a hideous start with pro-Hamas supporters chanting ‘Gas the Jews’ in the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House on 9 October. Despite Australia’s extensive legislation against hate speech, no one was arrested.

The problem seems to be that Australia’s almost wall-to-wall Labor governments are shockingly weak on the issue, particularly the Albanese government which is hopelessly divided. Its mixed messages have emboldened antisemites.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong is courting the left of the party and the Islamists in Labor electorates in the suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. Wong’s response to the Kristallnacht march was to post a statement on social media condemning ‘anti-Semitism and Islamophobia’. But as opposition leader Peter Dutton asked, ‘What examples of Islamophobia was Wong referring to?’ On Sunday, Wong threw more fuel on the fire saying Israel needed to be held to higher standards than Hamas, that, ‘We all want to take the next step towards a ceasefire’ and called on Israel to abide by international law and stop ‘the attacking of hospitals’.

This is an outrageous slur given Israel has bent over backward to try to avoid killing civilians, Hamas has a long history of embedding itself in hospitals and using ambulances to transport terrorists, and Article 19 of the Geneva Convention explicitly states that hospitals lose their protection if they are used for military purposes. Photo- graphic evidence emerged this week that Hamas has been using hospitals to store weapons and house hostages but Wong hasn’t offered an acknowledgement much less an apology.

Jewish Labor MP for Macnamara Josh Burns is fighting for the conscience of the party from the backbench pointing out that calling for a ceasefire before the hostages are released would be akin to telling Israeli families ‘that they are giving up on bringing their loved ones home’. Burns condemned the pro-Hamas demonstrators who came to the Jewish suburb to ‘scream at them and spit at them and throw rocks at them’. He has been backed by Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and former Labor leader Bill Shorten but the Prime Minister seems half-hearted in his support at best seemingly driven by concern that Burns could lose his seat.

In parliament this week, Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi, who recently led a boycott of question time in protest of the Albanese government’s claimed inaction over Gaza goaded the government saying, ‘Weasel words are not going to stop war crimes’.

But the Prime Minister still couldn’t take a stand. He refused to back Wong’s call for a ceasefire or her suggestion that the Netanyahu government could be breaking international law but neither did he demand that she withdraw them. He was rewarded with a taste of the left’s twisted attacks when pro-Hamas supporters gathered on the lawns of Parliament House, laying out white shrouds and teddy bears on a red cloth to represent children killed in Gaza. They cheered Adam Bandt when he called on Israel to end its attacks on Gaza and chanted, ‘Albanese you can’t hide, you’re committing genocide’.

In this incendiary environment, the national broadcaster’s Q+A managed to make a bad situation worse. Presumably, the international spokesman for Hamas who has already been interviewed on the ABC wasn’t available but the ABC found the next best person, Nasser Mashni, the head of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network.

Mashni’s worldview is that Israel is to blame for everything. He says, ‘The power structures that exist in the world all focus upon Zionism. Israel is the domino. Israel falls over, not just the Middle East – South America, the Africans – the world is a far better place once we destroy Western imperialist control of the world.’

Mashni had no problem with the pro-Hamas march in Caulfield which he claimed was not a protest but an ‘anti-racism vigil’.  And despite repeated requests, he refused to condemn Hamas. Why should anyone be surprised? Like Hamas, he does not accept the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state – he supports a one-state ‘Palestine’ solution.

The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese was deeply sympathetic to Mashni. She said of his performance on Q+A that he ‘did very well in front of an execution squad’. She also claimed Palestinians had been progressively ‘ethnically cleansed’ from the region as of 1947 and said, ‘When I hear Hamas leaders speaking and I hear Israeli military and political leaders speaking these days, I do not hear much difference.’

All that was lacking from this week’s antisemitic clown show was a bouncing castle for bigots but right on cue the owner of a business in Western Sydney that rents out jumping castles posted to social media that she wasn’t going to rent a castle to Masada College, a Jewish co-educational school for children from kindergarten to Year 12 whose core values are kindness and respect. Why? Because, the owner explained, ‘There’s no way I’m taking a Zionist booking. I don’t want your blood money. Free Palestine’. She didn’t however want to be misunderstood. ‘Just to be clear,’ she added, ‘This is about zionists. Not Jews. I have zero issues with the Jewish community.’ So she’s taking the fight to kindergarten zionists by depriving them of bouncy castles.

To top it off, teachers and pupils who want to free Palestine are going on Friday school strikes, presumably in sympathy with Greta Thunberg who said last week that there can be no climate justice on occupied territory.

It used to be said that history repeats itself the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. Now it seems that the tragedy and farce are rolled into one.

In that spirit, why don’t Wong, Faruqi, Thunberg and the teachers and pupils who want to free Palestine go to Gaza and get Hamas to stop firing rockets into Israel, secure the release of the 239 hostages, and arrest the terrorists? If they don’t immediately bring peace to the Middle East it will at least give the rest of us a break from the clown show.