History will not forget this moment.

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have made a choice that should trouble every Australian who believes in moral clarity and historical truth. At the United Nations, they voted in favour of recognising a Palestinian state, a move made in the absence of any requirement for negotiation, renunciation of violence, or recognition of Israel’s right to exist.

It was more than a symbolic gesture. It was a statement that appeasement pays.

At home, Albanese’s government has presided over the most serious explosion of antisemitism in Australia’s modern history and has done virtually nothing to stop it. From the grotesque chants of ‘Gas the Jews!’ and ‘F*** the Jews!’ on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, to MPs standing with pro-terror imagery, to Jewish schools and synagogues being attacked, the federal government has failed to properly address the situation.

Is the government blind, or ideologically bound?

The facts of history cannot be rewritten.

In 2000, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat walked away from a peace deal that would have established a Palestinian state, brokered by Bill Clinton and Israel’s centre-left Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Instead, Arafat launched a terror war. In 2005, Ariel Sharon withdrew every Israeli from Gaza. Instead of peace, Hamas launched rockets. The rejection of a two-state solution has come not from Israel, but from those who have never accepted its right to exist.

Since the declaration of the modern State of Israel in 1948, every war initiated by the Arab world has been a rejection of a two-state solution. The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), founded in 1964, three years before any so-called Israel occupation, was not formed to create a peaceful state, but to destroy one. Its charter still calls for the annihilation of Israel.

In contrast, the Jewish connection to the land of Israel is not some modern invention. It goes back over 3,500 years to the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, affirmed by history, archaeology, and uninterrupted presence. If Albanese had visited Israel, especially after the atrocities of October 7, he might grasp this truth. Instead, he chose to revoke Australia’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, as if democracies don’t get to decide their own capitals.

Meanwhile, since the attacks of October 7, 2023, Australia’s Jewish community has been relentlessly targeted, while the government has failed to act. No other community has been targeted like this. Extremists have marched openly with pro-Hamas, Hezbollah, and pro-Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) slogans. Jewish businesses, schools, and homes have faced threats. Not a single meaningful federal policy has been enacted in response. For over 100 weekends, our cities have been hijacked by these radical protests with their genocidal slogans decorated as free speech. Speech that would and should never be tolerated against any other minority group. You don’t see Jews targeting Mosques, Islamic schools or businesses, nor would you. Nor would you see Jews chant ‘Death to Muslims!’ If you did, you can bet the full force of the law would be used.

And it’s all happening under Albanese’s watch.

The Sky News Australia Antisemitism Summit made urgent recommendations eight months ago. The government’s own antisemitism envoy, Jillian Segal, submitted hers nearly three months ago. None have been implemented. Not one.

The message this sends is devastating. Intimidate loudly enough, and you’ll be rewarded. Protesters who take over streets, threaten Jewish Australians, and chant openly for Israel’s destruction are indulged. The pro-Palestinian camp, including radical MPs, do not appear to be seeking peace in the way Australia understands the word.

Let’s be honest. The slogan, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!’ is not a call for coexistence. It is a demand for a Judenrein (Jew free) Middle East. It is not a two-state vision. It is a one-state fantasy, in which Israel and its Jews no longer exists.

And yesterday the Labor government has chosen to lend it legitimacy. Albanese can say otherwise, but his actions at the UN speak volumes, as do Penny Wong’s public statements.

No wonder a group of 25 senior US Republicans, including Republican Leadership Chairwoman Elise Stefanik and Senator Rick Scott, issued a direct warning to Albanese and other Western leaders, including the UK’s Keir Starmer, Canada’s Mark Carney, and France’s Emmanuel Macron urging them to abandon plans to legitimise a Palestinian state at this time. Their letter was blunt.

‘This is a reckless policy that undermines prospects for peace… It sets the dangerous precedent that violence, not diplomacy, is the most expedient means for terrorist groups like Hamas to achieve their political aims.’

What makes this even more farcical is that Hamas and Hezbollah are proscribed terrorist organisations under Australian law, and the IRGC is under review following its involvement in the firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne and Lenny’s Deli in Sydney.

How can a government simultaneously ban these groups as terrorists while legitimising their political aspirations at the UN?

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted, Albanese’s leadership on this issue is ‘weak’. That wasn’t just a diplomatic jab, it was a statement of fact. This is a Prime Minister, who was literally pushed out of his own electorate office by pro-Palestinian protesters, and did nothing to reassert his position. He simply left.

Weakness invites escalation. When Hamas publicly thanks you, it’s time to question your judgment.

Albanese may believe this UN vote will buy him favour with Australia’s hard-left flank. But radicals never stop at compromise. The far-left push to ‘decolonise’ Israel is the same ideology behind calls to ‘decolonise’ Australia, one that increasingly casts Jewish Australians as foreign occupiers in their own country.

Let’s not pretend this is new. Long before Israel existed, under the British Mandate of Palestine, Jews were massacred in Hebron, Jaffa, and Safed. October 7 was not an anomaly. It was a continuation of the same hatred, just better armed.

The reality is, a two-state solution is not possible right now. Not because Israel opposes it, but because the Palestinian leadership rejects even the minimal conditions of peace as outlined in the Oslo Accords, recognising Israel, renouncing terrorism, and holding elections.

Let’s be very clear. Peace will never be achieved by legitimising Hamas or excusing antisemitism. Nor will it come by rewarding violent rhetoric in the streets of Melbourne and Sydney.

This vote signals to protest groups taking hold of Australian streets, from Antifa to radical climate groups, that you never have to negotiate, reason, or respect democratic process. Just chant loud enough, take over the streets, and the government will fold. It doesn’t matter how much the victims have contributed to this country if you fit the right narrative, you get a free pass. To be clear, it has cost Victorian taxpayers $25 million for the police to babysit the pro-Palestinian protests over the last 100 weeks. That excludes the cost of backfill and 23,000 redirected police shifts.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir understood this decades ago when she said:

‘Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.’

It is as true now as it was then. And until that moment comes, Israel, and the Jewish people will endure.

Because they always have.

The Romans, the Babylonians, the Ottomans, and the Nazis, all empires that tried to wipe out the Jewish people, are gone. Israel remains.

From the ashes of the Holocaust, from exile, dispersion, and endless attempts at destruction, the Jewish people returned to their ancestral homeland not as conquerors, but as rightful heirs. In 1948, Israel was decolonised! Today, Israel stands as a beacon of democracy, innovation, humanitarian aid, and moral clarity in a region overwhelmed by tyranny and terror.

As former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke once said, ‘If the bell tolls for Israel, it won’t just toll for Israel, it will toll for all mankind.’