Sheina Gutnick, the daughter of Bondi massacre victim Reuvin Morrison, said it loud and clear; Albanese and his government have ‘blood on their hands. A week after the murder of 15 Australians, majority Jewish, by two radical Muslim extremists at Bondi Beach, Albanese had still not adequately addressed the Jewish community about his failure to protect them. He should apologise not just to the Jewish population but to all Australians, especially the families of those murdered and injured. On the 8th day, he finally gave a weak, ‘Sorry’.

I was born in Holland in 1940. I am a holocaust survivor who, as a child, experienced uncontrolled Jew hatred in the Netherlands. It started in the early-1930s when the Dutch government let antisemitism get out of control. Prior to 1930, the Dutch welcomed thousands of Jews from Spain, Germany and Poland.

Both my parents’ families had lived in Holland for over 200 years. My parents had many non-Jewish friends and neighbours, and they baby-sat each other’s children. In 1931, a Dutch Nazi party was established and grew rapidly. In 1934, it won seats in the Dutch elections. In May 1940, Nazi Germany occupied the Netherlands. Within months, Jews were second-class citizens. Our neighbours stopped visiting and started to ignore my parents. Many members of the Dutch government became Nazis. During the Holocaust, more Jews in Holland were murdered per head of population than in any other Western European country. Out of 107,000 deportees to concentration camps, only 5,000 survived, including my family of four.

After the war, in May 1945, a newly elected government still had a few Nazi sympathisers. Antisemitism was still very visible. For example, in early 1946, my 10-year-old brother got into a fight at school with a boy who yelled at him, ‘A pity Hitler didn’t kill you.’ A teacher broke up the fight. My brother was suspended for three days; the other boy was not punished. Twelve months later, elections were held, and a Nazi-free government came to power. Between 1945 and 1947, European countries were short of workers, and Holland, Germany, and Belgium encouraged Muslims from Turkey and surrounding countries to emigrate to the West to rebuild their economies.

‘Gastarbeiter’ (guest workers) grew in West Germany from 1950 to 1970. Today’s unrest in Europe is directly linked to that influx of mainly Muslim Turks into Western Europe.

Today, there are nearly a million Muslims in Australia. In NSW, we have a political group, ‘The Muslim Vote’. There are five electorates where the Muslim population is ‘large enough to exert significant electoral influence’. This, versus approximately 117,000 Jews, who do not exert significant electoral influence in a single seat.

On October 7, 2023, Palestinians led by Hamas terrorists invaded Israel in their thousands and raped, mutilated and murdered 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians, including Israeli Muslims. They took some 250 Israelis hostage, many of whom were non-Jews.

That same night, an imam led crowds of Muslims in Western Sydney who celebrated the massacre. On 9 October, pro-Palestinians marched to the Opera House shouting obscenities at Jews, lit flares and shouted ‘Gas the Jews’ and ‘F*ck the Jews’ while police watched. The Jewish community was advised by the police to stay home for their own security. Over the next two years, Jewish homes, businesses, synagogues and schools were vandalised while the Australian government did nothing other than make excuses, and hardly anyone was arrested.

Marches, mostly by students who had taken over universities without consequences, were held every weekend, and still no arrests were made. Universities allowed the harassment of Jewish students. Academics allowed antisemitic hate to fester. Muslim student bodies grew. Open vilification continues unabated.

In 2024, I was invited by a Jewish organisation to speak about antisemitism at Sydney University alongside former British colonel Richard Kemp. I only spoke for five minutes. No one was interested. Colonel Kemp didn’t speak at all. In 2015, when he was invited there to speak on the morality of the Israeli Defense Forces, Professor Jake Lynch organised his students to invade the hall with loud hailers, screaming, ‘Richard Kemp, you can’t hide, you’re promoting genocide.’ He was unable to speak.

Why is there so much hatred of Jews in universities? Is it envy? Some 220 Jews have won Nobel Prizes; 14 live in Israel, none in Australia. An anti-Israel group of Jewish academics, professors, journalists, and lawyers has been given credibility by the government, a big mistake, encouraging Jews to turn on Jews. During the Holocaust, Nazi-occupied countries set up Jewish councils that organised the deportation of Jews to concentration camps, and then deported the Jewish council members and their relatives to the death camps.

Early in his parliamentary career, Alba-nese met Yasser Arafat. In October 2000, a video shows him addressing an anti-Israel rally that coincided with the rejection by Arafat at ‘Camp David’ of an Israeli peace deal offering 96 per cent of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and joint control over East Jerusalem. Instead, Arafat unleashed the second intifada, a campaign of suicide bombings, shootings, and stabbings targeting Israeli civilians that killed around 1,000 people.

In 2024-25, Albanese’s government brought 3,000 Palestinian Gazans to Australia, people who would have been taught to hate Jews, one of the highest intakes of any country. No Arab country, including Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza, has allowed Palestinians to settle in their country for fear that Hamas, the Gazan chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, will try to bring down their governments.

After 14 December, Foreign Minister Penny Wong went missing. Nearly two weeks later, she made weak excuses. She  should resign. For 25 days, Albanese gave every lame excuse not to call a royal commission. Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Muslim Australian, didn’t need 25 seconds to disarm one of the shooters, saving many lives. He is an Australian hero.

I hope the commission will look fairly at all aspects of what happened on and before December 14 at Bondi Beach, how and why it happened and who is responsible for the rise in antisemitism?

Albanese must implement Jillian Segal’s report on antisemitism. The Federal government should stop funding universities that foment antisemitism. It should end multiculturalism and promote integration. It should deport any non-citizens who spout antisemitism. The ABC has covered the Israel-Hamas war as a one-sided supporter of Hamas. It did not once denounce the antisemitism in Sydney and Melbourne. Laura Tingle claims the murder of 15 Jewish Australians including a 10-year-old Jewish schoolgirl by Islamist terrorists had ‘nothing to do with religion’. Shame on her. Sarah Ferguson ignorantly insulted Jewish Australian former treasurer, Josh Frydenberg claiming his support for Australian Jews was ‘political’. Double shame on her.