In November 1938, the world was less than a year away from the start of the most destructive war in history.

Britain was regrettably re-arming after attempts at appeasing the ambitions of Adolf Hitler had come to nothing. Hitler’s aggressive moves – annexing Australia and part of Czechoslovakia, building a formidable army in violation of an international treaty – had paid off because Western democracies desperate to avoid a war were letting him get away with it.

It was a bad time for Jews who had remained in Germany and on the evening of 9 November 1938 – after the alleged assassination of a German diplomat by a Polish Jew – Nazi thugs unleashed a pogrom in Germany. Pogrom is a term of Russian origin, used to describe violence to persecute Jewish minorities (something which happened disturbingly often in Russia in the 19th century).

The pogrom in 1938 came to be called ‘Kristallnacht’ – the night of broken glass – from the shards of glass which littered German streets the next day. More than 7000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed. Jewish homes, synagogues, hospitals, cemeteries and schools were invaded, destroyed and looted by Nazi thugs, and more than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned in places called Dachau and Buchenwald. These would later be known as ‘concentration camps’ where Hitler’s ‘final solution’ was carried out – the industrialised enslavement and murder of 11 million people, including six million Jews.

Fast forward to 2024 in Melbourne, Australia, where last weekend the Adass Israel Synagogue was torched by arsonists (while there were people inside it) in what is now being called a terrorist attack. Jews in Melbourne have just experienced their own Kristallnacht. In the past week, cars have been torched and buildings damaged in a predominantly Jewish area in Sydney as well.

Since 7 October last year when terrorists attacked Israel, taking hundreds of hostages and murdering 1200 Israelis, a pogrom has been unleashed against Jews in Australia. At first it was just hateful protests celebrating what the terrorists had done in Israel and calling for more. When the government did nothing to stop them, the demonstrations became more targeted, more intimidatory and ultimately more violent. Protesters started turning up at synagogues and Jewish schools or roaming streets to provoke violent confrontations in prominent Jewish neighbourhoods. Jewish artists were attacked. Jewish children were forced to hide their faith in public to avoid attacks.

The Albanese government again did nothing other than make feeble moral equivalence statements at home and appoint an ‘anti-Semitism commissioner’ (but not without also appointing an ‘anti-Islamophobia commissioner’ –  there’s that moral equivalence again). On the international front, the Albanese Labor government upended decades of bipartisan Australian policy supporting Israel by backing UN resolutions against the only democracy in the Middle East, demanding Israel stop defending itself against terrorists. The government is even denying visas to Israelis to visit Australian relatives because they have served in the Israeli Defence Force – just like every Israeli is required to do in a country with compulsory military service.

If you want to talk about moral equivalence, how is burning a synagogue in Melbourne any different to what the Nazis did on Kristallnacht? The stakes have suddenly become a lot higher, finally forcing the Prime Minister to face the consequences of his complete and utter lack of leadership, morality and basic common sense. He’s finally been humiliated and shamed into condemning an abhorrent anti-Semitic attack which has made headlines around the world and tarnished Australia’s international reputation.

As Pauline Hanson pointed out in an interview this week it’s too little, too late from the hapless Anthony Albanese. The anti-Semitic genie is well and truly out of the bottle and the ‘social cohesion’ Albanese likes to talk about when these things happen is in tatters. Albanese has been a complete and utter failure, and the sooner he and his toxic government are gone, the better for us all.