The Australian government yesterday named a special envoy to confront a rise in anti-Semitism across the nation since the Israel-Hamas war began.
A similar envoy is soon to be appointed to challenge Islamophobia in Australia and both will promote social cohesion, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters at the Sydney Jewish Museum.
Photo: EPA-EFE
TARGETS
Albanese’s Sydney office has been targeted with pro-Palestinian graffiti as rival activists clash over the Israeli-Hamas war in Australian cities and university campuses.
Albanese appointed Jillian Segal, a Sydney lawyer and business executive, to be “special envoy to combat anti-Semitism in Australia” for three years.
She will consult with community groups and report back to Albanese and Australian Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Andrew Giles.
Segal called statistics on anti-Semitism in Australia “shocking.”
Reports of anti-Semitism spiked 700 percent immediately after Hamas militants sparked the war in Gaza by attacking Israel on Oct. 7 last year, and are still running 400 to 500 percent higher than before the conflict, she said.
The reports include Jewish-owned businesses being boycotted and vandalized, as well as Jewish artists being excluded or subjected to social media shadow bans that restrict their visibility on platforms, Segal said.
“Unfortunately, there is no single answer to the perennial problem of anti-Semitism,” she said.
CONFRONTING EVIL
“But the creation of this role shows a determination by the government to confront this evil and to ensure that it does not erode the goodness that exists in our society,” she added.
Albanese said a graffiti attack that marked his inner-Sydney office as a Hamas target in December was being taken seriously and acted upon.
He also condemned last month’s vandalism with spray paint at the Australian National Korean War Memorial and the Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial in Canberra.
“I have spoken with members of the Jewish community here, in Melbourne, right around Australia, who have not felt safe, members of the Jewish community whose children are worried about wearing their school uniform in our capital cities,” Albanese said. “That’s not acceptable. Not acceptable, ever. And certainly not in Australia in 2024.”
“What we need to do is to make sure that the conflict that is occurring in the Middle East that has caused a great deal of grief for the Jewish community, for members of the Islamic and Palestinian communities — Australians overwhelmingly do not want conflict brought here,” Albanese added.
It is usually a serene two-and-a-half-hour ride on Japan’s famously efficient bullet train, but on Saturday, the journey quickly descended into a zombie apocalypse, with passengers screaming in terror. Organizers of the adrenaline-filled trip, less than two weeks before Halloween, touted it as the world’s first haunted house experience on a running Shinkansen. On board one chartered car of the Shinkansen, about 40 thrill-seekers were ready to brave an encounter with the living dead between Tokyo and the western metropolis of Osaka. The eerie experience was inspired by the hit 2016 South Korean action-horror movie Train to Busan, in which a father and
IRANIAN THREATS: Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami said that it would be a ‘mistake’ for Israel to attack Iran and if it did ‘we will strike you again painfully’ Israel yesterday bombed a Syrian coastal city, while the US conducted multiple strikes on targets in Yemen nearly a month into Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza all belong to the so-called “axis of resistance” led by Iran, which on Oct. 1 conducted a missile strike on Israel. Israel has vowed to retaliate for the strike. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami yesterday said in a speech that Tehran would hit Israel “painfully” if it attacks Iranian targets. “If you make a mistake and attack our targets, whether in the region or in
NEW RECRUITS: A video released by Ukrainian officials allegedly shows dozens of North Koreans lining up to collect military fatigues from Russian servicemen Russian aerial strikes wounded more than a dozen and knocked out electricity for tens of thousands of Ukrainians overnight in attacks on residential areas as temperatures dropped toward freezing, Kyiv said yesterday. Ukraine also said it had targeted a crucial Russian explosives factory, about 750km from the border, in an overnight drone attack, while Moscow said it had shot down 110 drones, the largest attempted aerial barrage by Kyiv in more than two weeks. At least 17 people were wounded in an attack on Kryvyi Rig, Ukraine, including a first responder, the Ukrainian State Emergency Service said. “At night, the enemy attacked Kryvyi
The space rock that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period caused a global calamity that doomed the dinosaurs and many other life forms, but that was far from the largest meteorite to strike our planet. One up to 200 times bigger landed 3.26 billion years ago, triggering worldwide destruction at an even greater scale, but as new research shows, that disaster actually might have been beneficial for the early evolution of life by serving as “a giant fertilizer bomb” for the bacteria and other single-celled organisms called archaea that held dominion at the