Beware false messiahs

Many Jews whether religious or not, believe in the idea of the messiah delivering for the Jewish people. The way some Jews campaigned at the recent federal election, it seemed they cast Peter Dutton, a vocal supporter of Israel, as that messiah, expecting he would become the new prime minister and cast out the "evil" Albanese Labor government.

Australian Jewish leadership, historically politically neutral virtually bet the house on Dutton winning, and a large and loud section of the Jewish community banked on them being right.

It was a dramatic failure: the Australian community rejected what the Liberals were selling, by a large margin.

The election campaign must be seen as a massive failure by the leadership of the Jewish community in political management, powered by what can only be described as an extraordinary level of arrogance.

The events of the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel and the subsequent shocking rise in Jew hatred in Australia has of course had a massive and profound impact on all of our community. The dismay and the anger directed toward the government has been felt by Jews of all political persuasions.

Let’s be clear, the government warranted strong criticism. The Jewish community has justifiably felt shaken to the core by the rise in antisemitism in Australia. Many Jews now question our place in this society.

For the first time ever, many Jewish voters considered this the central and only issue in determining how they might choose to vote. By the end of 2024 and especially following the Adass synagogue fire-bombing in Melbourne a huge chunk of Jewish Labor voters was for the first time in their lives considering not voting Labor.

But throughout 2024 high profile individuals within the Jewish communal leadership became more and more shrill in attacking the government. Communal events that commemorated Oct 7 or addressed antisemitism deteriorated into partisan political activism, led by high profile Jews including former Liberal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and journalist Sharri Markson. Audiences escalated the fervour: at times it felt like we were at revivalist meetings.

It was one thing for example, for Senator James Patterson to criticise the government’s anti-Israel UN votes, or its response or lack thereof to rising malignant antisemitism here in Australia. It was quite another for Jewish leadership to promote the views of prominent but partisan Jews.

The messaging strayed from dealing as a community with the failure of government responses but in a way that kept the community ‘in the tent’. Instead it became a booster campaign for the Liberal Party, which within the community morphed into both a vicious and arrogant attitude, notably against Macnamara Federal MP Josh Burns.

The repulsive language from many in the Jewish community directed towards Burns in "private' conversations at shabbat and yomtov tables or Caulfield cafes was shameful and shocking.

This was not merely the expression of a view about whether he was fighting hard enough for the community, whether he was effective or not, or whether he was ultimately tarred with being part of the government. It was a tone and language that was despicable.

What was surprising was the absolute failure of so many in the community to understand that the Liberals in Macnamara had no hope of winning the seat and that this was only ever a fight between Labor and the Greens.

The Jewish Labor vote could have moved en masse to the Liberals but if anything, it risked Burns finishing third and delivering the seat to the Greens which would have been a massive blow to the Jewish community let alone the wider community.

A Liberal win was always fanciful thinking in Macnamara yet almost no amount of explanation seemed to sway the thinking until the final two weeks of the campaign, when many Jewish voters returned to Labor.

The anti-Green campaign run by former Federal MP Michael Danby and former State MP Tony Lupton had a significant impact as did the open preference ticket run by the Burns campaign.

A perfect demonstration of this was a phone call I received from a long-standing Liberal voter friend with a sign for Liberal candidate Benson Saulo on his front lawn, who wanted to understand the voting dynamic. After accepting the thesis that Saulo could not win it was a question of deciding who he hated more - the Greens or Labor! He voted for Burns and put Saulo second Ultimately a lot of Jewish voters did the same.

If the voters of Australia were shocked by the extent of the election result there is no doubt the Jewish community were gob smacked when it came to the results in Macnamara, where there was a 4.4% first preference swing towards Burns.

So here we are now, and the Liberals have been essentially wiped out in the metro areas of Australia and occupy only 18% of Federal Parliamentary seats.

Their new leader Sussan Ley is a former co-chairman of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine,

Some Liberal-supporting Jews are enthusiastic to embrace her. While they continue to raise negative comments about Israel made by Labor’s Tanya Plibersek 20 years ago, they are keen to believe Ley’s claim that she is now a “staunch friend” of Israel.

Peter Dutton is gone, but we will be making another mistake if we embrace a new Liberal “messiah” with similar partisanship.