We know what you said last summer

Jenny Leong, the NSW State Member for Newtown, took almost 24 hours to respond to last weekend’s vandalism of a synagogue in her electorate. The response, when it came, was thoroughly unsatisfactory.

The Newtown Synagogue, in Sydney’s inner west, was vandalised with swastikas on Saturday in an attack, which police said also involved an attempt to burn the synagogue down.

There were several other antisemitic incidents in the surrounding days: swastikas sprayed on the Southern Sydney Synagogue in Allawah;  the antisemitic vandalism of a house, five cars and a trailer in Queens Park; and offensive comments written on a Marrickville poster.

Leong’s delayed response was justified by the fact that she was “not in Sydney”, an implausible excuse implying a lack of access to modern technology anywhere outside of Sydney.

The delay may say something about how much Leong cares about her Jewish constituents, but the real issue is what her statement blatantly failed to say.

Not once was the word ‘Jews’, or even ‘antisemitism’ used to describe the attack. Leong’s media team must have been doing verbal gymnastics to describe the attack on a synagogue without referring to Jews or antisemitism.

Leong’s statement also failed to express any empathy for the Jewish community. She offered no condolences for the victims of the attack. She made no acknowledgment of Rabbi Eli Feldman or of the Newtown congregation.

Leong called the attack “unacceptable” and “not ok” which is similar to how I speak to my five-year-old when “I’m not angry, just disappointed”. To clarify, my five-year-old has never vandalised property or committed arson.

Leong, a Greens member who paints herself as a campaigner against racism, has form in her attitude to the Jewish community. In December 2023 she referred to the “tentacles” of the “Jewish lobby” in a speech at a Palestine Justice Movement forum in Bankstown.

“The Jewish lobby and the Zionist lobby are infiltrating into every single aspect of what is ethnic community groups,” Leong told the forum.

“They rock up and offer support for things like the campaign against the 18C racial discrimination laws, they offer solidarity, they rock up to every community event because their tentacles reach into the areas that try and influence power…we need to call them out and expose them”.

Leong’s comments invoke an antisemitic trope of Jews controlling the world and were widely interpreted as a, conscious or subconscious, reference to a 1938 Nazi cartoon depicting Jews as an octopus encircling the globe. She denied any intended connection and eventually apologised, saying, “I know that it is important to hold people to account for words that may cause harm.”

In this case, it’s the words that haven’t been said that cause harm. 

Leong is one of the worst offenders but not the only public figure who has avoided calling antisemitism by its name, submerging the problem in generalist language about “racism” and “hate”.

Of course racism and hate are always to be opposed, but we are not dealing with a general problem or racism, we are dealing with a specific attack on Jews. We need to confront the problem clearly and call it by its name.  

It’s not just hate; it’s Jew-hate. 

They’re not just hate symbols; they’re swastikas. 

This was not just graffiti; it was an attack on Jews.

The Jewish community is dealing with a terrifying spike in antisemitic attacks.  As Australians, we have the right to expect better from our elected representatives.