Rabbi killed in Sydney Hanukkah attack had warned Australian PM about rising antisemitism
A friend of Rabbi Eli Schlanger said warnings over rising antisemitism in Australia went unaddressed for years before his tragic death in Sunday’s terror attack during a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach.
“The writing was literally written on the walls. It was written on the walls of my nephew’s school, it was written on the walls in Bondi Junction, it was written on the walls of multiple synagogues, and the warnings went unheeded,” Jewish Israeli advocate Mor Greenberg said Monday on “Fox & Friends.”
Police said a father and son were behind the mass shooting that left at least 16 people dead, including one of the gunmen, and 40 people hospitalized during Sydney’s annual “Chanukah by the Sea” event.
A letter Schlanger wrote to the Australian prime minister imploring him “not to betray the Jewish people” is drawing renewed attention after the attack.
Co-host Brian Kilmeade read an excerpt from Schlanger’s Sept. 21 letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, in which the rabbi said the leader had “the opportunity to stand on the side of truth and righteousness.”
Greenberg said Schlanger was “extremely frustrated,” and he wasn’t alone.
“At a certain point it gets frustrating, and you say, ‘How many more times am I gonna have to do this?’ But then when I woke up, and I saw Rabbi Eli Schlanger’s face, and it was someone I knew personally, it all hit home even closer,” she said.
“The Australian government rewarded the terrorists. They rewarded Hamas with a Palestinian state. What do you think happens when you reward terror? It just brings more terror.”
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Kilmeade then played a clip of Albanese insisting his government has taken antisemitism seriously. Greenberg pushed back.
“Absolutely not. I can tell you my family and my friends there are scared. They feel the need to hide their Judaism. This is a Western country. It’s so hard to believe,” she said. “And that’s what they convey to me. They cannot believe the situation they’re facing. They cannot believe the lack of action.”
“Everybody feels that this government has failed them. This was a moment where they could have really come forward and said, ‘We are gonna stand by the Jewish community.’ And I don’t think that they stepped up to that.”
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