Rising Islamophobic Hate Crimes Are Hardly Being Acknowledged by Government

Following special envoy on Islamophobia Aftab Malik having called upon him to do so earlier that day, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese condemned recent attacks upon two Muslim women at the Pacific Epping Shopping Centre in Naarm-Melbourne. The top minister added that those who engage “in this kind of racist, criminal behaviour should face the full force of the law”.

This development came on Tuesday, which was a day after the Australian National Imam Council released a statement denouncing not only the 13 February attacks upon the women, but further the way in which Victoria police had failed to investigate them as hate crimes, after police officers and medics had immediately responded to the incidents.

Police subsequently arrested 31-year-old Pascoe Vale woman Susan Gonulalan on Wednesday, in relation to the “savage” assaults on the two Muslim women, who were taken to hospital afterwards.

Gonulalan allegedly assaulted a 30-year-old pregnant woman from behind, using her hijab to choke her, in front of her 4-year-old child, and then ten minutes later, she attacked a 26-year-old woman.

These attacks came after a monthslong media storm and climate of fear involving a spate of “antisemitic” crimes, the legitimacy of which have now been under dispute for close to a month, while Islamophobic incidents have too been on the rise but quietly ignored by the politicians and media alike.

Malik further made his most decisive statement since being appointed to the position of Islamophobic envoy last September – just two months after the antisemitic envoy Jillian Segal was announced – as Malik has now called on the PM and other leaders “to throw their respective resources into ensuring Muslims feel safe”. 

Nothing much to see here

“These were two women just trying to go about an ordinary day like all other Australians. No one deserves to feel unsafe in this country. No one should be attacked because of their race or religion,” Albanese said in a statement on Tuesday. “Police are investigating, so it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

Yet, the prime minister’s final statement about refraining from commenting has raised eyebrows, as while it is the correct protocol, since the campaign of fear around antisemitic attacks has been at play, politicians have been quick to rush in to deem both displays of politically motivated anti-Israeli attacks and prejudicial vandalism targeting Jewish people as inherently antisemitic acts.

Gonulalan is understood to have attacked both women on 13 February as they were wearing hijab. The second woman was punched, slapped and pushed over. And following her arrest on Wednesday, the 31-year-old offender has been charged with intentionally and recklessly causing injury, assault and aggravated assault.

Liberal opposition leader Peter Dutton condemned the attacks as all the “more egregious” as the women were “targeted because of their religion or appearance”. But no major party politician gave these physical attacks on a person, the same urgency as they have to graffitiing and arson attacks that have at times targeted the state of Israel or at others have involved antisemitic messaging.

Unlike his boss or the opposition leader, assistant multicultural minister Julian Hill did point out that the “appalling” attacks were part “of the rise of Islamophobic incidents and attitudes”. And he also mentioned the fact that attacks on women wearing hijab have long been an issue in this country.

Is something going on around here?

The reason that the issues of antisemitism and Islamophobia have risen in tandem and require special envoys of late is that the 16-month-long Israeli genociding of the Palestinians of Gaza has been underway and this followed the Hamas 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

The Islamophobia Register of Australia revealed in May last year that reporting on Muslim hate incidents since October 2023 had increased 39-fold, yet such a rise in these crimes was not being reflected in the political narrative, and rather former Liberal MP Josh Frydenberg hosted documentary Never Again: The Fight Against Antisemitism aired on Sky News that same month.

There have been multiple anti-Muslim graffiti attacks that fail to garner the same attention as antisemitic graffiti incidents. The targeting of a white Australian man with a homemade bomb because he was flying a Palestinian flag was downplayed, and so too was the firebombing of an Islamic school bus.

A dead kangaroo was dumped out the front of a mosque in Yerta-Adeliade in August last year, while a spate of arson attacks on mosques in that same city in October 2023 gained no acknowledgement or national concern regarding the spike in Muslim hate crimes targeting mosques, and nor did they result in calls for bans on protests outside of places of worship, as has the targeting of synagogues.

The Islamophobia Register reported late last month that the rise in Muslim hate incidents stands at a 540 percent increase since October 2023.

The obvious lack of political attention provided to hate crimes targeting one religion as opposed to another religion by a state that continues to honour a third religion in parliament reeks of bias.

Where the real action is

The antisemitic fear campaign erupted in October 2023, when pro-Palestinians demonstrators rallied outside the Sydney Opera House, as it had the Israeli flag projected onto it. The issue arose as a small group of people chanted “Fuck the Jews”, and as this was not in keeping with the anti-Israel stance of the protest crowd, which had nothing to do with religion, these people were asked to leave.

Footage distributed by the Australian Jewish Association the following day showed people chanting “Gas the Jews”, which is a far graver statement. But when an independent forensic scientist revealed to NSW police that the footage had been doctored and that no one made any “gassing” remarks, it was clear that some people were attempting to frame a false antisemitism narrative.

Two recent graffiti and arson attacks on Gadigal land in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra, one last November and the other in December, featured prominently in the news as antisemitic attacks, even though their messaging was clearly anti-Israeli at a time when the Netanyahu government had been committing a mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians for over a year in front of the entire globe.

Right before the second Woollahra incident, the Addas Israel Synagogue of Melbourne was firebombed, which saw an escalation in the arson and vandalism attacks in terms of targeting synagogues and featuring graffiti conveying Jewish hate.

The subtle conflation of criticism of the Israeli state, even when it attempts to exterminate another people, with the type of prejudice towards Jews that led to the Holocaust, is a political strategy that the apartheid Israeli state has been employing since the 1970s, in order to deflect criticism from its genocidal settler colonial project.

AFP commissioner Reece Kershaw told national cabinet in late January that it appears the antisemitic/anti-Israel attacks are the result of foreign interference, with local criminals being paid by foreign actors to carry out these crimes to create the spectacle of an antisemitic crimewave amongst the Australian community.

NSW police commissioner Dave Hudson advised the public a fortnight ago that of the ten suspects in custody in relation to the antisemitic crimes, none of them adhered to any ideology that would explain why they committed such acts. And this revelation came right before it was revealed that a scare around a caravan full of explosives targeting synagogues was debunked.

Yet despite all of this, both major party leaders now vying for the next prime ministership have addressed recent Islamophobic attacks in a dismissive manner when compared to antisemitic crimes, while Sky News found it necessary to run an Antisemitic Summit on Wednesday, amidst all the claims that many of the most significant examples of antisemitism are false flag incidents.