Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Sunday called the fire deliberately set by mask-wearing perpetrators at a Melbourne shul on Friday an “act of terror”

“The atrocities that occurred at the synagogue in Melbourne clearly were designed to create fear in the community and therefore from my personal perspective certainly fulfill that definition of terrorism,” Albanese told the press in Perth.

“There has been a worrying rise in antisemitism,” he added.

Albanese has come under fire from local and international politicians for failing to call out the increasing antisemitism in the country and even contributing to it via the Labor government’s anti-Israel policies.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu  slammed the Australian government following the attack, saying  that “it’s impossible to separate this reprehensible act from the extreme anti-Israeli position of the Labor government in Australia, including the scandalous decision to support the UN resolution calling on Israel “to bring an end to its ‘unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory’…and preventing a former Israeli minister from entering the country.”

“Anti-Israel sentiment is antisemitism,” Netanyahu concluded.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton also slammed Albanese, saying on Sunday that the prime minister believed “that by not taking a strong stance in relation to antisemitism, that somehow that will deliver him political benefit domestically.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)