A part of the ‘On Second Thought‘ series

By: Ezra Nadav

Only in Australia would the firebombing of a synagogue on shabbat with 20 people inside not be classified as an act of terror.

But that’s Melbourne, Australia, in 2025.

A place where virtue-signalling criminals are permitted to run roughshod over public order, while law-abiding citizens are also intimidated — not just by those in the streets, but by those wearing uniforms that until not too long ago signified protection and authority. Uniforms that once indicated they would protect the law-abiding and hold criminals accountable.

But those days are now gone.

If this weren’t the most recent incident in a long line of escalating violence against Jews in Melbourne, one might think the use of the term pogrom to be too strong.

But alas, this is only the most recent episode in a disturbing sequence of events that authorities have failed to prevent — as they continue to allow criminals to hijack the CBD on a weekly basis. Those who attend these rallies now do so with the full confidence that they are impervious to any level of accountability that a free society should rightly demand.

There was a time when Australians of all backgrounds could trust that justice was blind.

That acts of violence would be condemned not only in words, but in decisive action — no matter who committed them and no matter the religion or heritage of the victims.

That public safety was a shared promise, not a political negotiation.

But in today’s Melbourne, that trust has been eroded.

A line has been crossed. And worse still, that line is no longer visible — blurred by indifference, cowardice, and selective outrage.

When a synagogue can be set alight in the middle of a major Australian city and it still isn’t called terrorism, we are no longer dealing with isolated incidents.

We are witnessing a sustained, tolerated, and increasingly normalised campaign of hate.

And history has a name for that.

Pogrom.

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Shalom Aleichem

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