Former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren calls for dismissal of Perth teacher who praised Hamas leader

A former Israeli ambassador to the US believes a Perth teacher who praised a dead Hamas terrorist in a public school classroom should be sacked. Renowned historian and author Michael Oren, who is also a former member of Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, said it was a security issue as well as a disciplinary issue. “If she’s praising a terrorist, she really should be dismissed,” he said. “Australia considers Hamas a terrorist organisation. She’s praising an enemy of the Australian State.” The John Curtin College of the Arts teacher has been on leave since The West Australian revealed two weeks ago she had used a classroom whiteboard to mourn Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh as “a great leader” after he was killed in an Israeli attack last year. A Jewish student who felt threatened by the teacher’s actions was moved to a different class. Dr Oren — who delivered the keynote speech at a United Israel Appeal dinner in Perth on Thursday — said a deeper discussion was also needed on how the JCCA incident came about and how prevalent such attitudes were in the school system. Referring also to an incident in a Sydney school — where students protesting last week outside Granville Boys’ High School chanted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) after a staff member was ordered to work from home over comments they posted on social media — he said education was the key. “You have to investigate how this happened, who taught them this, why they taught them this,” he said. “Maybe they’re not getting it from the classroom, maybe they’re getting it from social media.” Dr Oren said Australia also needed to improve the way it educated children about the Holocaust and its causes. “I understand it’s not in the curriculum now, but there are curriculum developments under way,” he said. He believed that a lack of consequences for anti-Semitic sentiments had emboldened further attacks. “If you ignore the broken window the next thing you have is a broken door, then a broken house,” he said. “And if the (Australian) government had cracked down on the people calling to burn Jews outside the Opera House in Sydney on October 9, 2023, we’d be in a different situation today.” Dr Oren was not surprised by an Australian Federal Police warning in January that terror groups were funding local criminals to carry out anti-Semitic attacks, because it was a common tactic of Lebanon-based terror group Hezbollah. “That’s not unheard of, it happens in the US too, but here it appears to be much more prevalent,” he said. “And the question is, how do you counter it? “There’s really only one effective way of fighting anti-Semitism in Australia ... and that is by making a case to the Australian public that what begins with Jews never ends with Jews. “That’s the lesson of history. Israel and Jews are only their first target — the ultimate target is Australian society.” “We have to educate and animate what you might call the silent majority, who think ‘this has nothing to do with me’, but in fact it really does.” Dr Oren said the wave of recent anti-Semitic incidents in Australia had been making front-page news in Israel. “It’s quite extraordinary,” he said. “I think it’s because it’s so shocking to us.” He said Australia was considered one of the most congenial, Jewish-friendly countries in the world, and always had been. “No one ever associated anti-Semitism with Australia,” he said. “Australia gave refuge, or sanctuary, per capita, to the largest number of Holocaust survivors.” He was concerned that Jewish Australians now felt so vulnerable. “I went to a meeting with one of the leaders of the Australian Jewish community the other day, and he had an armed bodyguard,” he said. “I’ve never seen that anywhere.”