Why stripping “religion” from terror laws puts Jews at risk

More than two years after 7 October 2023, life for Jewish Australians feels very different.

We all know the guards and cameras were there before; what has changed is the mood around them – the open celebration of violence against Jews, the jump in threats and harassment, the sense that a foreign regime can reach into our suburbs, and the quiet, constant calculation Jewish families now make about how visible it is safe to be.

Against that backdrop, it is jarring to hear serious voices argue that we should take “religion” and “ideology” out of Australia’s definition of terrorism, or lift the bar so high that attacks on a specific community, or “only” on property, may no longer be treated as terrorism at all. From inside the Jewish community, which feels completely disconnected from reality.

The government’s security watchdog, the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, is reviewing how “terrorist act” is defined in law. Some organisations say the law should no longer mention religion or ideology because it unfairly targets one faith community. Others want the definition narrowed so that lower-level offences and property damage no longer qualify as terrorism, which critics warn would downgrade serious attacks on minority communities like the Jews. Jewish organisations have pushed back because we know where religious hatred, if it is not taken seriously, can lead.

Security agencies and key legal bodies oppose stripping out religion and ideology, and there is no sign the Albanese Government intends to back those changes. That isn’t habit or bias. It reflects what they actually see: most of the attacks and plots here in recent years have been driven by religious motives, usually a form of Islamist extremism. You don’t have to like that fact, but it remains a fact.

Motive is not a legal nicety. It is what separates a serious crime from an act of terror.

If you set fire to a building because you are in a dispute with the owner, that is arson. If you set fire to a synagogue because you want to send a message to Jews, or to scare Jews away, that is something else. It is not just an attack on bricks and mortar. It is meant to frighten a whole community. The physical act might look the same. The reason behind it is not. That reason is what makes it terrorism.

If the law pretends that motive does not matter, then it treats a random warehouse fire the same as an attack on a shul or a mosque carried out to intimidate people because of who they are. That offends common sense and makes it harder for police and security agencies to connect the dots between incidents and see patterns of escalating hate.

For those of us in the Jewish community, this is not a theoretical debate.

Australians were recently told openly that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind the firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne and an attack on Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney. A foreign regime, committed to the destruction of Israel and steeped in antisemitic ideology, reached into our suburbs to target Jews here. That is not random crime. That is antisemitic terror, using ideology to justify violence, carried out through proxies on Australian soil.

On top of that, we have lived through arson and threats involving synagogues and Jewish schools; bomb threats and hoaxes that shut down community buildings and terrify parents; Jewish businesses deliberately targeted and vandalised; and rallies where 7 October is praised as “resistance”, where people chant for “intifada” and march past Jewish areas using slogans which, for most of us, are heard as a call to wipe out the Jewish state. For many Jewish families, it feels very clear: it is not about policy, it is about us.

You don’t shrug this off. You feel it in your gut. If a change in the law results in some of these attacks being treated as “just” property damage, or something less than terrorism, the message to our community is straightforward: what happens to you is not really central to the story.

This debate should not be framed as if the choice is between “blaming a whole religion” or looking the other way. That is a false choice. The real task is much more basic: to listen to what terrorists themselves say is driving them, and to write our laws in a way that reflects that reality. Changing the wording of the terror laws so we do not have to say “religion” or “ideology” will not reduce prejudice. It will simply blur the truth.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Australia’s terror threat level has been raised back up to “probable”, meaning authorities see a better than even chance of an onshore terrorist attack or plot. We have had state-backed antisemitic attacks here, not just “overseas somewhere”. Jewish families are changing how they travel, dress and speak because they do not feel as safe as they once did. In that environment, this is the worst possible moment to make it harder to call an attack on a synagogue or a Jewish school “terrorism”.

Countries like the United Kingdom and Canada still include religion and ideology in their terror laws. They have not decided that opposing hatred means pretending motive does not exist. They understand that if you cannot name a problem, you cannot fix it. Australia should not be the one to step back from that.

So let’s be honest about what this legal debate really means in practice. If Parliament strips religion and ideology out of our terror laws, or narrows them so far that attacks on Jews and other minorities slip into a “less serious” basket, it will not be a neutral, technical change. It will be heard as this: when Jews are targeted for who they are, that is something less than terrorism.

That message would echo through every Jewish school gate, every synagogue entrance and every community centre foyer in this country. It would tell our kids that the guards they walk past are necessary, but the laws that should protect them have been watered down for the sake of political comfort.

We cannot afford that.

Targeting Jews, or any community, with violence and intimidation to spread fear is terrorism. Full stop. Our laws must keep saying that out loud.

Michael Gencher is the Executive Director of StandWithUs Australia.