US Monitors Migrant Crime in Australia and Asks Why Our Jews Aren’t Armed

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US Monitors Migrant Crime in Australia and Asks Why Our Jews Aren’t Armed

During a visit to the United States on the week commencing 2 March 2026, Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin met with US antisemitism envoy Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, along with other Trump administration officials to discuss the state of Australia’s Jewish community post-Bondi Beach massacre, and a chief concern appeared to be why Australian Jews aren’t arming themselves.

Ryvchin told Trump White House officials that regular civilians in Australia don’t carry guns. Of course, the NSW Minns government is actively considering allowing the nonprofit Jewish security provider Community Safety Group to carry guns at Jewish events. And the CEO then openly reflected on whether times have changed, and civilians can rely still on the police and ASIO anymore.

Yet, this is not the first time the Trump White House has flagged it is actively prying into Australia’s domestic situation in terms of security, as a US state department official told journalists from European and Five Eyes nations, including Australia, last year, that the US is actively monitoring “migrant-related crimes and human rights abuses” in their countries and its collecting data on this.

That the US antisemitism envoy is involving himself in security issues in the Australian domestic sphere further raises questions about the influence that unelected Australian antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal has over local affairs, as the 2024-appointed figure is now a key architect in the whole-of-society antisemitism overhaul that this nation is undergoing in an effort to stifle criticism of Israel.

All of this hints at this nation being in grave danger in terms of who is calling the shots, as Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have both been proactively whittling away at the authority of Australian PM Anthony Albanese, in questioning his commitment to “combatting antisemitism”, and this is ceding authority over the local domestic sphere to these foreign powers.

Why don’t Jewish Australians carry guns?

In speaking to the Herald last week, Ryvchin explained that he’d briefed the US antisemitism envoy and officials from the US National Security Council, the State Department and congress. A key question put to him was whether Jewish Australians were considering arming themselves, and whilst Ryvchin explained that gun ownership is uncommon in Australia, he did question that reality.

Ryvchin admitted that the line of questioning had made him think whether post-Bondi Australia is the same place, when it comes to consideration of whether threats are being contained by the police and ASIO. The Jewish leader further insisted that he didn’t see the solution as Jews arming themselves, but he then conceded it was time to “modernise” thinking about domestic “threats”.

The ECAJ co-CEO then explained that US envoy Kaploun is concerned about perceived failures of the Albanese government to protect the local Jewish community. The Herald further notes that US undersecretary of state Sarah Rogers has criticised the initial draft of Albanese’s post-Bondi “combating antisemitism” bill, as she claimed it blocked legitimate criticism of Islam.

The Australian reports that whilst he was speaking in Washington last week, Ryvchin told the local press that the Jewish community in Australia has “experienced the single sharpest decline in physical community in the world”. He based this on the ISIS-inspired 14 December 2025 Bondi Beach mass murder and the 6 December 2024 arson attack on the Addas Israel Synagogue of Melbourne.

Ryvchin again underscored that local Jewish confidence in the “police, security and government” has been waning, as these institutions “allowed antisemitism to fester and rise and grow”. These further comments from the ECAJ co-CEO appear to be conducive with the Trump White House continuing to pry into the arrangements in this country that don’t permit Jews to carry guns.

Zionists architects at the helm

Albanese appointed Segal Australian antisemitism envoy in July 2024, amidst a growing moral panic around antisemitism. However, the Australian public was unaware that there are a rising number of unelected combatting antisemitism envoys across the western world. Kaploun’s current position as US Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism was established in 2004.

Journalist Anthony Klan revealed last year that Segal’s position is a $1,000 a day role. The envoy has two offices, one situated on Gadigal land in Sydney and another in Naarm-Melbourne, along with having six staffers to assist her. The Klaxon site further exposed that the Segal family trust is the second biggest donor to far-right white nationalist lobby group Advance.

Segal’s chief task as envoy has been the production of the 10 July 2025 Plan to Combat Antisemitism. This scheme involves whole-of-society reform, so that all levels of government and its institutions adopt the IHRA working definition on antisemitism. Albanese agreed to implement the plan on 18 December 2025, in the wake of Bondi, and Segal is now overseeing its implementation.

The IHRA definition is notorious for its ability to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and therefore, block such criticisms. The definition contains a straightforward description of antisemitism being prejudice towards Jewish people because of their religion, but it then provides eleven examples, seven of which involve criticising Israel. So, it serves as a cover for Israeli atrocities.

The PM launched the post-Bondi Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion on 8 January 2026, with Segal the first official to follow him out to the podium to make the announcement. Chief commissioner Virginia Bell recently confirmed that the IHRA definition would be adopted by the inquiry, and there would not be room to consider other forms of prejudice.

So, US antisemitism envoy Kaploun liaising with Ryvchin in the States to query the security situation for Jewish people in Australia, does forbode potential further overhauls to Australian systems, which it now appears that foreign Zionist forces are able to take a key role in shaping, alongside the federal Labor Party, which has repeatedly shown it will eventually come around to the agenda.

Bringing the shitshow down under

But the prying into Australian matters that’s currently on display from the recently Trump-appointed US antisemitism envoy is not the initial foray of that administration into the Australian domestic sphere, as in late November last year, it came to light that the US state department is now surveilling crime committed by migrants in this country.

The Trump administration is doing this 12 months into a mass deportation drive targeting undocumented migrants it launched on the basis that the nation has been swamped by criminals. The US is establishing a system of detainment camps where seized migrants are held in poor conditions. The understanding is that some of these migrants are disappearing post-detainment.

The White House has also reinvented ICE, or US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, so that untrained masked agents are sweeping American cities to seize immigrants they claim are criminals, yet their actions are turning cities targeted by Trump into domestic warzones. And two US citizens have been shot dead at point blank range.

Against this backdrop, the announcement that the Trump administration will be monitoring allied nation’s migrant communities takes on a different light. Immediate questions raised are what will Washington demand if our domestic migrant population is not found to be kosher? Will the White House demand enforcement against Australian immigrants? And how will our government react?

The US state department official told the Australian press that “mass migration is an existential threat to western civilization and the safety of both the west and the world”, and they added that the Trump administration is standing ready and “willing and able to support” local officials in handling what the Trump administration considers to be “an existential crisis”.

So, the assertion is that the US will be monitoring people in this country who are of non-European descent for any potential crimes. Washington has employed a new “goon squad” to lock up and deport its own suggested migrant threats. And, of course, Australian major parties have already got a predilection for locking up migrants they consider to be criminal.

So, these encroachments into our local domestic sphere by the openly authoritarian and white supremacist Trump administration are continuing at apace, and while their ultimate aim appears to be to insist that this nation takes on similar radical transformations as US society is undertaking, and a key concern for the White House is which local pollie can be entrusted to implement all this.

Paul Gregoire

Paul Gregoire is a Sydney-based journalist and writer. He's the winner of the 2021 NSW Council for Civil Liberties Award For Excellence In Civil Liberties Journalism. Prior to Sydney Criminal Lawyers®, Paul wrote for VICE and was the news editor at Sydney’s City Hub.

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