Imagine it’s 1972. Thugs try to set alight the front door of Melbourne’s old St Francis Catholic Church while 20 worshippers, including children, are inside.

Up the street, more hoodlums storm a Celtic pub, screaming that the IRA are terrorists and should be eradicated.

Rabbi Dovid Gurnick (left) and Dvir Abramovich of the Anti-Defamation Commission outside the East Melbourne Synagogue on Saturday.Credit: Aaron Francis

Or reverse it. Thugs try to set alight one of Melbourne’s Protestant churches and a gang invades a British-style tavern in the CBD, terrorising patrons and chanting that British soldiers responsible for shooting civilians on Bloody Sunday in Derry should themselves be killed.

The shock and righteous outrage of Melburnians would be without end.

Happily, it never happened. Not in Melbourne.

Yet 1972 was the height of what were known as the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Innocents were dying in bombing campaigns and being massacred for protesting. There seemed no end to the fury and the suffering,........

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