At this time of year, my local Coles and Woolies each have a menorah on display – a candlestick with nine (electric) candles, with one more lit each day of Hanukkah.
I’m sure it’s the same in other suburbs with significant Jewish populations.
It might be hundreds of kilometres away, but the awful events at Bondi on Sunday night hit home.
Fifteen innocent people taken in an absolutely horrific, evil act.
For my Jewish friends, we perhaps can’t truly know your feelings of hurt and fear and pain right now, but we stand by you.
What can be done going forward?
I don’t agree with the view that protests for peace in Gaza and against the actions of the Israeli government equate to anti-Semitism. That Venn diagram is not a circle. But we’d be kidding ourselves if we thought there isn’t an anti-Semitism problem.
Governments can and must do more to battle it, and extremism more broadly, as well as more on gun control.
5 replies on “Bondi”
Going forward, the most important thing we should do is listen to the Jewish community and Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism and act on what they recommend, without equivocation or compromise. They know better than anybody what the issues are. The problems that have festered are a direct result of failing to act on their concerns.
Thanks for the thoughtful reflection, Daniel.
Such an awful night. With some inspiring acts of bravery and care in the midst of it all.
I join everyone in condeming the attacks in Bondi this past Sunday night, and that antisemitism, but I feel that it is simplistic to claim that the protests for peace in Gaza and criticism of Israel is equal to antisemitism. Recognising Palestine (as what Albanese had done) is not antisemitic, and Labor tried to stop hate speech against all communities (including the Jewish Australian community), including the banning of Nazi symbols. But unfortunately, the Liberal Party has decided to politicise this tragedy for their own nefarious ends, and while it will be a sugar hit initially, it will turn sour on them down the road.
When it comes to antisemitism, we need to look at the so-called “alternative media” which had promoted antisemitism tropes such as George Soros allegedly playing a huge influence on world events without any evidence; with these websites including InfoWars, Prison Planet and Global Research on the extreme right and World Socialist Website on the extreme left. But the problem here is that many of these websites are not based in Australia (and some of these websites, such as Global Research which is claimed to be based in Canada, are supported by nefarious actors, prominently in Russia).
In order to stop antisemitism, we need to call out the so-called “alternative media” on both extremes of the political spectrum (whether it is the extreme left of the political spectrum, or the extreme right of the political spectrum) as well as extremist groups on both extremes of the political spectrum and not those who are calling for peace in Gaza (which is a legitimate cause). Many Jewish Australians support peace in Gaza and had participated in these protests for peace in Gaza.
I forgot to mention that we need to listen to the Jewish community here, because they have been feeling the brunt of hate since October 7, not helped by certain people who claim to be “pro-Palestine” but use the Palestinian cause to air hatred towards the Jewish community. We need to fight antisemitism, as well as other hatreds that had emerged in recent years such as Islamophobia and Sinophobia (the latter was especially the case during COVID-19).
@indigohex3. Finger pointing isn’t going to resolve the issue, nor is suppressing freedom of speech. Anti-Semitism, based on various libels, has been around for centuries and has never gone away. Only in the years following WW2 it was not considered acceptable to demonstrate it openly in polite society, but it roared into the open in Australia at Sydney Opera House on 9 October 2023 and it came, not only from the centuries-old religious direction, but from the political left, where it has festered since the early 20th century, notably in the USSR.
The Nazis were dealt with, but the communists weren’t and various studies and surveys in Europe today have found that, after Muslims, Jewish people feel most threatened by the political left. There are, of course, many liberal Jews because their culture is naturally inclined towards collectivism and social justice, but many do have a naive habit of teaming up with people who would, deep down, rather see them dead – as was the case of many peace-loving Israeli victims of 7 October. In the end, their gestures of peace towards Gazans didn’t matter. They were Jews and that alone was the reason to rape, torture and kill them in the most bloodthirsty medieval ways.
Jewish people around the world face an ongoing existential struggle and Israel is their foundational support, given the number of countries that won’t support their own Jewish diaspora populations. There is no distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, they are one and the same. On 7 October 2023 Gazans attempted a genocide against Israelis (not the other way around as perversely claimed) and this was followed by an immediate and sickening moral inversion in which the people attacked were labelled as the bad guys. I don’t need to outline the well-publicised escalation of attacks in Australia since then and the enabling language and actions, including by the Labor government, that inevitably led to last Sunday’s horror. Words (like globalise the intifada and from the river to the sea) matter. When you, by various means of intellectual sophistry, keep libelling a group as bad, some people will act on it to the worst possible extent.
I have Jewish family and have spent much time with Jewish communities and have visited the wonderful multi-cultural democracy of Israel. I can tell you that Jewish people hurt and are very afraid. They are not aggressors, but will defend themselves when attacked, simply to stave off a repeat of the 1940s. Does it give those of the left in particular a sense of pride that they can terrify and hurt a minority group so much? If so, I think they need to do a lot of soul searching. As a mostly lifelong Sydneysider, it feels like Sydney died last Sunday.