A reminder that Jews know all too well

Up until the nation’s leaders were forced by a terrorist massacre to acknowledge antisemitism as a threat, in Australia, we were in the midst of a domestic violence “crisis”.

As if this were something new, the news was full of women being murdered by those closest to them. For so many years, we’ve heard about toxic masculinity and how dangerous it is. And women fought back.

We women marched, we reclaimed the night. We made speeches. We swarmed Canberra. We chanted. We let off balloons. We demanded. And the police made promises. All kinds of promises.

Go out during the day, we’d been told. Sunlight is safe. Bad things happen after dark. Stay home at night, but still be on your guard. Don’t put up with violence in the home. Tell someone.

We opened refuges, and created 1-800 numbers for escapes. We made safety plans, and safe places for pets at the RSPCA.

There are ways to get away now. It’s not how it was when coming home from the pub and belting your wife was as much a national sport as backyard cricket.

Possession is nine tenths of the law in any case. You only have to be smacked, threatened, degraded, humiliated, falsely accused, gaslit, cheated, robbed, whatever it is, a couple of times before you understand.

Domestic, intimate partner, family violence doesn’t work on predictability. It relies on random.

And those random events act as important reminders. 99 happy days can be erased in one ugly night. One slap. One round of name calling. Another reminder what the true dynamic is and what’s really going on.

Amongst all of us traumatised by Bondi on so many levels, Jew and non-Jew, Australian and outsider, atheist and those of faith, someone forgot what it means to women.

That when a father and son entered into a consensual suicide pact, they personified the patriarchy, drank the strongest glass of hate they could swallow and gave every woman on earth a reminder.

Right near the playground. At the beach. For the Festival of Lights.

Two years after Jewish women were systematically sexually assaulted, taken captive and trafficked, Australia got a reminder, one that Jews know all too well.

But women know it, too. It’s like being on a very long leash that gets yanked just often enough.

Jews have known this for centuries; for 80 years and again, for the last two.

You’re on a very long leash, Jew. We can cut it at any time. Don’t ever forget it.

Antisemitism as it exists today, exists as a parallel, identical model of domestic violence.

We’d screamed since October 7 and no one heard a thing. We showed them our own fears and they asked what we did to provoke him.

We’d told the police. They just didn’t respond. We were being hysterical, again.

We’d told the government. They agreed there was no place for this kind of behaviour then immediately recognised a place that doesn’t exist instead. A place that, if it did exist, would do so only to exterminate us. Like a stalker that never dies. And always finds out where you moved to.

We’ve been lied about for centuries, accused of the most bizarre harms, blamed for everybody else’s bad luck and choices, nothing new under that sun.

But they said as long as we stay in groups, under the safe watch of those who make the rules, during the daylight, we wouldn’t bring it on ourselves, like we always do.

So, now, Australia, where should we take our children to play? How would you like us to protect ourselves since our skirts couldn’t get any longer than the first night of Chanukah?

Those reminder shots penetrated more than just Jewish people’s lives and sense of security.

They decimated the safety net from under every woman who has ever been reminded exactly who is in charge and nothing will ever change. Wherever you go, however you dress, whomever you are with, day or night, alone or with hundreds, this country allows some people to be violent at whim. Even if it’s been 80 years, don’t get smart.

There’s not a promise you can make that can give that back to us. Jews, women, Jewish women. Jewish women who know what coercive control is? You don’t want to know.

See, we heard all the promises you made last time. Saw all that money you spent to impress your friends. But in the end, there’s nowhere safe to go. And that breaks our hearts, because we wanted to believe you more than anything with your White Ribbon days and your Never Agains. But we can all feel that leash yank.

They were lying the whole time, and there’s no reason to believe them ever again.

So what hotline do I call now that this backhander to my reality just broke my heart, again? Tell me, 1800 RESPECT, how do we get a community AVO for 120,000 people?

Oh yeah, minus 15. The reminders.

Tanya Levin is a Jew, a Zionist, a social worker and a writer.