Affirming Jewish belonging in Australia

We are here tonight carrying something heavy, but also something shared.

Bondi was not just an act of terror. It was a rupture. It tore apart the illusion that distance could keep hatred at bay and it has forever changed how Australian Jews see themselves in this country.

Within hours of the attack, President Herzog called me: Israel is with you, he said. Just as you stood with us, we now stand with you.

In Jewish tradition there is a phrase from the Talmud: Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh – All of Israel are responsible for one another.

We are a single body animated by a single soul. When limbs in Australia are riddled with bullets, the heart bleeds in Israel; eyes weep in New York; breath catches in London. We feel each other deeply, symbiotically, no matter the distance.

Since October 7, Israel has consumed our waking moments. We have cried and prayed. Advocated and ruminated. Our gaze, fixed anxiously on Israel, has never strayed.

I will never forget the moment after Bondi when families of Israeli hostages called to give us strength. For two years we stood with them. Suddenly they stood with us. It was vulnerable. Profoundly moving. A reminder that we are bound not by geography but by peoplehood.

Mr President, your presence here tonight is Jewish peoplehood, lived.

Our community understands that not as theory, but as memory. Many of our families came from places where being Jewish meant living with fear. Europe. Russia. South Africa. The Middle East.

We came to Australia and built full lives. We flourished. We contributed. We believed we could live openly as Jews, without having to second-guess our safety.

For decades, that sense of security rested on two covenants. One was the covenant of Israel. That a Jewish state exists as a sanctuary and safeguard for the Jewish people. The other was the covenant of Australia. That our government would protect its Jewish citizens fully and without hesitation. A covenant strengthened by a close, bipartisan relationship between successive Australian and Israeli governments.

In the past two and a half years, both of those covenants have been tested.

October 7 shattered the illusion of Israel’s invincibility. Here in Australia, we have watched antisemitism creep from the fringe into respectable spaces – into academia, the arts, and progressive circles – where our fear is mocked, our history denied, and our right to self-determination put on trial.

In 2026, the respectable way to express antisemitism is through the demonisation of Israel. When Israel is smeared as uniquely evil, “Zionist” becomes a safe word for Jew.

That is why false accusations of genocide and apartheid are not legitimate critique. They are a verdict. A moral inversion designed to strip Jews of legitimacy and turn Jewish survival into a crime.

Bondi reminded us what happens when hatred is tolerated in polite society. It metastasises and destroys from within.

It is for this reason that the President’s visit, and this moment, matters so deeply. Not as ceremony. As clarity.

The invitation to President Herzog for a state visit tells the purveyors of antisemitic hate that Australian Jews belong here, that our connection to Israel is legitimate, and that attempts to demonise it will not be tolerated.

It was a choice. The right choice. And I commend the Australian government for making it.

If there is one thing that our enemies should now understand, it is this: we are not going anywhere. The State of Israel is not going anywhere. We will not be silenced. We will not retreat from our identity, from our values, or from our place in this country.

Jewish history has shown, time and again, that every attempt to extinguish us only strengthens our resolve. We add light. We do not hide it. When Jewish life is lived proudly, openly, and without apology, it becomes its own answer to hatred.

President Herzog has embodied that spirit in Israel, and he embodies it here tonight. In Israel, he has been a source of strength and unity during one of the darkest periods in the nation’s history. He has stood with hostage families, the wounded and the bereaved. He has held the nation together when division threatened to tear it apart, carrying sorrow with strength and meeting pain with purpose.

By coming here tonight, President Herzog extends that same strength to a community that has been shaken but whose light will not be dimmed.

The last two years have bound us through trauma. My hope is that the years ahead will bind us through strength and pride. That we lift one another not only in moments of loss, but in moments of confidence and renewal.

Mr President, I still remember as a child almost 40 years ago, watching your father, President Chaim Herzog, come to Australia on the first official state visit by a serving Israeli President. Even then, I understood what it meant. It told Australian Jews that while we belong in this beautiful sunburnt country, we also belong to something larger than ourselves.

Tonight you come in very different circumstances, but for the same purpose: to stand with this community and I thank you.

Jeremy Leibler is the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA). This is the text of his speech at “An Evening of Light and Solidarity” in Sydney on Monday night with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.