Aghion represents Australia at global antisemitism summit

Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Daniel Aghion represented Australia at the Anti-Defamation League’s Never Is Now summit in New York this week, where he joined leaders from the world’s seven largest Jewish diaspora communities to address the global rise in antisemitism.

Aghion said he had the honour of representing the community on the world Jewish stage, participating as a panelist in discussions focusing on antisemitism and communal responses.

“While Australia may have suffered the worst antisemitic attack in the diaspora since the start of the 7 October war, tragically, it was far from an isolated event,” Aghion said. “Jewish communities around the world are seeing an unprecedented rise in antisemitism and its normalisation.”

Aghion said escalating antisemitism had topped discussions at meetings of the J7 Large Jewish Communities Task Force Against Antisemitism. He said he held hands with leaders of other communities who had suffered antisemitic attacks over the past year in Jackson, Boulder, Michigan and Manchester to commemorate victims and survivors of attacks there and at Bondi Beach.

“We are not alone, and we cannot let our brothers and sisters overseas be alone,” he said.

On the sidelines of the conference, Aghion and fellow J7 leaders met with UN permanent representatives from Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States on Wednesday to urge urgent action to address antisemitism.

The J7 issued a joint statement calling on governments and the UN to do more to combat antisemitism and the anti-Israel bias that often legitimises it.

“Our communities are in the midst of a global antisemitism crisis, with attacks on synagogues in North America and Europe just over the past week,” the statement said. “While each community faces distinct circumstances, what begins in one country invariably appears where other Jews live.”

The statement said antisemitism was globalised through copycats, coordinated campaigns and state actors such as Iran, “which deliberately internationalises hate, extremism and terrorism, aimed specifically at Jewish communities”.

“Indeed, the Iranian regime has already targeted our communities, from the Buenos Aires AMIA bombing in 1994 to as recently as the December 2024 attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, Australia,” it stated.

The J7 leaders called on UN permanent representatives to work for accountability by UN officials and mandate holders for antisemitic conduct, rhetoric and bias, and to ensure UN resources do not support or legitimise extremism, terrorism or antisemitism.

They also urged the representatives to ensure the next UN secretary-general consider the crisis of antisemitism and take steps to address it within the UN.

The meeting came in the wake of violent antisemitic attacks around the world, including the massacre of 15 people at Bondi Beach during a Chanukah celebration, targeted shooting attacks on synagogues in Canada, the stabbing of two people outside a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur, and explosive devices set off at two Jewish institutions in the Netherlands.

J7 leaders also met with the US Conference of Presidents to discuss how UN processes could be reformed to remove anti-Zionism and Israel-hatred.

The J7 was founded in 2023, bringing together Jewish community leadership from the seven largest Jewish diaspora communities to collaborate in assessing and responding to global antisemitism. It met in Australia in early December last year, just prior to the Bondi Beach attack.