Educating for impact in the fight against hate

In the evening of December 14, 2025, our family was celebrating the first night of Chanukah with our two beautiful little granddaughters aged two and five.

As we were enjoying the warmth of a family gathering our phones began to start pinging. We furtively scanned the messages and news streams steadily unveiling the full horror of Bondi. We strove to maintain a happy demeanour for the children while my son went into another room to answer queries for our welfare and seek reassurance of the safety of family and friends.

It was a shock but I can’t say it was a surprise given the multiple times many of us had warned of the inevitable trajectory the country has been on since October 7, 2023.

Afterwards I asked myself, how can I explain such incomprehensible antisemitic hate and violence to the children when they ask me why do they hate us, Saba?

More viscerally I wondered how I could protect them, with the heartrending images of little Matilda before my eyes. The answer for me has always been that you take up the fight head on. It has never worked out well for the Jewish people to simply hope things will blow over. That begs the question as to what is the best way to fight back. When it comes to the battle space of the mental landscape “education” always jumps to mind.

Education is a lifelong process but the most impactful life shaping period is early childhood. Aristotle’s writings on education are paraphrased with the line, “give me the child until the age of seven and I will give you the adult”. If we are to inoculate Australian children against antisemitism, and equip them with the means to evaluate and sift social media, we must lay an early foundation and continue to build through the process.

This is why I have passionately embraced the National Holocaust Memorial and Education Centre (NHMEC) project in Canberra that began as an initiative of former treasurer Josh Frydenberg. This project will take the proven success of the “Hidden” exhibition at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum, which caters for children aged 11-14, calling on the same experts. Of the 165,000 school children who visit Canberra every year, year 6-9 children make up 89 per cent. We will cater for the year 10-12 students in a separate process. That 89 per cent will be the beneficiaries of a team steeped in the science of early education, wellbeing and positive psychology.

Through the NHMEC we will be able to engage with every school in the country. In partnership with the University of Canberra, we aim to pioneer a model of student teacher engagement that could be extended nationally, generating effective crafters of social cohesion and ambassadors against antisemitism. No other location in Australia offers this potential due to the unique nature of Canberra in the education tourism landscape.

Establishing the NHMEC will also address the glaring anomaly that Canberra is the only capital in the Western world that does not have a Holocaust related facility. A related aim will be to fight the inversion and denial of the Holocaust story and through the introductory component of the visit that exposes visitors to Jewish culture, we intend to demystify Jews, set the foundation for empathy and generate a wider understanding of the connection of Jews to the land of Israel. It is this vision that has won the support of our project ambassadors, Julian Leeser and Bill Shorten and the commitment of the federal government as a key component in the fight against antisemitism.

We have all understandably been focused on giving all the support we can to Israel, where many of us have families who have endured so much over these last few years. I have an abiding passion in this regard based on generations of family experience in Eretz Israel and our own beloved family members living there. There is another aspect to this fight, however, that relates to securing Israel’s standing amongst liberal democracies and ensuring the bipartisan support Israel needs from a country like Australia. For me, personally, establishing the NHMEC will be my tribute to the courageous men and women in Israel who sacrificed their lives in confronting evil unflinchingly. We are also now faced with the need to defend our own community against the spread of a violence that knows no limits. It has fallen to this generation of community leaders to take this challenge head on.

It is unacceptable to live with an endless cycle of threat and violence. We need to create a new reality where Jewish schools and facilities operate no differently from any other community. That is the Australia I want my granddaughters to grow up in. I refuse to believe this cannot be achieved. Please join us in this endeavour. As Rabbi Sacks of blessed memory said, “To defend a country, you need an army. But to defend an identity, you need a school.”

Dr Mike Kelly is an adjunct professor at the National Security Institute at the University of Canberra.

More info: nationalholocaustmemorialeducationcentre.com