Honours Club session focuses on Royal Commission

On Wednesday June 24, the Australian Friends of the Hebrew University’s Honours Club hosted a discussion and Q&A with Dor Foundation CEO Tahli Blicblau about the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

Drawing on her background in strategic intelligence and law enforcement, Blicblau explained that combating antisemitism requires more than responding to individual incidents.

Instead, she argued, Australia must address the systems, technologies and social conditions that enable hatred to flourish.

“When you look at antisemitism only as an outcome, such as the burning of a synagogue or graffiti on a school, it’s already too late to intervene,” she said.

“We need to understand the systems that allow these things to happen if we want to create meaningful change.”

Blicblau said the long term vision of the Dor Foundation, established in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, is to build a safer future for Australian Jews, while strengthening Australian democracy.

She outlined the foundation’s evidence-based approach to measuring antisemitism, and how it has found that online discourse has become particularly pervasive, and public attitudes towards the Jewish community have deteriorated, especially among younger Australians.

Blicblau emphasised that the Royal Commission offers a unique opportunity to reverse these trends.

She described it as the highest form of public inquiry, capable of gathering evidence on a scale never before seen in Australia, and was reassured by more than 20,000 written submissions being made.

Blicblau said that the Royal Commission is about far more than the Jewish community alone.

She argued that the same forces driving antisemitism also threaten Australia’s broader social cohesion. Despite the challenges, her message remained optimistic.

She pointed to examples of Australians rejecting hatred, including the widespread community response following antisemitic abuse at a junior netball match in Maroubra where sporting organisations, families and officials united quickly and publicly to condemn the behaviour.

“History tells us we are never going to eliminate antisemitism completely,” she said. “But if we can push it back to the radical fringes, where it is seen as shameful and unacceptable, then we have achieved something enormously important.”