Is Australia really resigned to this?

The attack on Jews at prayer in Manchester on Yom Kippur – the holiest day in the Jewish calendar – will echo far beyond Britain.

It is being felt in every Jewish home across the world, including here in Australia. Because every conversation since – every single one – carries the same fearful refrain: “It’s only a matter of time here.”

That sentence has become the quiet soundtrack of Jewish life in the Diaspora.
It is whispered in shule foyers, discussed around dinner tables, murmured among parents watching their children walk to Jewish schools with security guards on the gates.

Is Australia really resigned to this? Have we reached the point where violence against Jews has become the next expected headline – a grim inevitability we are too weary or too timid to resist? If so, what does that say about us as a nation? About our civic courage, our decency, our willingness to defend the very values on which modern Australia was built?

How could we, of all societies, have allowed ourselves to come to this place – a place where the oldest hatred in history once again prowls our campuses, our media, and our streets?