Mizrachi exec urges election participation
'If you are a Zionist, join in, because I'd rather have you inside the tent than outside,' says Rabbi Doron Perez.
In a whirlwind five-day speaking tour of Sydney, Melbourne and Perth shules last week, executive chair of the Mizrachi World Movement, Rabbi Doron Perez, spoke with love and pain about the loss of his son Daniel while serving in the IDF on October 7 and urged all Australian Jews to participate in “the most important election that many of you may never have heard of”.
Orthodox Israel Coalition Mizrachi is one of five choices that Australian Jews have in the World Zionist Congress (WZC) elections – which Australians can vote in for the first time in decades, until this Sunday.
“This time there are open [WZC] elections everywhere in the Diaspora and I think that’s a very positive thing,” Perez said at a talk at Kehillat Masada, spruiking the Mizrachi ticket’s potential to deliver on its core value that “Zionism and Judaism go together”.
But his main message was the importance of as many Australian Jews casting a vote as possible, “for the ideology you believe in”.
“If you are a Zionist, join in, because I’d rather have you inside the tent than outside,” Perez said.
He lamented the morphing of antisemitism since October 7, from hatred of Judaism or hatred for Jewish people, to anti-Zionism, which is now “the greatest challenge we have today”.
“All they’ve done is swap the word Jews for Zionists and Jew hatred for Jewish state hatred and so our response to anti-Zionism has to be Zionism.”
Perez also reflected upon October 7 being the worst day in Jewish history since the Shoah, but also a day in which extraordinary acts of heroism occurred, with thousands of Israelis risking their lives to save others.
His sons Yonatan and Daniel both served in the IDF that day – the former was shot in the leg and survived but the latter, aged 22, was killed while protecting Nahal Oz from attack and his body remains in Gaza.
“Nobody should ever be okay
if they have lost a child, but we need not be defined only by our pain and our challenges,” he reflected.
“We don’t have to ever get over it, but we have to get on with it.”
That message struck a particular chord with Caulfield Shule’s Rabbi Daniel Rabin, who thanked Perez “for showing us what real leadership and courage look like”.