Our local war is just beginning
"The Jewish people have been dealt a trauma that will live with each of us for the rest of our days."
As we gather together as a national roof body with leaders around Australia, we know things are not normal. And we must not allow ourselves to think that they are, no matter how much we hope they could be.
Today nearly two hundred Israelis are still enduring the horror of captivity by a band of sadistic killers. Communities that for decades thrived are now permanently disfigured, their names, Kfar Aza, Be’eri, Re’im, will forever be cloaked in that tragic aura like so many shtetls in Poland and Lithuania. This resonates with the Jewish people all over the world. These were sites of mass murder, of trauma and of hatred visited on people just because they were Jewish. Many of those attacked, killed or taken hostage were peace activists. Many thought they could have warm relations with their close neighbours and workers in Gaza and they could live together as peaceful neighbours, but that was not to be. That is our reality.
The Jewish people have been dealt a trauma that will live with each of us for the rest of our days. We will never forget it. We will never forgive it. It will form a part of our commemorations and our solemn reflections. October 7 was not just our 9/11 but another Kristallnacht – marking a turning point in the life of the Jewish world.
And it is not over. The captivity for most endures. Hamas still lives and is actually being praised by journalists, the Greens and Australian schoolchildren. The heroic soldiers of the IDF still manoeuvre amid the ambushes, the snipers, the tunnels and the boobytraps, taking the criticism of the international community as well as the bullets of terrorists just as Hamas and its masters planned.
And our local war is just beginning. We must understand that we, as the representatives of this community, have obligations. We are here to fight for the rights and freedoms of our people, to defend Israel from disinformation and slander that ultimately is paid for in Jewish lives. We are here to educate and advocate. We are here to ensure that Jews in this country will never have to cower, will never have to flee, will never have to hide who we are and can live full and free Jewish lives as part of a peaceful and accepting multicultural society.
The changes in attitudes that we are experiencing actually happen both slowly and quickly. We have seen a gradual but meaningful rise in antisemitism incident statistics over the years; we have been conscious of intimidation and incidents on university campuses; we have seen the antisemitic speakers who have been hosted and praised; we have seen festival boycotts and many media commentators extremely critical of Israel and Jews – but that all seemed relatively acceptable. And then with the events of October 7, we have seen how quickly hatred has been exposed and we have progressed from vicious chants on the steps of the Opera House, even before Israel went into Gaza, to incendiary sermons by clerics, to violence, intimidation and threats, to vandalism of Jewish businesses, to street abuse, to school students chanting for the destruction of Israel.
This explosion of hatred is shocking. To me this has overtones of the experience of German Jews in 1937-38. The propaganda war being waged against Israel and Jews in Australia has become intense: only this last Friday a schoolgirl standing beside the deputy leader of the Greens held a placard saying, “keep the world clean by discarding Israel into a garbage bin” and others exhorting “support Hamas”. Our governments to date seem almost impotent to stop this kind of behaviour, particularly where some media is complicit in their overt and influential bias against Israel.
The challenges we face include security concerns for all community institutions and businesses, boycotts, disinformation online, uninformed activism among teachers and academics and some journalists, and overt hostility from some human rights organisations and the Greens. All this resulting in a community that is shocked, upset, angry and fearful.
I firmly believe that in the four years of my presidency we have taken enormous strides to ensure ECAJ could rise to these times. We have developed a powerful media capability, growing strength in social media advocacy, critical relationships in government, young advocates and activists through the Jewish Advocacy and Leadership Corps, a depth of knowledge of the issues that no other organisation possesses and perhaps most of all, a committed, united and highly functioning team of office bearers and professionals with the tenacity and ability to advocate and represent our community in its darkest hour. We have meticulously built these building blocks of capability.
I am therefore hopeful that with the ongoing support of the community we are match fit. What we urgently need is strong and decisive leadership from the federal government to take action on many fronts, but urgently to strongly, publicly and unequivocally condemn what is happening in Australia before it spins out of control.
Jillian Segal is the outgoing president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. This is an edited extract of her speech at the ECAJ AGM held on Sunday, November 26.
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