Rawan Osman in conversation

WIZO Victoria recently held its annual gala appeal featuring keynote speaker Syrian-born political activist and influencer Rawan Osman in conversation with Jewish-Australian advocate Marnie Perlstein. Over 500 members of the community attended the event in support of WIZO’s Return to the North campaign which funds essential programs delivered through the WIZO Kiryat Yam community centre and other WIZO community centres across northern Israel.

The gala, themed “Beyond Brave”, which has brought Osman to Australia for the first time, explored the bravery of the two featured women, Osman and Perlstein, who fight for truth every day through their activism and advocacy work. Osman’s opening remarks on the night praised the organisation and the Jewish people for their dedication to building Israel.

“This organisation is proof of the power of women and what they are capable of. WIZO played an instrumental role in building Israel. Ordinary women with resolve and agency assumed responsibility and helped this dream come true,” she said.

“Some harness hope, others give in to despair. Some build, some destroy. Against all odds, the Jews, men and women, hand in hand, built Israel.”

Following her opening speech, Osman sat down with Perlstein for an in-depth conversation before an attentive audience.

Osman was born in Syria to a Sunni Muslim father and Shiite Muslim mother and grew up hating Jews, Israel and Zionists. It wasn’t until she left Syria and found herself living in the Jewish quarter in Strasbourg, France, that she first encountered Jews and began to question her beliefs about Jews and Israel.

“The collision between what I had been taught and what I was seeing in front of me was so violent, so intellectually embarrassing that I had no honest choice but to start over – to read, to ask, to dismantle by group everything I had been given as truth,” she said.

After discussing the experiences that inspired Osman’s shift from antisemite to vocal Israel advocate, Perlstein turned to a more pressing topic – fighting the anti-Israel narrative. Addressing the current situation, Osman was clear in her response that the Jewish people are “outnumbered” with “Israel having more enemies than ever”, yet she was hopeful that many people are already waking up to the truth.

“There are many people who broke out of that prison where they are not allowed to ever speak to a Jew, and they make a first encounter and they change their minds … A lot of people are awake, especially in the Middle East.”

Osman currently lives in Germany with her son and is undergoing an Orthodox Jewish conversion. When questioned about her choice to convert, Osman recounted the moment she realised she was Jewish.

“I couldn’t shake off that feeling that I was Jewish, and I was questioning my sanity … All those coincidences that took me from Lebanon to Syria to Saudi Arabia to Qatar, France to Cyprus to Germany, and now to Israel, were the pebbles Hashem used to show me the way back home.”