Sheina Gutnick takes advocacy to US

Sheina Gutnick was recently in the US to talk about her advocacy in the aftermath of her father Reuven Morrison being killed during the Bondi massacre, while fighting back against a terrorist.

During her visit, Gutnick met with the Anti-Defamation League, the New York Police Department, New York City Council members, Jewish Community Centres, Nova survivor Natalie Sanadaji, as well as holding a meeting at the United Nations with Australian and Israeli delegations, including Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon.

Discussing her visit with The AJN, Gutnick said she was sharing with American audiences what’s happening within Australia politically including the rise of antisemitism.

“We thought that Bondi would be the stopper in the door, but unfortunately it hasn’t been. And just reflecting on what’s going on, on the other side of the world in New York, how similar things are unravelling over there,” she said.

“And I remember having a conversation with my husband, and this was pre-Bondi, and I asked him, are we the Jews in 1930s Germany that didn’t pack their bags early enough? And we realised this isn’t a situation where we pack our bags and run because this is a global issue happening everywhere. There’s nowhere to run. It is work that has got to be done in every single corner of the world.”

Among her most meaningful US meetings was with Isla and Lisa Klinghoffer, the daughters of Leon Klinghoffer, who was killed by Palestinian terrorists aboard a cruise ship in 1985.

“It was incredible sitting across from them, who are both incredible women and massive advocates and instituted many sort of terrorism laws, legislations… here they are, 40 years on, and you realise that the pain doesn’t get any less from the first day that it happened, but you still have to live your life and grow and have families,” she said.

Gutnick said one of the key lessons from her US trip was the need for a shift in approach. “I think we need to be much more proactive than reactive is something that I’ve come to learn very quickly,” she said.

“Bondi happened and now we have a Royal Commission. We have so many things that we’re running to put into place, but this is all happening out of a space of being very much reactive to the worst day that we could have ever have imagined becoming a reality.  But at same time, that reality wasn’t a shock to all of us because we were calling out for the last two and a half years since the 9th of October protests outside the Opera House that we saw sort of the signs of where this is leading and nothing was being done. And it was only after Bondi where all of a sudden everyone’s waking up.  So, one thing I’ve come to learn is that it’s not enough to just do things post-hate. We need to step up.

“It’s been horrifying to read the reports from ASIO saying that… they don’t feel like they have the capacity or the resources to protect us from a terrorist threat level because it’s so absolutely high. It’s getting your resources together because this is a reality and we’ve already faced it,” she said.

Gutnick, who was among the most prominent advocates for a Royal Commission into antisemitism and appeared on the front page of The Australian, welcomed the hearings.

“I think it’s definitely fantastic that they’re looking into this sort of explosion of what’s going on in terms of Meta and social media and the antisemitic rhetoric that’s being fed,” she said, adding that she hoped the Royal Commission would also examine the media’s role in spreading misinformation and anti-Jewish tropes.

“We need to stop calling it antisemitism. We need to call it Jew hatred. Because essentially that is a much better term for what is going on,” she added.

Gutnick now works as a public affairs advocate for the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), an international organisation that arranged her US meetings. CAM is planning a national summit on antisemitism and social cohesion for the end of the year in Sydney, in conjunction with Waverley Council.

“I have found while working with the Combat Antisemitism Movement is how effective they are because they’re very much grassroots, feet on the ground, working with the policy makers that understands what’s happening within each council,” she said.

Gutnick is also writing a book in tribute to her father. “I’ve been approached by a publisher and it’s very early days in terms of putting an autobiography together on my dad’s wildlife, and a title I just keep coming back to as ‘Rebel’ because he had no rules in his book of life.”

She recalled a kiddush held recently at Chabad Bondi to mark her father’s Hebrew birthday. “It was so phenomenal having strangers come up to me and share with me in tears in their eyes essentially how much they miss my dad… how my dad assisted them, helped them in some way that sort of changed the trajectory of their life in that sense. My father was very humble in the sense of how he helped people. You definitely wouldn’t know that based on his personality. He would come into a room… and his personality would fill every corner with his joyous presence. But when it came to actually assisting those, he always did it in such a way that no one felt necessarily that they were indebted to him.”

“He was just so kind and so giving. I’d love the world to know that. And when talking about this book, I’d love to focus on his history on making a life for himself in Australia after coming as a 14-year-old boy from the Soviet Union,” she said.

Gutnick shared her parents’ 12-year struggle with infertility led them to observant Judaism. “They wrote in for a blessing and my Dad got an answer that he was to join the covenant of Abraham and my mother was to attend the mikvah, the ritual bath house. And ten months later, against every medical prediction I was born, so then my dad did an absolute 180… he took on the life of a follower of the Lubavitcher Rebbe as his number one priority.”

She said her father’s guiding philosophy – to make the “world a better place, have pride, joy, and resilience as a Jew” – is one she now tries to live by, and one he embodied in his final moments at Bondi.

“I think the world got to see it in the last ten minutes of his life where he gave everything up for his community. He saw danger came to Bondi. He saw the terrorists there and you could see it in his body language. He was saying, how dare you? Not on my watch. And he physically placed himself between his family, friends and community members and the terrorists and it cost him his life, unfortunately.”

Morrison was also instrumental in developing the Chabad of Bondi. “For years and years my dad actually fought Waverly Council to attain permits and permission in building, had a dream to the Chabad Bondi community, a beautiful community centre with a function hall, a synagogue, a space for essentially the community to come and feel at home,” Gutnick said, crediting his business partners and the late Rabbi Eli Schlanger who was also killed during the Bondi massacre, among others, for helping bring the vision to life.

Asked what her father would make of her advocacy since his death, Gutnick said: “He would just say, that’s my daughter. He would just tell me, keep going. But at the same time, you know, I’ve been asked, do you think he’s proud? And I said, absolutely. But instead of saying, I’m so proud, he would say, I expect nothing less of my daughter.”