Two requests of the United Nations

It is a great personal honour to be here. But I am not here in a personal capacity. I am here as the chief executive of the organisation that represents the Jewish community of Australia. A proud and formidable community that is as old as any non-Indigenous Australian community – a community that was just ravaged by the worst terrorist attack in Australian history.

An attack that took 15 beautiful souls who had come to Bondi Beach, perhaps the happiest place on Earth, to mark the first night of the Jewish festival of lights. They were chosen to die only because they were Jewish. That was their crime.

I have often wondered what the killers thought they were achieving. Did they think that by slaughtering these people with high-powered hunting rifles they would hasten the coming of the caliphate? That in our grief and torment we would abandon our faith or turn our backs on Israel? They clearly do not understand who the Jewish people are or how we think and act. And they do not understand how we have always responded to persecution. They have made us more devoted to being Jewish, more proud of our Zionism, more determined to live as Australians.

All these killers achieved was to force a father to live through the torture of watching his daughter gasp for air in his helpless arms in her final moments. They forced elderly women to live out their remaining years without their husbands. Left children without fathers. And my community without its most adored rabbi.

These weeks after the massacre have led to much contemplation. The Prime Minister publicly apologised for failing to keep my community safe. The country is holding a Royal Commission into antisemitism, considering how such a great country got to so low a point and how a father and a son were radicalised to the extent of viewing Jews as vermin fit only for destruction.