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.

And I ask you to contemplate too. Have you done all you can to drive this evil from the world?

What would the victims say if they were sitting here with us? We need not contemplate. I know the answer. With several of the dead – Tibor Weitzen, Alex Kleytman, Reuven Morrison and my rabbi, Eli Schlanger, we discussed international affairs, Israel, the UN on a regular basis.

I know what they thought of the Secretary-General telling the world that the abduction, rape, torture and unsparing slaughter of Jews on October 7 “didn’t happen in a vacuum”. I know what they thought of the suggestion that antisemitism is driven by the conduct of the Jewish state, a vapid modernisation of the old standard that Jews bring hatred upon themselves.

In truth, they held this institution in contempt, not only for the harm it does but even more so, for the good it could do, but does not.

I know also what Israel meant to them. What it means to Jewish people throughout the world. To many here, it is a nuisance, a tiny country that is a little too assertive, too pushy. To us, it is not a distant country. It is an idea. The idea of the restoration of Jewish self-determination to the lands in which we first dwelled.

It means Jewish freedom, Jewish self-reliance and the innate love and connection Jewish people, like any scattered minority, feel for one another regardless of the languages we speak or the countries in which we live.

So when it is wronged, when it is attacked, when member states here claim that the country is not really there, it is an attack on every Jew. And when the organs of the United Nations indulge this kind of prejudice, it sends a message to those who wish us harm, that they are on a righteous path. To embolden the hateful is to be a participant in their ultimate deeds.

I ask you to also contemplate what we can do to ensure the cruel deaths of those 15 innocent people were not in vain. We need not speculate because they lived their lives with such clarity of values that there can be no confusing what they would say in a given moment. And their surviving families have spoken also. They seek no vengeance. They want only to replenish the good that was taken from the world on that catastrophic day.

In the wake of the massacre, something extraordinary happened. The nation stood together in love and unity. Thousands of Australians lit candles to replicate the lights of Chanukah. The word, “mitzvah”, a Hebrew word meaning a kind deed, entered the Australian lexicon. The nation seemed to finally see the Jewish community for who we are, for the eternal values by which we live.

And so, in that spirit, I make two very specific requests of you.

I ask that December 14, the day of our catastrophe, be recognised as World Mitzvah Day. A day where all the peoples of the world are encouraged to do a single deed of kindness. And I ask that for the first night of Chanukah this year, a menorah be erected outside this place, for all the world to see, and for you all to be present, together with the families of the 15 that were murdered, as we light the lights that no evil could suppress.

Alex Ryvchin is co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ). This is an edited version of a speech he delivered to the UN Alliance of Civilisations (UNAOC) in New York City last week.