We have stepped through the looking glass
We are the ones being moved on, we are the ones being forced to stay away, we are the ones being treated like the villains – and the people causing the problems are getting away with it.
Join me on a journey back in time. The year is 1991 and the movie everyone is talking about is JFK, in which Kevin Costner seeks to uncover the truth behind the Kennedy assassination.
As he probes deeper, it becomes increasingly evident that the man believed to have fired the fatal shot, Lee Harvey Oswald, could not have been the killer. In fact, there was a whole array of people involved, including the mob, the military, CIA, FBI, Cuban nationalists and members of the US government.
Everything everyone had been led to believe was false, reality has been turned on its head. Laying out the conspiracy and inspired by Alice in Wonderland, Garrison utters the iconic phrase, “We’re through the looking glass here people.”
Over the past nine months, that phrase has often popped into my mind.
Immediately after October 7, outside the Sydney Opera House, hordes of anti-Israel activists are letting off flares, singing, dancing and chanting a range of antisemitic slogans. Never mind the moral repugnance of people glorifying the deaths of hundreds of men, women, children and babies, which in itself is beyond belief, the fact that this was allowed to take place with no repercussions was astounding.
And the major controversy from this? Not that there was a display of hate but a question mark over the chants, as if “Where’s the Jews?” and “F**k the Jews” are somehow justifiable, but “Gas the Jews” oversteps the mark.
A few weeks later in Melbourne there’s the blaze at Burgertory. Protesters arrive a few hours later at Princes Park, right outside Central Shule. But rather than the protesters being moved on, it’s the shule that is evacuated.
In the weeks and months that follow, Jewish schoolkids are told to cover the badges on their uniforms. We see footage of a man wearing a kippah in Melbourne and a non-Jewish man waving an Israeli flag in Sydney being dragged away by police for fear they might upset pro-Palestinians.
We hear of Jewish events and Jewish performers being cancelled, we meet Jews forced to move home because antisemitic neighbours are making their life hell, and we shake our heads in disbelief as Jewish students are afraid to go to university where they’re harassed and intimidated, not just by activists in the encampments but also by professors in the lecture halls.
All the time, we are the ones being moved on, we are the ones being forced to stay away, we are the ones being treated like the villains – and the people causing the problems are getting away with it.
We’re through the looking glass here people.
In recent years, our federal and state governments have adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Among its examples are “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” and “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
But how many times over the past nine months have you heard Israel being referred to as racist or guilty of apartheid? How many times have you heard the slogan “from the river to the sea”? At protests we see Nazi banners with the swastika replaced by the Magen David.
Clear examples of antisemitism, according to the definition adopted by our governments. But if no action is taken, then the public has no moral compass.
And when individuals or organisations representing the pro-Palestinian narrative still receive government funding or face no repercussions for sowing division and hate, multiculturalism is likewise sacrificed on the altar of political expedience.
There is a clear and present danger here. We’ve seen what happened in the UK election when Labour lost seats to candidates who stood on anti-Israel platforms, decrying a vote for Labour as a vote for genocide.
With talk of a Muslim bloc over here, with at least one MP deserting the ALP just last month and with the Greens as fellow travellers, votes and preferences have to be carefully weighed and measured when we next head to the polls.
I started this piece reminiscing about 1991. JFK though isn’t the only thing I remember. It was also the year of the First Gulf War when Saddam Hussein fired scud missiles at Israel – even though Israel was not involved in the conflict.
In the 33 years since, missiles have been fired at Israel on an almost daily basis. And like Saddam Hussein, there are those who call for its destruction.
The sad truth today is that we hear those calls not just from Israel’s neighbours, we hear them from our own neighbours – in our CBDs, in the media and in schools and universities.
In Alice Through the Looking Glass, one of the characters the eponymous heroine encounters is Humpty Dumpty. Those versed in classic nursery rhymes will recall Humpty’s fate.
It pains me to say that for the past nine months, our community has stepped through the looking glass. Only it’s not Humpty we’re facing, it’s our multicultural society.
And, like Humpty, that has had a great fall and shattered. And having failed to take appropriate action in time, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will not be able to put that together again.
Zeddy Lawrence is the executive director of Zionism Victoria.
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