A day or two after the Bondi murders, my other half suggested I get in touch with an old friend, a former workmate who happens to be Jewish, and who now lives in Melbourne.
For reasons that may become apparent I resisted the idea. But over the years my old friend and her partner had become family friends, so my wife, who’s smarter than me, sent the email herself. As soon as the friend replied, I knew why we were getting in touch.
“We are feeling very vulnerable at the moment,” she said. At a synagogue service attended by about 1000 people, she heard the congregation boo Victoria’s premier, Jacinta Allan. “I was quite shocked but I guess that was the depth of the feeling of those people there.”
She concluded: “You are good friends and it’s so good to hear from you. I hope you are both keeping well … We have fond memories of meals together… [We] wish you and your families a very happy and festive Christmas and a wonderful New Year.”
Booing Jacinta Allan at that synagogue, or angrily rebuking the PM on camera as former treasurer Josh Frydenberg did last week, is pointless and counter-productive. But as my friend said, it showed the depth of feeling.
Readers probably know all this but it bears repeating. After centuries of persecution in countless communities and many countries, a victorious Britain declared in the wake of World War I that Jewish people should have a homeland in the eastern Mediterranean. That sparked a steady movement of Jews from across the region to the holy lands of their scriptures, a movement that became a flood after the Nazi Holocaust.
But there was an awkward problem: those lands were populated mainly by Arabic Moslems. The 1947 UN partition of British Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab territories brought more strife. And it only got worse.
Gaza is recognised internationally as Palestinian territory along with the much larger West Bank, from which it’s separated by Israeli land. But after rejecting the UN partition and Israel’s right to exist, along with numerous failed wars, skirmishes and missile attacks, its people have been unable to form a viable state – while with US support their enemy, Israel, has proven both viable and potent.
Antisemitism is an odd word, based on “semite”, a name given to non-Christian Europeans (mainly Jews) to distinguish them from a supposedly superior European racial type. That stupid and baseless belief should have died with Adolf Hitler, but it’s taken on a whole new life since Israel came into being, turbocharged by the Hamas assault on Israelis in October 2023.
Israel’s creation changed everything for the world’s Jews. Whether or not they live there, it symbolises a security that was patently absent in the appalling Nazi years. Seeing the meaning of antisemitism extended to encompass opposition to Israel and its government is no surprise. But it’s wrong. One is racial; the other political.
Besides bringing catastrophe to their own people, Hamas’s 2023 assault strengthened extremist Zionist and ultra-nationalist causes in Israel’s governing coalition and took attention away from corruption charges against prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. So he’s in no hurry for a ceasefire.
The wrecking of Gaza continues apace. Homes and workplaces have been levelled and independent sources put the number of people killed in the territory at over 70,000, an average of nearly 90 dead for every day of the two-plus years of war. For each individual Israeli killed or kidnapped on that day in 2023, well over 50 Palestinians have died.
These are shocking figures. Some leading Australian Jews have expressed discomfort about them, and about Netanyahu’s repeated charges of antisemitism against the Australian government.
It is perfectly consistent to oppose the way the Israeli government has conducted its war on Gaza while also mourning the loss of those defenceless people at Bondi, killed celebrating their Festival of Lights simply because they were Jews. Seen in that light those killings are antisemitic, no question, but the event is coloured by opposition to the Israeli state’s overreach in Gaza and Australia’s support of a Palestinian state, neither of which is antisemitic.
I watched the telecast of the beachside memorial service on Sunday to celebrate the great good that Jewish people bring to this country, and was moved by the spectacle and the things said – except for two things: partisan statements and crowd jeering. When we need unity, they divide.
Statements by Jewish leaders attacking the prime minister were unfair on the man. Though he was present at the service, he did not attend victims’ funerals because he wasn’t invited. It’s simply wrong to then turn around, as one rabbi did, and attack him for not turning up.
Putting all that aside, my Melbourne friend’s fond memories of our times together are mutual, and we’ve agreed to meet next year. I’m confident our old friendship will withstand whatever the world throws at it.