In the Media

Canberra Times – 5 February 2025

Last Wednesday night, as the news broke of a massive terror attack threat on the Sydney Jewish community, with a synagogue the likely target, I began to feel real fear in a way I have never felt before.

I have certainly been afraid before – for instance, growing up in Johannesburg and being surrounded by a pack of kids because I was a “bloody Jew”, being jostled and intimidated by a group of young men on the streets of Melbourne city in the 1990s because of my kippah (skull cap). Or feeling it vicariously when hearing about the terror of my mother and her siblings being chased through her Lithuanian neighbourhood by a group of pursuers who threw acid at a seven-year-old Jewish girl who couldn’t run fast enough to escape them. But I was always able to find comfort in the strong “Never Again” reassurance, the soothing consolation of living in a free society with the full protection of the law. Today, that feels like false comfort – and I fear for my family, my community, my people, the Australian nation.

For the past 15 months the Jews of Australia have been on a rollercoaster of emotions from disbelief to shock and anger, at the naked and brazen antisemitism on our streets, the attacks on our sacred places, the unending sewer of anti-Jewish hatred racing and raging like a black and muddy river through our social media. We are severely shaken and ineffably saddened that this land of long dreams has become a country and landscape of nightmares for our Holocaust survivors, for our kids who wonder why they have armed guards and graffiti at their school gates, security barriers outside their synagogues. My family in Israel – a country at war – is worried for our safety.

It apparently took the burning of a synagogue and the attack on a childcare centre to wake our Federal Government to the wildfire that has been burning, virtually unchecked for well over a year. You could say that the chilling news on Wednesday night was as predictable as it was terrifying, but at least there is some concerted action now.

As a liberal “lefty” rabbi, I have always vigorously defended freedom of speech and the right to protest as fundamental for our democratic country. Yet after months of relentless protests in our CBDs, often with vile and violent signage and hateful speech directed at Israel and “Zionists”, meaning the overwhelming majority of Australian Jews who identify with Israel (even if a proportion are critical of its policies and devastated by the human cost of the terrible war), I say enough is enough.

Even if many protesters are noble in their motivation, they need to take a long, hard look at the unintended consequences of their outrage on the social cohesion of our country and the safety and welfare of their fellow Jewish citizens. I don’t dare to go to the city and certainly in the vicinity of the protests on a Sunday because I know my kippah could attract the aggression of some individuals. This has been the experience of a good number of Jewish men both in the city and on university campuses.

The anti-Jewish hatred in our country may not be a direct result of the protests, but they do feed into the escalation and normalisation of antisemitism. It’s time for a cease-fire in our cities – if they can do it in Israel and Gaza surely we can do it here – and not only in our CBDs but in our synagogues and mosques.

Despite the fracturing of Jewish-Muslim relationships in Australia (as across the world), I still believe that we the children of Abraham can and must find a way of living in harmony with one another. And I know I am not alone and that some moderate Muslim leaders and imams, like their Jewish counterparts across this country, are working to achieve this. I just wish I could say with conviction that this is what is being conveyed at Friday prayers and in Muslim schools as I know it is at many Shabbat services and Jewish schools.

I am afraid, but I am neither intimidated nor in despair. I still hope for a sense of solidarity and allyship with the overwhelming majority of Australians who are worried about the future of our proud multicultural country. Join with us – express and articulate your support in public, in your social media feeds and social circles, your places of worship, and to your politicians.

Perhaps we can even link arms and march across our city streets against antisemitism – political, communal and diverse religious leaders – as 1.7 million people did in the Paris Solidarity March in 2015, following the murderous attacks on a Kosher supermarket and the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo there.

But if not, at the very least, can we not today agree to a ceasefire in our harsh interactions and pronouncements on the streets and in the media to avoid making things worse? Let’s make them better by our compassion, our understanding and our respect.

Rabbi Ralph Genende OAM is the Interfaith and Community Liaison at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.