‘Too ugly to imagine’: Australia can’t allow ancient hatreds, like antisemitism, to fester

The US journalist Bret Stephens was enjoying a stroll along a Sydney beachside a few months ago when he came upon some stickers that had nothing to do with Australia. “I saw the same anti-Israel, antisemitic stickers you’d find on campuses at Berkeley or Columbia,” two of the US universities that hosted the most vitriolic pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protest encampments.

“So it’s a universal phenomenon,” he tells me. “Vehement Israel haters in the US are sometimes asked, ‘Why don’t you protest against the atrocities going on in Myanmar or Sudan or elsewhere?’”

Illustration by Simon LetchCredit:

The answer they’ll give is that the US gives expensive military support to Israel and the anti-Israel activists don’t want their tax dollars to be part of it, says Stephens.

“As far as I know, the Australian military is not subsidising anything in Israel” – correct – “yet you have the same kind of propaganda here. That exposes the antisemitism at the heart of the movement,” says Stephens, a regular columnist for The New York Times and former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.

But isn’t it perfectly legitimate and reasonable for Australians to complain about, even protest against, actions of a foreign government?

“No one should hesitate to criticise Israeli government policy, but when you see a movement calling for the elimination of an entire state, you are dealing with antisemitism.”

Some of the protesters argue that they are not demanding the abolition of the world’s only Jewish state but defending the right of the people of Gaza or, now, Lebanon to be left unharmed by Israel’s military. And, no doubt, some are sincere in this.

But consider the ritual chant, heard at protest marches and campus rallies: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” This is not a harmless assertion of the rights of Palestinians. Indeed, the German government this week stipulated that anyone who uses the banned phrase “from the river to the sea” will be denied German citizenship. Its meaning is that clear.

“Unlike anything I have witnessed in my lifetime”. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus on the rise of antisemitism in Australia.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Yet the marches and the chants roll on in Sydney and Melbourne even as the sombre anniversary of the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel arrives.

And the other expressions of antisemitic hate? In the months of October and November 2022, the number of antisemitic incidents in Australia as recorded by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry was 79. In the corresponding two months a year later – coinciding with Hamas crossing into Israel and murdering some 1200 people and kidnapping about 250 more – there were 662, an increase of over 700 per cent. And they continue apace.

Abuse, threats and physical assaults against Australians. Somehow, this tiny minority of about 140,000 Jewish Australians, 0.5 per cent of the population, is supposed to be responsible for the acts of the Netanyahu government on the other side of the planet. Jewish schools have had to redouble their security patrols – and maintain them to this day – to protect their children. In Australia.

Australia’s Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, the most senior Jewish officeholder in the country, has refrained from any comment on the situation over the past year. He considers it beyond his official responsibilities. But on Friday he acknowledged the pain and fear in the Australian Jewish community: “The shocking rise in antisemitism in Australia since October 7, 2023, has been unlike anything I have witnessed in my lifetime,” the Perth-born 68-year-old told me, declining to add anything further. One senses frustration in his exclamation.

“If we are to maintain our cherished social cohesion the law must be enforced and red lines drawn.” Former treasurer Josh Frydenberg.Credit: James Brickwood

On the other side of the political aisle, the most senior Jewish Liberal to have held political office, former treasurer Josh Frydenberg, concurs: “The explosion of antisemitism in Australia unleashed by the October 7 attacks has been truly shocking,” he tells me. “It’s a wake-up call for all Australians. If we are to maintain our cherished social cohesion the law must be enforced and red lines drawn, something missing to date. Otherwise, those who spread hate and incite violence will be further emboldened with consequences too ugly to imagine.”

The brilliant Jewish-Australian World War I general John Monash, whose breakthrough strategy turned the tide of the entire allied war effort against Germany, is rightly celebrated. Likewise, the Jewish-Australian Isaac Isaacs, chief justice and Australia’s first homegrown governor-general.

But in contemporary times, the Lowys probably are the most respected and successful of families among the contemporary Jewish Australian community. Family patriarch Frank Lowy arrived in Australia a penniless refugee from the Nazi Holocaust and went on to co-found the Westfield shopping and real estate empire, generating tens of thousands of jobs and many billions in economic activity for Australia. He went on to salvage the game of soccer by creating Football Federation Australia to much acclaim, founded the Lowy Institute think tank on foreign policy and supported multiple philanthropic causes. Yet even Frank Lowy, now 93, and his family have been targets of the mindless, pointless hatred of the antisemites.

His youngest son, Steven Lowy, attests: “Certainly, members of my family have been subject to attacks on social media. The Jewish community in Australia is extremely nervous, very uncomfortable, scared in many ways by events since October 7,” he tells me.

Steven Lowy: “Members of my family have been subject to attacks on social media.”Credit:

“My dad has recalled many times how Australia welcomed him and masses of postwar European people escaping the Holocaust, how Australia gave him a fair go. That’s the Australia that embraced my father and the Australia that I grew up in, and it’s changed in horrible ways.”

Steven Lowy has a message for the pro-Palestinian groups who want to march in Sydney and Melbourne on Monday, the anniversary that the Jewish-Australian community would prefer to mark as a solemn day of mourning: “I would say to them, ‘Think very deeply about what you are celebrating; you are celebrating the most barbaric attack, the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust. The barbarism, the slaughter, the beheadings, the taking of hostages, including little babies – is this what people celebrate?’

“When the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, a barbaric mass murderer and terrorist, was killed, there was dancing on the streets of Syria because of the horrible things he’d done to them, and there was crying on the streets of Sydney and Melbourne. It’s a very sad experience. It’s un-Australian.”

Steven Lowy never had spoken out on political or social issues outside his business and philanthropic duties until two weeks ago. He decided he needed to stand up and speak out because of the outbreak of antisemitism in Australia. He gave a speech at the University of NSW where he uttered the central reality for Australia today: “It is beyond any of us to influence what’s unfolding in the Middle East. But we can influence what our life is like here at home.”

His central hope is for leadership. “I would hope that our leadership would stamp antisemitism out and show zero tolerance, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. And we need leadership across the board – political, judicial, institutional. Everyone.”

Action is needed. Without it, Bret Stephens fears that the current fever of antisemitism will rage for 30 years more. Why? “Because that’s the unfortunate historical pattern. It turns out that you and I grew up in historical parentheses when the sense of shame about the Holocaust made antisemitism recede as an unacceptable prejudice. Now it’s found a new guise as anti-Zionism,” denying Jews the right to a homeland.

“The protesters believe they are on the side of good. They believe they are militants in a great redemptive cause. Evil takes wing when bigoted people think they are helping to save the world. The Nazis in Germany, the Red Guards in Maoist China, now it’s anti-Zionists. That’s why I feel it will persist – there’s no sense of shame because they think they are being virtuous.”

None of which is to say that Jews are the only minority feeling pain in Australia. But the great achievement of contemporary Australia is the national ideal that no minority should feel pain, that everyone must be respected. Australia is twice as multicultural as America, as measured by the proportion of citizens who were born overseas or whose parents were, and many times more successful in creating a harmonious society.

At the core of that achievement is respect for all. No one group has any more rights than any other, and none should have any fewer. Steven Lowy is right – the special victimisation of our Jewish fellow citizens is un-Australian.

Speaking of the contested right of pro-Palestinian marches on Monday, October 7, Penny Wong said: “We are blessed to have people from all over the world, and part of how we have ensured that we are a cohesive society is we’ve respected one another and this is about respect. People should respect, whatever their views about what has happened over this last year, people should respect those who are grieving the loss of life on that horrific day.”

Australia is a sanctuary from ancient hatreds, not an incubator for them. It begins with respect. For all.

Peter Hartcher is political editor.