Peter Hartcher’s analytical piece on the current growth of anti-semitism in Australia concludes with “Australia is a sanctuary from racial hatreds (“Don’t let ancient hatreds fester”, October 5)”. The stain of racist inhumanity on our country is reflected in the historically barbarous treatment of our Aboriginal population. We have a documented history of displacement, massacre and exploitation of the original inhabitants of this place. Hartcher contends that sanctuary begins with respect for all. Paying lip service to such sentiments in our time is well meaning but, very clearly, not good enough. Peter Thomas, Rose Bay
Illustration by Simon LetchCredit: Simon Letch
Bret Stephen infers that those who oppose Zionism are denying Jews the right to a homeland. I oppose Zionism because it denies the right of Palestinian Arabs to live in peace in Palestine as it relentlessly moves further into the West Bank, restricting the movement of the indigenous inhabitants, destroying their villages and businesses. Perhaps if Stephen is concerned about the rise in antisemitism he and other Jews should demand that Israel withdraws from the West Bank and assists in the creation of a Palestinian state. That way the Arab extremists will have no reason to attack Israel. But I’m not holding my breath. Rodney Crute, Hunters Hill
The Israel of the last 20 years isn’t the moral, principled Israel of the ’70s and ’80s, it has turned to the hard right. Today’s Israel under Netanyahu has no interest in a two-state solution or Palestinian human rights. Today’s Israel is gobbling up Palestinian territory for illegal settlements, annexing Palestinians land, occupying and murdering Palestinian people and committing genocide.
The US and Australian governments keep saying Israel has a right to defend itself. Do the Palestinians have the same right? Israelis have the right to live in peace on their own land. Do Palestinians have the same right?
We talk about a “fair go” but our policy in the Middle East has been anything but. Barry Henson, Upper Orara
According to Peter Hartcher, the Executive Council of Jewry has reported a 700 per cent increase in antisemitic incidents following Hamas’ murderous incursion into Israel this time last year. Has there been a similar increase in the number of people who are not antisemitic, but who are critical of what has happened since that incursion? If so, what does that mean for the world’s attitude toward Israel? Or if you believe that all criticism of what has happened since October 7 is antisemitic, what does that mean for attitudes toward jewry in general? Allen Greer, Sydney
Antisemitism should be called out whenever it is encountered. Benjamin Netanyahu and others who speak on behalf of Jews around the world have not helped by conflating antisemitism with the world’s reaction to Israel’s response to October 7. If the answer is to kill more than 42,000 of your neighbours and leave more than a million homeless you have asked the wrong question. One day there will be a two-state solution for Palestine. Current events have pushed that day further away, ensuring the misery on both sides continues. John Vigours, Neutral Bay
Thank you, Peter Khalil MP, for expressing a sentiment shared by a large swathe of the Australian Jewish community: that being asked not to protest on October 7 is not a matter of rights but decency. There has not been one day in the past year that the Jewish community has been allowed to mourn the massacre of October 7 without being reminded of the “pain of the other side”. When is enough, enough? Is 51 weeks of protest in the Sydney and Melbourne CBDs - protests which make a lot of Jewish people feel anxious and insecure - not enough for us to have heard that side of the story? We asked for one day to gather and mourn. Why could we not be granted that decency? Yehuda Bassin, Glebe
Thank you, Peter Hartcher, for placing the great wave of anti-Jewish madness sweeping the world in a tiny nutshell. It is by far the best article in a long time that I have read. I arrived in Australia in 1952 and felt it was God’s own country….. We were all equal, we were all Australians. Now, for the first time, we who are Jewish are different. We are Jews to be despised. Rosalind Sharbanee Meyer, Mosman
What Mia Kline went through this year, I experienced a decade ago as an undergraduate (“One year on”, October 5). It was 2014, and violence had broken out between Hamas and Israel. Several of my friends broke off our friendships because they branded me a Zionist for having lived in Jerusalem. They never stopped to ask me what I had experienced there, or my views on the situation. It was enough that I was Jewish to suit their narrative. Until then, I had believed that one could be critical of Israel without being antisemitic. That line blurred for me in 2014, and it has been well and truly crossed since October 7. What we as Jews have experienced this past year is heartbreak, anguish, and the feeling that whatever we say to explain or defend ourselves will be contorted or silenced. Nicky Gluch, Glebe
I came to Australia 46 years ago from Northern Ireland and fell in love with this country despite its many faults. Reading Saturday’s Herald my belief and trust in my country and its people was shattered completely. To find out that pro-Palestinian supporters put out a spreadsheet with 600 names of Jewish people involved in the arts and academia, and which was distributed, destroyed any faith I had in the population. This is exactly the same behaviour as those they protest against; from both sides of the conflict and which echoes the behaviour of the antisemitism of the last century. Targeting these people is criminal and degrades any respect I have for their protests. Their leaders need to denounce this soundly and we should not allow ourselves to perpetuate an emotional vortex that will leave our peace-loving country divided, with long-running social scars. Dermot Perry, Mount Keira
Environment can’t wait
I don’t envy Tanya’s Plibersek’s job (“Going on the attack in the name of nature”, October 5). It’s hard to remember a time when the portfolio of the environment minister has been more complex or challenging. Labor’s election commitment to create a national Environmental Protection Agency has stalled and Plibersek’s promise of comprehensive reform to national environment laws has been delayed. The Global Nature Positive Summit hosted by Plibersek in Sydney this week is an opportunity to regain some lost ground in advance of the forthcoming election. But with a PM who recently watered down the EPA to secure votes in WA, and fossil fuel projects being approved, it’s hard to be optimistic. Australia’s 2245 threatened species are running out of time. The Summit is a chance to refocus on their needs. Ray Peck, Hawthorn (Vic)
Tanya PlibersekCredit: Oscar Colman
Tanya Plibersek is right to call out Peter Dutton’s anti-environment agenda. Her criticism of the Greens as extreme, however, is unfounded, as is her portrayal of herself as the sensible centre. According to the report of the same name, the State of Australia’s Environment is “poor and deteriorating”, our threatened species list is ever-growing, and the Great Barrier Reef is suffering. Yet under Labor we continue to log native forests and dig up fossil fuels, as if our nature is flourishing and thriving. In an ecological crisis, such poor environmental stewardship is inexcusable and embarrassing, especially when we are hosting the Global Nature Positive Summit. Unless Plibersek starts choosing the environment over corporate interests, she too will end up in the environmental sin-bin with Dutton’s Coalition. Amy Hiller, Kew (Vic)
How can Tanya Plibersek claim that Labor is taking a “sensible” approach to environmental policies, when the government only recently approved three new coal mine expansions? These projects are set to create over a billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, with the Narrabri project threatening hundreds of acres of koala habitat. Labor’s approvals of new fossil fuel projects defy logic. No amount of renewables investment can reverse the potential damage to our climate and natural environment. With its weak stance on global emissions reductions, Labor is hardly in a good position to host the upcoming Global Nature Positive Summit. Anne O’Hara, Wanniassa (ACT)
I have one simple question for Tanya Plibersek. How can you justify more coal mines when this will simply add to emissions, both here and overseas? Andrew Macintosh, Cromer
Hail the real women warriors
I’d like the right of reply to my letter about female leaders (Letters, October 4). The few usual suspects are cited in responses to my letter: Thatcher, Meir and so on, proving that there are so few of them they can be easily remembered. Compare that number to the thousands of brutal and megalomaniac male leaders there have been throughout history, far too many to remember or mention. One correspondent says that those “driven by power” invariably “follow the path of violence”. As women are less “driven by power”? Could that explain their scarcity as leaders? Judy Hungerford, Kew (Vic)
Margaret Thatcher Credit: AP
You can add my name to the growing list of millions of women who have had enough of the destruction of homes and killing of innocent people, all coldly regarded by political and military men as dispensable collateral damage in a revenge response to warfare. But don’t fathers suffer this too?
There are no longer any words which adequately describe the savage brutality of political and military men who react to enemy attacks with even more force which can eventually get out of hand. Dispute resolution, hideous destruction, conflict, retaliatory retribution, warfare – all weasel words which can never describe the unimaginable suffering and loss of those souls who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Women have turned history around before, and must do it again as their male counterparts obviously don’t have the will to stop. Corin Fairburn Bass, Turramurra
My goodness (Letters, October 5). What on earth have Sussan Ley and Bronwyn Bishop done, or achieved, to mark them as local “women warriors” in the same sphere as New Zealand’s WWII hero Nancy Wake? John Pick, Cremorne
Adrian Bell must have known he would to get a response to citing Sussan Ley and Bronwyn Bishop as strong women. Puhlease! Mum Shirl any day, for instance. Claudia Drevikovsky, Croydon
I’m rather surprised that in his list of strong woman, Adrian Bell did not include our own Julia Gillard and NZ’s Jacinda Ardern. The former had strength in standing up to likes of Tony Abbott and Bronwyn Bishop. Charlie Dodd-Somerton, Ultimo
Good old days
Nick Bryant, you might have a point, but Hawke had a more switched-on media to either love the bloke, or give him a kick if he needed it (“Not even Hawke could escape this incumbency trap”, October 5). There was no “antisocial” media, using algorithms to tell their targets how unhappy they are and why. There was more bipartisanship among politicians, and they were largely focused on improving the country, rather than what was in it for them. There was less of a medium to spread malicious conspiracy theories, and people were generally more outward looking, rather than inward, self-absorbed and switched off to the truth as they often are now. Cometh the hour, cometh the woman or man, to show the way. Geoff Nilon, Mascot
Age of reason
“Younger readers write to us” – yes, please do! (Postscript, October 5). One wonders – is the lack thereof because they are busy on social media, with no time for our beloved Herald? Let us hear from the smart opinionated young readers. Alison Stewart, Waitara
Interpreting “younger reader” in the legacy media context, I presume you mean those of us under 60 – in which case I still qualify, just, and can happily opine youth and its opinions remains wasted on me. Peter Fyfe, Enmore
Aye, a penny for their thoughts. It’d be a breath of fresh air to read younger readers’ views, and to see their style. Edward Loong, Milsons Point
Between the lines
Did anyone else laugh, then think to congratulate cruciverbalist DS, on the cunning insertions of football references into the cryptic crossword on NRL grand final day? Even “grand final” made it into a clue. Others that I picked were “opener”, “build a squad”, “storm”, “out of bounds”, “top stars”. No doubt footy fans will find more. Thanks for the laughs, DS! Barry Laing, Castle Cove
Nathan Cleary is the biggest star in tonight’s NRL grand final Credit: NRL Photos
Room for all
Why would Premier Minns even consider changing the successful Northern Beaches Secondary College (NBSC) structure (“‘It would be crazy’: Parents fight co-ed proposal for Sydney’s top-ranked schools”, October 5)? There is already a co-ed high school, a boys’ school and a girls’ school, a co-ed year 11 and 12 school, and a co-ed selective school in the group. All these schools are at full capacity and are achieving great HSC results, with (non-selective) Balgowlah Boys High being one of the best-performing schools in the state. Perhaps the premier should look at this college and try to implement some of their successful strategies in other schools in the state rather than dismantle this fabulous example of public education. Premier Minns, there is already plenty of choice at NBSC. Helen Simpson, Curl Curl
Have a heart
The proposed ousting of low-income people from their homes in Paddington is appalling. It’s The Rocks evictions all over again (Letters, October 4). The NSW and federal Labor governments should immediately step in and compulsorily acquire these houses to enable the battlers to remain in their community. I remember similar purchases by a federal Labor government of homes in the Glebe Estate, which remain affordable housing to this very day. I also remember Tom Uren’s (ALP) Better Cities Program which funded much-needed infrastructure associated with new developments, such as the Ultimo community centre and library. So how about it, Albo and Chris? A Better Public Housing Program has a good ring to it. But you’d better be quick, or 29 men will be sleeping on the streets.
Elizabeth Elenius, Pyrmont
Your correspondents are rightly angry that, in the middle of a housing crisis, dozens of vulnerable people are being made homeless. Demolishing cheap but liveable housing to make way for a smaller number of luxury houses is common in central and eastern Sydney, and is something we need to prevent. The best way to do this is obvious: put a tax on it. If developers were levied $10,000 for every bedroom that was lost, we’d have fewer demolition jobs and the state government would have a pool of funds to build social housing. While we’re at it, we could levy developers for demolishing any habitable building less than, say, 40 years old. The newer the building, the higher the levy. Getting builders to focus on building completely new dwellings, rather than replacing old ones, wouldn’t fix the housing crisis overnight, but it would be a start.
Fraser Rew, Ashfield
Generous gift
Oh Edward Loong, regarding those bottles of gin: surely you realise it’s not the principle of the thing, it’s the spirit (Letters, October 5).
Coral Button, North Epping
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