It’s vital to combat anti-Semitism at the grassroots level

Your editorial (“Segal report gets to the heart of why bold action matters”, 11/7) was considered and well-argued.

With one caveat. The top-down measures that have been suggested are critical.

But it also requires bottom-up awareness that disavows anti-Jewish racism at grassroots level – around the dinner table, at the pub, in civil society.

Both tracks are essential to stop it being the new normal.

Vic Alhadeff, Darlinghurst, NSW

In response to the excellent articles on anti-Semitism following the report from Jillian Segal, the federal government’s special envoy to combat anti-Semitism, I wish to reflect on my personal experience (“Victoria fails to stem the anti-Semitic explosion”, 11/7).

I feel as if I am reliving what my parents lived through in Germany during the 1930s. My parents discussed growing up in Nazi Germany.

Both of my parents were born in Berlin in the 1920s. They each can trace their families for five generations of German Jewry. Yet, like so many German Jews, they left all of that behind in 1938 to immigrate to this country. They were the fortunate ones. Their grandparents and some uncles and aunts who could not leave ended their lives in the concentration camps.

The German people generally were willing to embrace National Socialism by not asking the hard questions or seeking out the facts and instead were prepared to accept the propaganda without critical analysis. They lost the art of reason.

And I believe it is the same today. Where is the critical analysis of the propaganda put out about the Jews and Israel? Israel is not beyond criticism but that criticism must be based on information and facts.

But as in Germany during the 1930s, too many people are prepared to suspend their moral compass and just go with the flow. The art of reason is missing today.

That was the experience of my parents and this is what I am experiencing now.

Dennis Bluth, Cammeray, NSW

Reviews, reports and law changes will have no effect on the anti-Semitism that is occurring now.

At best, it will be several years before they are in operation. We have laws against hate speech. We have laws against assault and violence. We have laws against intimidation and preventing people from conducting their normal activities. We have laws against property damage.

Use the laws we have – arrest and charge offenders and stop the kerfuffle about whether they intended to offend. Of course they did.

Marian Hinwood, Elsternwick, Vic

Where does anti-Semitism find its roots in our society? At the end of World War II, hundreds of migrants arrived in Australia from far-flung countries laid waste by war. We needed them and they came in large numbers prepared to work hard to make a new life in a new land.

Through sheer hard work, many in the Jewish community were successful in establishing and achieving in a number of fields of endeavour, and with that came resentment from those who did not have the same successful outcomes.

While we can be full of admiration for those who make a go of it, there is nothing like jealousy to bring out the worst in people, carrying resentment, suspicion and even bitterness in some cases from schooldays to old age.

Our cities, which have become more recently places of generous hospitality to new arrivals from countries historically opposed to Judaism, have conjured up anger and resentment, leading to the violent anti-Semitism that now pervades our communities, educa­tional institutions and our once admired suburban tranquillity.

Our governments, schools, universities and workplaces must be made aware that anti-Semitism is a scourge that must be exposed for the damage it has caused worldwide.

Stephanie Summers, North Turramurra, NSW

The ALP’s apparent conversion to combating anti-Semitism is to be commended. Not before time.

It should be quite clear, though, that criticism of the actions of Israeli politicians and others is not anti-Semitic.

It is no different, for example, to the ongoing criticism of US President Donald Trump or any other politician.

Paul Everingham, Hamilton, Qld