‘An attack on everyone’: NSW Premier Chris Minns joins push to defend Australia’s Jewish community
A chuckle ran through the room as Deborah Conway sang those words before an audience of business and cultural leaders on Wednesday because it’s true, isn’t it?
The Jewish people have given so much to the world – to music, science, law, medicine, and the arts. They have helped build modern Australia.
And yet it is upon the shoulders of bewildered Australian Jews that hatred has now settled.
Today, in Australia, Jewish children walk to school under armed guard.
Today, in Australia, Jewish worshippers pray at synagogues with security personnel on the gate.
Time and again this year, Australian Jews have been forced to get on their knees with buckets and sponges to clean eggs and paint off their homes.
Many will sorrowfully tell you that Australia feels like a different country from the one their parents and grandparents came to, after the horror of war in Europe.
For a long time, they felt safe.
They no longer do.
Is that what we, as Australians, want?
To have small groups of vulnerable Australians living in fear?
If so, we’re not the country we said we were.
We’re not the country we promised the fallen that we would always strive to be.
Deborah Conway is an artist, and she is Jewish, and she has found herself, in recent years, being escorted from the stage for being Jewish.
She performed her special, funny song, referencing her own ancestors, as well as Bob Dylan, at the launch of a new book on Wednesday.
It’s an important new book, for it seeks to turn the tide.
A Different Country has been published by The Australian and HarperCollins, and the launch event was held at the Opera House.
Very deliberately, it was held at the Opera House.
The Australian’s editor-in-chief, Michelle Gunn, said the venue was chosen in part because it represents “the peak of cultural endeavour in this country.”
Regrettably – painfully – it was also at the Opera House that the first signs of a sudden, violent shift in Australian values – away from a sunny nation, where all are welcome, to a place of lengthening shadows for Jews – emerged.
It happened on October 9, 2023.
Two days earlier, Hamas had slaughtered 1200 people in Israel, and taken hostages to Gaza.
Israel was reeling but – importantly – Israel was also yet to respond.
Anti-Israel protesters converged on the Opera House, chanting slogans that were ominous then, and are frightening even now:
Where are the Jews?
In the process, they tore a hole in the social fabric that will take years to repair.
The changes that have come to Australia since October 7 are not easy to quantify but everyone can surely see that Australian values – multiculturalism, religious freedom, social harmony – are being battered, one anti-Semitic attack at a time.
The NSW premier Chris Minns, a giant among political leaders on this issue, spoke at the book launch because he wanted to “reclaim this space” – the Opera House – for all Australians.
He urged all good people to resist the idea that the harassment of the Jewish people is “just freedom of speech.”
“An attack on anyone on the basis of their culture or religion is an attack on everyone,” he said. “It’s not a negotiable principle. It’s the foundation of our modern state.”
Australians do not tolerate the harassment of small groups, not because “we are nice people and hospitable people.”
Australia offers the promise of peace and freedom, but here’s the thing: we get it back.
Tear at the fabric, you destroy the whole cloth.
Steven Lowy spoke at the launch because, he said, he has faith in Australia’s future. Because Australians know that we live in the best country in the world.
We have no interest in importing ancient hatreds.
We’re doing something different here.
We are keeping the far left and the far right on the fringes. We are finding middle ground. And in the process, we are taking more than a stand. We are taking our country back.
Order your copy of A Different Country today.
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“You all hate Jews … but you like Bob Dylan.”