Cowardice at the heart of the lucky country

Angry chants of “F..k the Jews” and “Gas the Jews” rang out across the steps of the Sydney Opera House on October 9. Picture: Jasmine Kazlauskas

There’s a popular saying about good times producing weak men and hard times building strength. The phrase comes from a post-apocalyptic novel published in 2016 and, despite being a work of fiction, there’s truth in those words, I think.

Just as our muscles grow soft, flabby and weak in the absence of pressure from repeated time under tension, so it goes with the development of character and integrity – be it in individuals, communities, businesses or government.

This past week the Israeli government issued a travel warning for its citizens coming to Australia. The message was clear. The seemingly sudden and vicious rise in anti-Semitism from living rooms to boardrooms and classrooms across Australia means the lucky country is dangerous for Jews.

Australia, who have we become? When Israel’s government (which knows a thing or two about anti-Semitism) considers its citizens safer in Tel Aviv and Haifa than Bondi, Caulfield or Mount Lawley, it seems a prudent time to ask.

I don’t want to talk about the war specifically, though of course that’s the context.

Since October 7; since angry chants of “F..k the Jews” and “Gas the Jews” rang out across the steps of the Sydney Opera House on October 9; since carloads of thugs drove hours across suburban Melbourne to hurl glass bottles and rocks at a synagogue on Shabbat; since pro-Palestinian protesters invaded a Melbourne hotel where families of Israelis kidnapped or killed by Hamas were staying; since some media outlets and most of academe and the political left decided that terrorism is now a matter of opinion and deemed the steely, broken voices of Jewish survivors to be worth less than the shouts of their deniers; since all of these things, we have seen a growing ugliness in this country that I’d never have believed possible.

Pro-Palestinian activists ambushed visiting friends and families of Israeli hostages at the Melbourne hotel they were staying at.

And it’s not the examples I’ve cited, though they’re the most prominent. It’s the universities that have said to Jewish students, do your exams at home, it’s safer, rather than acting with integrity to ensure campuses are safe for all students. It’s in the Jewish-owned businesses being boycotted and vandalised with hate symbols. It’s the dad who shared that school parents cancelled a play date because their children wore kippahs and they feared it was too dangerous to be seen as Jewish in public. It’s the friend in Western Australia from my university days who reluctantly decided to ask his daughter to stop wearing her Star of David. It’s not safe any more, he lamented.

It is in casual conversations I’ve been part of, others I’ve been told about. Everyday people, when confronted with the atrocities of this war and the rise in violent Jew hate in the community, who respond with a shrug or a weaselly “yeah, but”.

It is all of this. Slovenly, me-first, moral weakness that reeks of cowardice, because that is what is at the heart of this denialism. Cowardice. Who but a coward would respond to first-hand reports of a woman having her breasts sliced off, then being raped, with: “I need more proof.” Or worse still: “That’s Israeli propaganda.”

Hamas terrorists committed these atrocities, they filmed it, shared it gleefully with the world then boasted about. Survivors and first-hand witnesses have testified. Yet in Australia there’s a glowering murmur that says: Did it really happen?

Israel families at Bondi. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.

How far we have fallen. In 1947 HV (Doc) Evatt, a former High Court justice and Labor MP for the federal seat of Barton in southwest Sydney, guided the UN vote in favour of the formation of the state of Israel. No doubt he was driven by moral compulsion, the memory of the Holocaust still fresh. Now? I imagine he and his contemporaries would be turning in their graves. Australian Labor today is but a shadow of its predecessors in terms of moral clarity and integrity. Australian Labor today is failing and flailing.

Oh, but I don’t want to be angry. I’m trying my best not to drown under the weight of it all, the rage within my chest, but how can people turn away? Everyone loves to say they’re an ally. An ally to the Indigenous community. The gay community. To women in the workplace. All of these are worthy of our allegiance, I’m not questioning that, but I am asking: Where are the allies for the Israeli people? Notice I said Israeli. Yes, a predominantly Jewish nation but 21 per cent of Israelis are Arab. Muslims, Druze, Christian, Bedouin. This is because Israel is a liberal, pluralistic society, yet another highly inconvenient, ignored, fact.

It’s in my nature, I think, to attempt to tease out and understand the heart of an issue. Here? I’m at a loss. There’s nothing rational or logical about it. There’s devastating recent world history to flag the warning signs, yet here we are, having to plead with our neighbours and colleagues to see the lights of the oncoming train.

Perhaps, and hear me out here, what we’re seeing is at least in some part a reflection of the price of peacetime. While no country in their right mind goes to war on a whim, the brutal truth of human nature as repeatedly shown throughout history is that often one must wage war to deliver peace.

For younger Australians, this experience of war, albeit at a safe distance, is their first. They know nothing of the price paid so they can wag school and shout “From the river to the sea”, spoiled and smug in their ignorance.

Peace? Yes, this is the ultimate goal, always. But some, like Hamas, don’t want it. Islamic State didn’t want it. Osama bin Laden didn’t want it. That means peace comes with a price. Those who bought ours with their lives are mostly long gone, so is it any wonder our collective memory is faded, our moral clarity so dimmed?

As for me? I will not be an ally to the weak and the immoral. I will not give my allegiance to comfort and convenience over truth, or sit in the company of mockers, armchair historians and anti-Semites. Just as Israel’s battle against Hamas is existential, so is Australia’s war on anti-Semitism. We must fight with renewed vigour while we still can.