I finished a book last week that took me a lot longer to read than expected. A Brilliant Life is the story of a woman called Mira, who as a teenager, along with her family, was betrayed by neighbours and sent to Plaszow, a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland. Plaszow was little known to most until made famous as one of the settings of the movie Schindler’s List.
Mira’s father was shot dead in front of his family, in front of their home, as his wife and children were dragged away. Her mother was murdered the day they arrived at the camp, in one of the notorious Nazi “selections”.
Mira survived the Holocaust, against the most unbelievable odds. She married, moved to Melbourne, and raised a large and loving family. She and her husband grew a business that employed dozens of Australians from all backgrounds during its lifetime.
A Brilliant Life does indeed tell such a story because as much as it bears witness to the worst of humanity, it celebrates and honours the best. The many good people, who counted the cost of risking their own lives to save Mira’s, and did it anyway.
Why did it take me so long to read? It felt too close to home.
If, like me, you ever wondered how the Holocaust could have happened, then look no further than today. Look no further than Melbourne, where the Star of David is again being used to intimidate and threaten. Where Jewish business owners are arriving at work to find anti-Semitic graffiti strewn across doors and windows.
Look no further than Sydney, where the same extremist preachers, from their pulpits, call for Jews to be murdered. For the state of Israel to be wiped out, yes, from the river to the sea.
And this is all happening in an environment free of consequences. There’s been the odd stern motherhood statement that half-heartedly tut-tuts the culprits and says there’s no room for hate in Australia. Kind of like the parent who, not moving their gaze from the TV, tells their child not to annoy her brother.
Are we supposed to be reassured that those with the responsibility of curbing this cancer are capable, let alone interested? NSW police said nobody chanted “gas the Jews” when a feral mob swarmed the Opera House on the night of Monday, October 9, even though others claim to have heard it, and clearly. This mob was there celebrating Hamas and its orgy of rape, torture murder and violence. They set fire to the Israeli flag, set off flares and chanted “f..k the Jews” and “where’s the Jews?”. Clearly, they just wanted to catch up for a chat over a cleansing ale about the two-state solution.
It’s this bracket creep of normalisation. It’s the seeming unwillingness to draw a line in the sand and say, no.
This past week, NSW state Greens MP Jenny Leong showed that just when you think we’ve seen the worst of the Greens, a hapless mob of university-grade anarchists who never grew up, they turn it up to 11.
At a Palestinian Justice Movement event in December, Leong told the crowd the “Jewish lobby and the Zionist lobby” are infiltrating the community, that “their tentacles reach into the areas that try and influence power”. The whole speech is extraordinary and not in a good way. It is the language of days gone by. It’s now, thankfully, easy to find online and I urge you to watch for yourselves.
Leong has apologised. Sorry for what she said, or for being exposed? You decide. If a bottle of wine can rob a premier of his career, surely anti-Semitic speech should spell the end of a local MP. It’s the Greens, though, so no doubt she’ll be promoted.
Stop taking us for fools. Stop avoiding the hard decisions and conversations. It is beyond me to understand why the Prime Minister and the premiers have clothed themselves in reticence. Their words masquerade as strength, but carry no weight in a weakness that can only be linked to electoral concerns.
More broadly, the political left, tenured academics, union lackies and those leading this anti-Israel campaign seem afflicted with an obsession with the state of Israel. The kind described by American journalist Caroline Glick. Glick single-handedly, surgically and intellectually eviscerated the Danish ambassador in December when he suggested Europe should apply a double standard to Israel when judging its actions, compared with other Middle Eastern nations. The clip is easy enough to find. Watch it, it’s a tour de force.
The double standard she describes is what we are seeing in Australia. Let me prove it.
When 33-year-old Roya Heshmati was sentenced in Iran to 74 brutal lashes for a hijab violation, where were the protests and marches on parliament? Between December 22 and January 21, 90 people linked to last year’s freedom protests were executed by Tehran. Ninety people, mostly young. Hanged on cranes before baying crowds. Where are the Greens? Where are Unionists for Palestine? Where are the young, keffiyeh-wearing actors from the Sydney Theatre Company? The federal government said it was deeply concerned, flogging Tehran with a soggy tissue.
This obsession is almost like a person who can’t accept a relationship is over, in the sense that there is no counter to the truth that Israel, while imperfect like all democracies, has a parliament in which Jews and Arabs sit side by side. In Israel, Christians, Jews, Druze, Muslims, atheists, gay, straight, you name it, live in harmony. Their only common enemy is the one that wants to wipe them out. Let me put it bluntly: in the Middle East nobody is leaving Israel to claim asylum in Tehran, Gaza or Damascus.
Is it obsession or blind hatred? Or is one caused by the other.
How did the Holocaust happen? Good people stood by and did nothing. Said nothing. Weak leaders tried to bargain with evil and win. For a country that had zero problem locking us all up and controlling crowds during Covid, our leaders seem remarkably disinclined to deal with this pressing threat in a meaningful way. It’s time they did.
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