Sickening hatred as Australian Jews live in fear

I drive, ride or walk past a Jewish school most days, and when I first moved into this neighbourhood a decade ago I wondered if the security was not a little over the top.

Will feminist Clementine Ford reflect on the rights of Israeli girls and women who were raped and slaughtered? Picture: NCA NewsWire/Valeriu Campan

Not long after I moved to Sydney in 2009, I was riding a train to the eastern suburbs watching two couples happily engrossed in their own conversations side-by-side on a bench seat. The young man in one couple wore a kippah and the woman in the other pairing wore a hijab.

It was a light-bulb moment for me, as someone familiar with Sydney but getting to know it better as my new home. I had been to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and the West Bank, I had been to smouldering terrorist sites in Bali and Jakarta, and while I remembered the ugly, ethnically charged riots at Cronulla, here in my new home it seemed I was living in a multicultural city blissfully untroubled by ethno-religious tensions.

No longer.

This week I spoke to a Jewish-Australian friend who said she had never felt afraid in this country until now. She is so frightened and conscious of being a target that she sometimes uses a “less Jewish-sounding” name when ordering a coffee and, most heartbreakingly, she questions her judgment decades ago in giving her children Jewish names.

Another friend showed me how their home bedroom and ensuite area was encased with steel grilles and a heavy bedroom door – a safe room set-up akin to Israeli kibbutzes. With death threats sparking across cyberspace, this was the only way to create peace of mind for a decent night’s sleep.

In the supermarket a Jewish stranger introduces himself to me and explains how his wife implores him to stop wearing his ring inscribed with a Hebrew quote. He understands her concern but refuses to cower; other Jewish Australians tell me they have stopped wearing Stars of David on necklaces or have switched out kippahs for baseball caps.

Students at Jewish schools eschew their uniforms, and wearing any item identifying people as Jewish has become an act of courageous defiance. I am told Orthodox Jews with their hats, curls and tzitzit hanging from their hips are resigned to abuse and threats on the street.

In Melbourne, pro-Palestinian protesters rallied in Caulfield, deliberately intimidating Jewish communities. In Sydney, within days of the October 7 atrocities pro-Palestinian protesters were chanting “F..k the Jews” and either “Where’s the Jews” or “Gas the Jews” at the Opera House – as if either is not an abomination.

The hatred is sickening. As I was discussing this traumatic new reality with a senior member of the Jewish community, his wife chipped in with a deflating sense of inevitability, “And it will only get worse.”

In Sydney in 2024, mothers are gut-wrenched about leaving their children at Jewish schools and daycare centres knowing that what is a haven of friendship and learning for their little ones could be a target for haters. Homes and offices have been desecrated and vandalised by graffiti.

The bloodcurdling atrocities of October 7 have been celebrated not only in the West Bank and Arab nations (which is unsettling enough) but also in Western countries, including our own.

A motorist in western Sydney took out personalised plates late last year that read OCT7TH – the NSW government has recalled them.

Death threats have been made. Lists of Jewish Australians have been circulated online in deliberate doxxing episodes designed to denigrate and intimidate.

One of the doxxers, a favourite of the ABC and other leftist media, Clementine Ford, is co-curator of a Sydney feminist festival. Will she reflect on the rights of Israeli hostages raped, Israeli mothers taken hostage and Israeli babies and girls slaughtered?

Where are the feminists on these unthinkable acts? Believe all women, support all victims – unless they are Jewish.

Holocaust survivors, who have always seen this country as their lifesaving, post-war haven, are suddenly transported back to the brutal bigotry of the Nazis.

Hungarian refugee Suzi Smeed, 79, told me on Sky News, “It makes my blood run cold.” She recognises the resurgent anti-Semitism, the “same old lies told over and over again”, and says it is terrifying.

I drive, ride or walk past a Jewish school most days, and when I first moved into this neighbourhood a decade ago I wondered if the security was not a little over the top. Even with my background in terrorism, conflict and classified briefings about extremist threats at home and abroad I would wander past, see the armed guards and security fences, and think quietly to myself, “Really?”

Tragically, the security judgment of Jewish schools and organisations can no longer be questioned. Where Jewish Australians gather in this country they need protection, now more than ever. What have we become?

None of those Sydney Opera House protesters has been arrested, let alone charged. Anti-Jewish posters, graffiti and online bile have become commonplace. Our political leaders do not hit back strongly enough. Their constant and often illogical criticism of Israel only encourages the haters.

At least 130 people who were kidnapped by Hamas on that horrific day, when 1200 others were slaughtered, are still held hostage in Gaza. Yet politicians, activists and media constantly demand that Israel ceases fire – they give license to the Hamas extremists by putting the onus on Israel to stop defending itself, instead of putting heat on Hamas to hand over its hostages and cease its terrorism.

Whatever you think of the geopolitics, we cannot ignore the message being sent by the UN and most Western nations. When countries such as the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia are demanding that Israel does not confront Hamas in Rafah, it gives free rein to the Israel haters and anti-Semites at home, shifting blame on to Israeli and Jewish victims.

We all want peace, we all want civilians protected and we all want a permanent, secure resolution. But this is a topsy-turvy view of a life-and-death struggle.

Hamas should be condemned for hiding its operatives in and underneath Rafah. Hamas should be denounced for using the civilians of Rafah as human shields and holding hostages there.

The international community should be applying maximum pressure on Hamas to surrender the hostages, exit Rafah and lay down its arms. Every bit of public pressure it puts on Israel dimin­ishes the pressure on Hamas to do this and increases the hatred directed at Jews around the world.

This is so palpable now that we saw television commercials against anti-Semitism aired during the Super Bowl this week. One highlighted how silence is complicity in the face of this hatred, and my favourite showed how a good neighbour could help shield a Jewish American child from these slurs.

We all need to stand up.

Our leaders and authorities have stood up before for our Muslim communities, fearful of a backlash triggered by Islamist terrorist acts (thankfully such reprisals never came – not after 9/11, not after Bali and not after the Lindt Cafe siege). Why, then, are authorities so impotent against the very real threats, targeting and viciousness directed at our Jewish communities now?

Liberal senator for NSW Dave Sharma has a rare insight into all aspects of this issue because he is a former ambassador to Israel and former member for the federal seat of Wentworth, home to large Jewish-Australian communities. He is disturbed.

Liberal senator for NSW Dave Sharma. Picture: Jonathan Ng

“No community in Australia should be forced to endure the level of fear and insecurity that the Jewish community is experiencing,” Sharma told me. “This is a failing of the most basic duty of government.”

He says Labor has been too conflicted on these issues. And too slow to condemn anti-Semitism.

Unfortunately, hatred is in our human DNA. If we believe in love, we must know about hate; if we believe in God, we must acknowledge evil; and if we respect generosity, selflessness, and courage, we must also bristle at their opposites. We cannot pretend these realities away.

You do not have to be a fundamentalist to understand that life is a constant struggle between these opposing sides of the ledger. You just need to be world-wise, a student of history or a realist.

People often, wisely, refer to the Edmund Burke dictum: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men (or women) to do nothing.” (Yes, I know, Burke might not have uttered these words, precisely, but he wrote something similar and John Stuart Mill said pretty much the same a century later.)

It is about vigilance. It is about eschewing complacency and embracing an ongoing struggle.

John Howard used to talk about economic reform being a never-ending race. We need to have the same attitude towards improving our society, building cohesion and tolerance. We are a long way from the finish line.