The Golan Heights is a military hotspot but Jewish Aussies say they are safer there than in Melbourne
Where is it safe to be a Jew? In a corner of the world beset by strife and bloodshed, Tania Borodach firmly believes she is safer in the Golan Heights than living in Melbourne | WATCH
Tania Borodach has endured a year of unmitigated torment. This former fraud investigator for the Australian Taxation Office has been living in a corner of the world engulfed by strife and bloodshed, fought over by multiple regimes.
Where once the sound of rockets launching was a constant, now it is the gunfire.
This is an agricultural area on the northern tip of the long-contested Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that borders Hezbollah conclaves in southern Lebanon. Adding to the uncertainty, the Syrian border of the new Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham administration is less than 2km away.
Hezbollah rockets have rained down on this area for 14 months since the day after the October 7, 2023, atrocities in sympathy for the horror that the other Iranian proxy, Hamas, inflicted upon Israeli residents and partygoers. Only in the past two weeks after the ceasefire of the past few months has held have Ms Borodach’s three children been able to return to school: one school building was totally destroyed by a Hezbollah rocket in July.
Yet among the unrest, the uncertainty and anxiety of the family having to take shelter in her eight-year-old daughter’s bomb-protected bedroom in the middle of the night, or even scrambling for safety while on zoom calls for work, is somehow less stressful than returning to Melbourne.
Ms Borodach, who now works for a global company organising executive redeployment, explains it like this: “When the war broke out, the Australian government put on a few evacuation planes. And we were ready because we didn’t know what to expect. I will tell you the truth. I was sure we were not going to make it.
“That was the thinking for the first couple of months. The country is gone. We were sure we’re all getting killed. But then we decided against fleeing to Australia because of demonstrations we started seeing in Melbourne, from the city centre, from the Parliament House. It was crazy. And I said I don’t know if I can raise my children there being hunted on the streets. You know, like my grandparents. We decided not to go.”
Over the phone, I pressed her on this decision: “Because of the images coming back from Australia, the anti-Semitism messages, you decided it was safer to be where you are now with rockets?”
Ms Borodach, 45, pauses then acknowledges her Australian friends might question this. “I know it sounds pretty insane, but everyone I speak to who is Jewish Israeli in Australia, they all say it feels much safer in Israel than it feels right now to be Jewish or Israeli in Australia. It’s really, really vile, this anti-Semitism.
“I know what it feels to have that internal sort of shame (of being Jewish) and I really didn’t want my children to experience it in Australia. And what I hear from my friends, from my close colleagues and friends in Australia right now, this feeling is creeping in, that feeling you are a little, dirty Jew. You should die, be gassed.”
Ms Borodach was born and raised in the Soviet Union until she was 15 and says throughout that time she felt a deep internal shame for being Jewish, being attacked in the streets and “hunted”.
That fear dissipated only when she moved to Israel as a teenager and she was then confident enough to move to Australia for her studies, where she married, became an Australian citizen and raised three children because Australia was tolerant and accepting of the Jewish faith.
It was only because the children, then all aged under 10, missed their grandparents that the Borodach family decided to move back to Israel in the midst of Covid-19. They chose a small kibbutz in the Golan Heights not far from Mount Hermon because the cooler variable weather reminded them of Melbourne.
Watching from afar, she says, the situation in Australia is now astonishing. Ms Borodach said the authorities had allowed face-covered people on the streets to wave the terrorist organisation flags of Hamas and Hezbollah in the middle of the predominantly Jewish suburb of Caulfield, scrawl anti-Semitic messages and firebomb the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne.
She said: “It’s like a snowball, you know? It starts from something small, they see there is no repercussions, and the next time, it increases just a tiny little bit, and they see, OK, this went through all right. Let’s now burn some flags. Let’s now go and threaten people at their homes. Now let’s do some scary graffiti.
“It just raises a level each time, because there’s no reaction, because the Victorian police is doing nothing, because nobody’s protecting the Jewish people.”
She has seen in some academic and professional “crazy” and “abhorrent” hatred to the point where people express anti-Semitism openly on professional forums.
“I’m shocked each time I see those things … I think it’s unsafe to be Jewish in Australia right now.”
The Borodach family was visiting family members in Richon LeZion, south of Tel Aviv, for the October 7 holidays in 2023 when the Hamas massacre unfolded and the town came under barrages of rockets from Hamas-held positions. They all hid in a bomb shelter for the day and then fled in a car for the three-hour drive to get home. The shock of such a slaughter in the southern kibbutzim, the brutality and horror that unfolded at the Nova party and the kidnapping of hundreds of Israelis instantly traumatised the country.
“From that day, I stopped sleeping,’’ Ms Borodach said. “For a whole month we all slept in a bomb shelter here inside the house. And then I realised that I can’t sleep because I’m constantly measuring the closets to see if my kids would fit, in case the terrorists are coming to kill us all.
“In the closet I’ll be able to save some of the kids. And I would be thinking over and over about it. And then I understood that, you know, it’s probably not OK for me to think about it constantly.’’
Ms Borodach’s deep fears were not isolated. Her doctor explained that nearly everybody in Israel was presenting with similar thoughts. “I’m just one example of how it affects people … just living their lives,” she said.
In the past few weeks, the children have returned to school, the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel appears to have held and the worries of local leaders that the big yellow bus carrying schoolchildren around the area would be too tempting target for cross-border fire have decreased.
Yet just as a sense of normalcy returned, the Assad regime in Syria collapsed in December, once again heightening tensions. Israeli soldiers flooded into the area to shore up the buffer zone established in 1974 between Israel and Syria. Israel has taken control of a “neutral” area around Quinetra, less than 10km away which previously was overseen by Iranian factions, including Lebanese Hezbollah. Several kibbutzes a few kilometres to the south have been evacuated by Israel under “imposed military zones”.
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has also announced a $20m plan to double the Israeli population in the Golan to help better protect the area.
“We are not sure what to feel about it yet,” Ms Borodach said. “The majority of leaders in Syria used to be part of al-Qa’ida. So are we happy that they are back ruling Syria? They’re making promises and they look really good on television, right? And their main guy is wearing a suit and making promises about the minorities.
“But who do we believe? We are 2km away from the border.”
She hailed the proactive approach of the Israeli government, eliminating dangerous weapons inside of Syria that would present a massive threat to Israel.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said there was a growing perception abroad about Australia’s “anti-Semitism problem”.
“The decision by some Australians to remain in volatile Israeli border communities rather than returning to Australia reflects a growing perception abroad that anti-Semitism in Australia has spiralled out of control,” he said.
“This comes not only from incidents like the Adass Israel Synagogue firebombing but daily experiences of ordinary Jewish Australians being abused, threatened and harassed because they are Jewish.
“Australia generally remains a safe place for the Jewish community but while Jews in Israel feel they control their own destiny and are all in it together, the same isn’t always felt here in Australia.”
Australia Israel & Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Rubenstein said Ms Borodach’s response was “far from unique … It speaks volumes for the seriousness of the anti-Semitism epidemic raging in Australia that she feels safer in that war zone than here, and this type of response is far from unique,” he said.
“Many Australians who have visited Israel since October 7 have said they felt safer over there than they do in Australia.
“This is an incredibly sad and disconcerting state of affairs and our governments, federal and state, and other relevant authorities must do absolutely everything they can to remedy it and end this abhorrent outbreak of anti-Semitism, not only for the sake of the Jewish community, but for the social cohesion and harmony of our entire Australian community and our country’s international reputation. Ending the constant demonisation and delegitimisation of the Jewish state would be a good place to start.”
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