‘Civilisation versus barbarism’: Standing ovation for Dutton at Jewish vigil

A crowd of 12,000 people from Sydney’s Jewish community joined a solemn vigil in Vaucluse on Monday night to commemorate the anniversary of the October 7 attacks.

Large screens played images and names of victims of 1175 Israelis and foreign nationals killed in the attacks by Hamas. Around 3400 people were wounded and 247 taken hostage, 101 of whom remain unaccounted for.

Peter Dutton at a Jewish vigil to mark October 7.Credit: Wolter Peeters

Opposition leader Peter Dutton, addressing the crowd, said there was “a vacuum of leadership” in Australia since a crowd protested against Israel’s response to the attacks on the Opera House forecourt on October 9.

Dutton said antisemitism had risen sharply in the past year and characterised the struggle between Israel and Hamas as one of civilisation versus barbarism.

“Moral clarity is important because frankly there hasn’t been enough of it,” he told the gathered crowd to loud cheers and a standing ovation. “Instead we’ve got a moral fog. In the interests of moral clarity, let me be clear – Israel has every right to defend its people from existential threats.”

“If we don’t take a strong stance now, we risk repeating the mistakes of the 1930s,” Dutton said.

October 7 was “a day of depravity [that] awoke and exposed an antisemitic rot in Western democracies”.

He pledged to confront antisemitism and, if elected, establish a judicial inquiry into antisemitism on university campuses and provide more funding for the Sydney Jewish Museum.

As well as Dutton, political leaders at the vigil included Health Minister Mark Butler, representing the federal government, NSW Premier Chris Minns and NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman.

Butler said Australia stood in solidarity with the Jewish people.

“No self-respecting nation would fail to defend itself if attacked in the way Israel has been,” Butler told the crowd.

Minns praised the resilience of the Jewish people.

“Twelve months ago we saw a horrifying crime,” Minns said. “There is no context, no history, no perspective that can ever justify the killing of a baby in a cot in front of her mother.”

Minns said he had seen a rise of antisemitism in the community and the “poison” of prejudice since the October 7 attacks.

“We can’t change the hate in people’s hearts, but we can call it for what it is – and that is racism.”

Earlier on Monday, Jewish community leaders said antisemitic incidents and threats had surged more than 300 per cent in Australia over the past year.

The incidents range from physical attacks on Australian Jews to offensive graffiti, bomb threats at synagogues and verbal abuse in public.

“These are numbers without precedent in this country and an increase without parallel anywhere in the world,” said Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, a peak body.

Graffiti in Melbourne.

“It is incumbent on all Australians to fight this hatred; it cannot be that it is the Jewish community alone who stands up to this.”

On the first anniversary of the October 7 attacks, the peak body released data that it said indicates an extraordinary rise in antisemitism.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry recorded more than 1800 antisemitic incidents across Australia since October 7, which it said represents a 324 per cent increase on the previous 12 months. The group has been collating annual data for more than a decade.

Co-CEO Alex Ryvchin and head of legal, Simone Abel, of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry at a press conference in Sydney on Monday. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

A dossier compiled by the group includes some information on 73 of the 1800 recorded incidents.

They include an assault on a 44-year-old Jewish man at Arncliffe, in Sydney’s inner south-west. The man had removed a poster for a pro-Palestine protest and was set upon by a group who told him to “go back to Vaucluse” and attacked him in a park, causing concussion and spinal injuries.

There were numerous alleged physical and verbal assaults on Jewish people, including on a 77-year-old woman who was kicked and spat at, at rallies against antisemitism.

Antisemitic graffiti in Adelaide.

In November, a convoy of about 20 cars and motorcycles allegedly drove from Lakemba to Coogee, waving flags and calling out “F--- the Jews” on a loudhailer.

The dossier contains incidents substantiated by police reports and multiple eyewitness accounts, and others that are difficult to verify.

It includes the alleged chanting of the phrase “Gas the Jews” at a protest on the Opera House forecourt on October 9 last year, although analysis of video footage could find no evidence the phrase was used.

A lawyer and researcher with the Jewish peak body, Simone Abel, said reports gathered by the group included Jewish students at universities being spat on, told to “go home to Europe” and threatened.

“Today being a Jewish student, academic or employee at an Australian university is a toxic experience,” she said at a press conference at Double Bay in Sydney’s east.

Ryvchin claimed many people attending pro-Palestine demonstrations in Australia were engaged in antisemitic behaviour and questioned whether they were really concerned about civilian casualties in Gaza, where more than 40,000 people have been killed and at least 101,000 wounded by Israel’s military since October 7.

“The 40,000 is a Hamas figure,” Ryvchin claimed. “Before citing 40,000 you need to understand that we’re dealing with 18,000 to 20,000 Hamas fighters.”

The number of casualties suffered by people in Gaza is mostly sourced from hospital statistics produced by the Hamas-controlled health ministry, but are accepted as broadly accurate by the World Health Organisation and the United Nations.

A separate community group, the Jewish Council of Australia, said it agreed antisemitism was widespread in Australia but said the data presented by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry was unreliable.

“I really object to this idea that the free Palestine movement is somehow inherently antisemitic,” said the group’s executive officer, Max Kaiser. “A lot of the university encampments have involved Jewish organisers and Jewish speakers.”

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