OPINION: Australia’s Jews have been abandoned – we’re through the looking glass now

Over the past 22 months, I’ve often been reminded of a line from Oliver Stone’s 1991 blockbuster JFK. 

As he explains to his team that Lee Harvey Oswald couldn’t have fired the fatal shot that killed the president and that the assassination and its cover-up actually involved everyone from the mob to Cuban nationalists to the CIA and even members of the US government, Kevin Costner’s character Jim Garrison exclaims, “We’re through the looking glass here, people.”

In short, like Alice of Wonderland fame, nothing is as it should be. It defies comprehension.

Since the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023, that phrase keeps popping into my mind.

Not so much because of what we, the Jewish community here in Australia, are experiencing or enduring, but because of the authorities’ reaction to it, or rather lack of reaction.

Antisemitic slogans were chanted and flares were fired outside the Sydney Opera House the day after 7 October, and the perpetrators got away with it.

Indeed, the only controversy emerging from this sorry episode was not that it happened but what words were actually chanted. Claims that it was “Gas the Jews” are rejected in favour of equally egregious taunts of “Where’s the Jews” and “F**k the Jews,” and this is cited as some kind of evidence that the chanting wasn’t that bad after all.

A few weeks later, a burger bar owned by a pro-Palestinian activist in the Jewish neighbourhood of Caulfield is torched in the middle of the night. The police insist it isn’t a hate crime, but nonetheless, pro-Palestinian activists descend on Caulfield and end up protesting outside a synagogue. Rather than the protestors being moved on, though, it’s the shul that’s evacuated.

In the months that follow, the Melbourne Central Business District becomes a no-go-zone for Jews at weekends, echoing to antisemitic chants as thousands gather every Sunday brandishing antisemitic placards. Jewish students are fearful of going to university, where they’re harassed by activists allowed to set up encampments. Jewish school kids are told to cover the badges on their uniforms when they’re not on school grounds, peaceful Jews are dragged away by the authorities if a pro-Palestinian protest is nearby, and performances by Jewish artists are routinely cancelled because venues are worried about anti-Israel demonstrators.

All the time, it’s the same story – the Jewish community is penalised to accommodate the haters. We’re through the looking glass here, people.

But this is just the start.

From day one, communal leaders warn the state and federal governments that unless they crack down, the situation will deteriorate and end in violence.

Twenty-two months on, one synagogue has been burnt to the ground, a second narrowly escaped the same fate earlier this month on the same night an Israeli restaurant was trashed, cars have been torched, graffiti is rife, and, just last week, young Jewish school kids on a trip to the Melbourne Museum were harangued by far older students from a non-Jewish school, whose teachers reportedly shrugged off the incident. This weekend, meanwhile, the National Gallery of Victoria was forced into lockdown as protestors rallied outside, demonstrating against the support it receives from a philanthropic Jewish family.

And the response from our nation’s leaders? Furrowed brows and the same empty words over and over again. “There’s no place for antisemitism in Australia.”

Except there is. To such an extent that a) it’s in the news here virtually every week; b) it’s making international headlines; c) there’s a palpable sense of fear in the community, with members literally saying they feel they have no future in Australia; and d) possibly most shocking of all, friends and family in Israel, who are in the middle of wars on all fronts and constantly running to bomb shelters, are ringing us up to find out if we’re okay because they’ve heard how terrible things are Down Under.

We’re through the looking glass here, people.

I say the governments have failed to act. That’s not strictly true. The federal government did appoint an Antisemitism Envoy some months ago, who last week delivered a series of recommendations.

Is the government taking them up? Well, as one minister said, underlining where it’s all going wrong – they’d wait to receive a report from the Islamophobia Envoy before making any decisions. Yes, even though the two are quite distinct and even though the number of incidents targeting the Muslim community is a fraction of the number targeting the Jewish community, the government has sacrificed its moral compass on the altar of political expediency.

By failing to crack down on anti-Zionism—which attacks on synagogues and school kids clearly demonstrate is simply antisemitism through the backdoor—they have allowed antisemitism to fester.

For a country that prides itself on multiculturalism, there’s only one explanation: we’re through the looking glass here, people.

• Zeddy Lawrence is former executive director of Zionism Victoria and former editor of The Australian Jewish News and Jewish News