Act Against Hatred

Published 27 December 2024

Here's an opinion piece I wrote for The Daily Telegraph after the attacks in Woollahra.

Hate.

It’s a powerful emotion and should have no place in Australian society, where our remarkable success story has been built on a cultural bedrock of tolerance and acceptance of people from around the world.

But hatred is now emerging as a growing threat to Australia’s social fabric, via the foghorn, behind the anonymity of the keyboard, and worst of all by firebombing cars and places of worship in our quiet city streets in the darkness of night.

How has it come to this?

Last week, as parents across NSW began celebrating end of year school speech days, one school in Sydney’s eastern suburbs was dealing with the emotional weight of our current national mood.

As the blameless little primary school students were happily singing Jewish songs, one mum said to me through tears that “the innocence breaks my heart, because they don’t yet know there are people who hate them”.

That is a heartbreaking statement in Australia in 2024. Most Australians of course condemn the rise in antisemitism that has exploded in our country. Most people abhor it. Yet, the daily reality for our local Jewish community is the necessity of posting more security guards outside school gates and synagogues, and hiding Jewish symbols and school uniforms, in the face of increasing intimidation and threats of terrorism.

Twice in the past few weeks we have witnessed hateful attacks in the dead of night while people are sleeping; cowards painting disgusting slogans on cars and buildings. Torching cars.

We wake up to scenes of a Melbourne synagogue in flames. We see protests outside Sydney’s Great Synagogue and Jews too scared to attend university because of institutionally sanctioned protest camps on campus that are indirectly focused against them.

And early yesterday morning another car was torched in a quiet suburban street because its owner was thought to be Jewish.

One local Jewish woman told me she grew up in that neighbourhood but was never subjected to antisemitism until the past year. The country she thought she knew had changed.

A radio announcer suggested to me that perhaps we shouldn’t publicise these events because the attention could incite copycat attacks.

But silence and appeasement are not the answer.

History has shown us that appeasing those with hatred in their hearts only emboldens them – encouraging them to escalate their attacks from verbal to physical ones.

That is what we are now seeing – at places of worship and in our streets.

These are terrifying assaults on one section of the Australian community, peacefully going about their lives, committed to their faith.

Targeting innocent Australians here for what occurs on the other side of the world is the embodiment of ignorance and bigotry.

We need concrete action from all levels of Government and the community, to eradicate this violent dogma before it becomes a depressingly regular feature of modern Australia.

We cannot tolerate one group of Australians feeling unsafe in their own country – simply because of their religion or their ethnic identity.

A terrorist attack on one group of Australians us a terror attack on us all. We cannot - and should not - look away.

The NSW and Australian Governments must work together to root out antisemitism – before the evil winds of hatred become unstoppable.

That means arrests. That means exercising the powers we have under legislation to bring legal action against those who preach hate. That means changing laws if they don’t measure up. It means monitoring online public forums and identifying dealers of hate before their twisted logic becomes embedded in innocent minds.

We cannot be timid about making an example of the people who actively work to incite violence, intimidation, and discrimination.

Australia is better than that. But it will take a strong stand from our nation’s leaders to affirm what we will stand for, and importantly, what we stand against.

German pastor Martin Niemöller famously said after World War II that:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

“Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

“Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

“Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

We must heed that warning. It’s incumbent on all of us to speak out. And to act.