Community message
- Published February 2 2025
- Community Message
SYDNEY SHOCK
Like you, I have been watching what has been happening in Sydney these past few weeks with absolute shock and horror.
I have full faith that our counterpart organisation, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, together with CSG NSW, is doing its best to protect the local Jewish community. The trauma and fear of waking day-after-day to a new anti-Jewish crime is wearing all of us down.
Rest assured, every Jewish leader in the country is knocking on dozens of doors and flattening our phone batteries to call for urgent and effective action to stop the antisemitism. For a long time now, words have been insufficient. Announcements and inquiries take too long. We need existing laws to be used, stronger laws to be rushed through, and effective policing to bring this terrible chapter to an end in Australia.
NEW REPORT – DEFINING ANTISEMITISM
The JCCV this week launched its latest report Defining Antisemitism: A Victorian Experience.
Intended as a guide for parliamentarians, bureaucrats, law enforcement and NGOs, this report has surveyed Victorian Jewish organisations to land on a consensus definition of antisemitism. This guide can also be provided to businesses, schools and other educational institutions and creative organisations grappling with antisemitism or just wanting to understand this significant problem better.
As well as antisemitism, the report helpfully explains, in simple terms, the meaning of Zionism, the meaning of common statements like “from the river to the sea” and “Zionism is terrorism” and how anti-Zionism is very often used as a proxy for antisemitism.
The report is available for download.
The JCCV will host a forum on how to use the report on the evening of Monday February 17.
Please click below to register.
80TH ANNIVERSARY MARKED
This week, the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day. One of my mentors and predecessors as JCCV president, Nina Bassat, continues to do a remarkable job helping people around the world understand the consequences of unrestrained hate, including on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Nina, a Holocaust survivor, told ABC 7.30 on Tuesday, “It took 52 days for Germany to go from a republic to a dictatorship and if that can happen in 52 days, I don’t think we have the time to sit back and do nothing about any hatred, whether it is hatred of Jews, or hatred of the other.” You can watch the full interview here.
I would also like to thank the Melbourne Holocaust Museum for hosting a moving commemoration on Tuesday evening. The day marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. If you would like to know more about what that day, 80 years ago this week was like, the Museum has posted some remarkable testimony from Melbourne-based survivor Eva Slonim OAM. I urge you to watch it.
AUSTRALIA DAY
On a more uplifting note, I was a guest, together with JCCV CEO Naomi Levin, at the official Australia Day flag raising at Government House on Sunday.
There were representatives from multicultural and multifaith communities from across Melbourne. It was a great opportunity to catch up with our friends and allies from the Christian, Muslim, Hindu communities and more.
