'The hate that begins with Jews, never ends with Jews' — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks 'Understanding Antisemitism'

Australia is reeling from the Bondi murders. For decades we've thought our gun laws would protect us from mass shootings, and our isolation would protect us from terrorism. These are terrible days.

I often think Speakola is so big now that somewhere in the speech library there will be the right words. On this occasion, I wasn’t sure quite where to look. I thought of Barack Obama’s ‘Amazing Grace’ eulogy for Clementa Pickney, I thought of Jacinda Ardern after the al Noor mosque shooting, I thought of Valerie Kaur and her perfect speech after the racially motivated murder of a Sikh man in 2016, ‘what if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?’.

But they all miss the essential Jewishness of this moment. A father and son terrorist team fired with deadly purpose into a crowd of Jewish people celebrating the first night of the Hannukah on the most iconic strip of land in Australia. Fifteen innocent lives have been taken. It was conceived as an act of terror. It was designed to slaughter as many Jews as possible, and terrify Jewish communities around Australia and the world.

I’ve read some beautiful pieces in the last couple of days. TV critic and humorist Ben Pobjie wrote his lyrical ‘My city of shining waters’

There is no inoculation against the world. There is no guarantee against it, no way to separate from it. It’s even worse when you smile, and you open your arms to it, and the world rewards you with a snarl, and a knife in the guts.

Gideon Haigh, perhaps most famous for his cricket writing but in actual fact, one of the most diverse and prolific non fiction writers in Australian history, hit me in the heart with his piece yesterday morning, ‘Cricket in a time of Terror’.

Not really until the last five years had it occurred to me how many Jewish friends I have. It had never been integral to our friendships. But especially since 7 October 2023, they have felt their Jewishness more keenly, and I’ve been privy to their discomfitures and anxieties. On Sunday, the eight-year-old son of one of these friends played his first game of competitive cricket and took his first wicket - the proud father sent me a video, his laughter audible in the background. This father must now explain to this son why Australia harbours people who would be proud of killing them both. This son will go forward in cricket knowing that the day of his first game was the gravest day in the history of his people in Australia. The Bondi killers are not just responsible for sixteen deaths. They have succeeded beyond their imaginings, in bequeathing decades of fear, of grief, of sorrow and terror.

But they’re not speeches. When it comes to great speeches on Speakola, there are two that felt most on point. The first was delivered by the now deceased Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks in September 2016 to the European Parliament. for a conference entitled ‘The Future of Jewish Communities in Europe’.

This is how Stacks opens his speech:

The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. That is what I want us to understand today. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Hitler. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Stalin. It isn’t Jews alone who suffer under ISIS or Al Qaeda or Islamic Jihad. We make a great mistake if we think antisemitism is a threat only to Jews. It is a threat, first and foremost, to Europe and to the freedoms it took centuries to achieve.

Antisemitism is not about Jews. It is about anti-Semites. It is about people who cannot accept responsibility for their own failures and have instead to blame someone else. Historically, if you were a Christian at the time of the Crusades, or a German after the First World War, and saw that the world hadn’t turned out the way you believed it would, you blamed the Jews. That is what is happening today. And I cannot begin to say how dangerous it is. Not just to Jews but to everyone who values freedom, compassion and humanity.

The appearance of antisemitism in a culture is the first symptom of a disease, the early warning sign of collective breakdown. If Europe allows antisemitism to flourish, that will be the beginning of the end of Europe. And what I want to do in these brief remarks is simply to analyze a phenomenon full of vagueness and ambiguity, because we need precision and understanding to know what antisemitism is, why it happens, why antisemites are convinced that they are not antisemitic.

First let me define antisemitism. Not liking Jews is not antisemitism. We all have people we don’t like. That’s OK; that’s human; it isn’t dangerous. Second, criticizing Israel is not antisemitism. I was recently talking to some schoolchildren and they asked me: is criticizing Israel antisemitism? I said No and I explained the difference. I asked them: Do you believe you have a right to criticize the British government? They all put up their hands. Then I asked, Which of you believes that Britain has no right to exist? No one put up their hands. Now you know the difference, I said, and they all did.

Antisemitism means denying the right of Jews to exist collectively as Jews with the same rights as everyone else.

It’s an incredible speech, so clear and passionate, and well worth listening to in its entirety.

Another speech that I’ve only experienced in French (which I can’t speak) with English transcript is this one from Manuel Valls, who was Prime Minister of France at the time of the Charlie Hebdo shootings. For those who don’t remember, this was a terrorist attack on a French magazine that published satirical cartoons of the prophet Mohammad, breaching Islamic rules about depictions of the prophet, and triggering claims of blasphemy. Twelve people died in that horrendous attack.

Valls spoke about growing antisemitism, and the part Jews have to play in French life. He also talked about the difference between blasphemy and hate speech or Holocaust denial.

There is a huge level of concern, that fear which we felt at the Hyper Cacher at Porte de Vincennes and in the synagogue de la Victoire on Sunday night. How can we accept that in France, where the Jews were emancipated two centuries ago, but which was also where they were martyred 70 years ago, how can we accept that cries of “death to the Jews” can be heard on the streets? How can we accept these acts that I have just mentioned? How can we accept that French people can be murdered for being Jews? How can we accept that compatriots, or a Tunisian citizen whose father sent him to France so that he would be safe, is killed when he goes out to buy his bread for Shabbat because he is Jewish? This is not acceptable and I say to the people in general who perhaps have not reacted sufficiently up to now, and to our Jewish compatriots, that this time it cannot be accepted, that we must stand up and say what’s really going on.

There is a historical antisemitism that goes back centuries, but there is also a new antisemitism that is born in our neighborhoods, coming through the internet, satellite dishes, against the backdrop of the loathing of the State of Israel, and which advocates hatred of the Jews and all the Jews. It has to be spelled out, the right words must be used to fight this unacceptable antisemitism.

Again, the whole speech is worth visiting.

The speeches have begun in Australia. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese delivered something in the moment that didn’t soar, but nor did he have much time to prepare, or take obvious missteps. In the next few days there will be more speeches to come — eulogies, laments, prayers, hespeds.

And then hot takes, name calling, political take downs, international bickering, attempts to make sense of this terrible thing that has happened in this country that was meant to have consigned mass shootings to the past.

The speech I watched on Sunday night, the speech I rewatch more than any other, might make other Australians feel better too. It’s the Robert Kennedy one on the death of Martin Luther King, my favourite call to peace.

To Australia’s Jewish community, to my many Jewish friends, I’m thinking of you all.

זיכרונם לברכה

Tony Wilson