Jewish Australians on the Bondi Beach attacks

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1:11Hello, I'm James Reynolds. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. In BBC OS Conversations, we bring people together to share their experiences. This time, Jewish people from around the world discuss their experiences of anti-Semitism. The Australian government says it will crack down on hate speech following the deadly shooting that targeted a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach. People had come together to celebrate Hanukkah when two gunmen opened fire, killing 15 people. Australia's new laws aim to target those who spread hate, division and radicalisation. Later in our conversations, we'll bring together Jews in the US, Germany and Belgium who share experiences of anti-Semitism in their lives.

1:57Our first guests, though, are all Jewish Australians. They spoke to my colleague Luke Jones earlier in the week, a day after the Bondi Beach attack. Ohad is a teacher in Melbourne, Sharon lives in Bondi, and Paul and his wife Eva are from nearby Sydney. It's a little bit like, you know, where were you on the night of 9-11 or the October 7th? And this really fits into that category, which is etched into your brain where you were at the time when you heard and what was your initial reaction? It was horrific. I was shaking. But, you know, to think that it was unexpected, I can't say. I think our leadership here has been so weak since the beginning of October, well, the day after October 7th or October 8th, when basically they were rioting at the Opera House and virtually nothing was done and the dreadful language and slogans that were used and then nothing to sort of make us feel safe or as time ensued, other things were happening and we just felt that really no one cares about us.

3:13Although I must say friends and people in the street have certainly cared. I can't tell you the calls and the texts I've received from overseas and from friends who are not Jewish and people I haven't even spoken to in a long, long time. So, you know, that gives me a lot of solace and hope. I've been inundated by support from around the world and it's been very touching and very meaningful. But, I mean, I think we're shocked but not really surprised, unfortunately. It almost feels like you see the arson, you see the graffiti, you see the protests, you see the slogans, you see people delegitimising Israel and its right to exist.

3:57And the jump is unfortunately not that far for people to then delegitimise the right of Jews to be in this country. And as she mentioned, I think we've been feeling increasingly unsafe. And this is just unfortunately a real tipping point that everyone's now suffering from. I think it's really important in this moment for us to not play this game of teams, of winners and losers and who's winning the game or something. the thing that we all need to remember and stay really strong on is that we stand against this kind of violence, whoever, irrespective of who perpetrates it. And we do know that Israel has perpetrated some quite unacceptable violence on Palestinians, and that October 7 was also an act of violence that is unacceptable.

4:40And it's really important for us to be consistent about that. And I've been really heartened that so many people who I know and who I love, and some people who I know even tangentially have been contacting me and making that so clear and that this was two sick, horrifying people, terrifying people, but this overwhelming feeling of support and love and a refusal of this kind of terroristic violence. That's been the message that we've been feeling since and that gives me some hope and it's important to hold some hope. I wonder what all of this means for your day-to-day lives. Not just the fallout of an incident like this, but as Sharon, I think you alluded to, some of the many anti-Semitic attacks that Australia and Sydney in particular have seen over the past couple of years.

5:33Cars being graffitied, schools being graffitied, synagogues set on fire and having, in one case, a swastika drawn on it. Does it affect, Sharon, the way you live and operate and move about your city? Well, I mean, I just went this evening to our synagogue. There was a candle lighting. People came together. People really wanted to connect and be together. And in addition to our communal security group, who are usually there doing security, plus an armed security guard who's also usually there, there was also a police presence. And, like, on one hand, you welcome it and you're grateful and, you know, thank you to the police and all the first responders who were there on the scene and the amazing work that they did.

6:15But it's also wanting to live in a society where we don't need to live under police protection. We want to be able to participate fully. We want to be able to have events, not to be in fear and not to be able to be in a public space and to share the beach with the thousands of people who enjoy Bondi Beach and to be able to be there. I work in the Jewish community for the Jewish Independent and we had an event just a few weeks ago where one of the communal security volunteers was wearing a bulletproof vest. It's hard to fathom that our kids, because really these volunteers are kids, they're like in their 20s on the whole and they're doing great work, but they're kids and they're putting their lives on the line.

6:57I know one of the security that we're working there, she's had surgery today. You know, she had a bit of shrapnel in her arm. And it's terrifying to think that we have to live with that and we shouldn't be able to participate fully in Australian society. I remember when my kids first started going to school, there was no guards on the Jewish school they went to. But by the time a couple of years went by, they cannot remember a time when there wasn't a guard at school with guns, you name it. It's a terrible situation that we have to live in a state like this. I think one of the most ironic stories I've heard is I was talking to a young guy today who was doing some work for us and he happens to be Lebanese and I think Muslim.

7:45And he was invited to his first Hanukkah event last night in the eastern suburbs. He was at this event and he was absolutely having a ball and all of a sudden the police turned up and said, you're immediately in lockdown. And they were in lockdown for two hours and they were then after two hours escorted each individually to their cars. I spoke to him about it this morning and I said, So how did you feel? And I said, welcome to our community. This is what we've been putting up with. He had unbelievable empathy now for the Jewish community and was so literally, he said, I can't believe that your community has put up with this for so, so many years.

8:31And I said, it's a fact of life. To my mind and to the mind of many people who I'm close to, we feel it's really important to build the kinds of connections that Paul was just talking about between our communities. Because at least in my view, the road to safety, clearly it was very important that police were there yesterday. I mean, if the police need to be there, in a sense, something has already failed. And the road to safety really needs to come from the relationships that we have within our communities and between our communities and across our faiths. And that's hard work and it's patient work.

9:07and extending those acts of empathy feels to me to be the path to the kind of safety that we want so that nobody in this place that we live has to go through anything like this or even graffiti or even being yelled at in the street or abused. Has that ever happened to you, Hud? I have not been abused on the street, no. I have had anti-Semitic comments said to me, but not in that sense of yelling and intimidation, unfortunately enough to say. when it happens it's a shock to the system and it takes a moment to register and it can come in very subtle ways too it doesn't need to be words of abuse it can be sly words of praise too it can have some connotations that are very clear to those who can hear them just following on from what Ahad was saying I think a real shout out to the I believe he's a Syrian Muslim who accosted the second gunman and took the gun away from him, like in the most insane act of bravery that was caught on film.

10:09You know, I'm really hugely grateful that people are willing to stand up and do things like that. The beach is like a melting point. We were there at lunchtime. The beach was packed. It was a glorious day. There were people from all walks of life. And I'm sure at this Hanukkah event, it wasn't just Jews coming up to hear the songs and to play on the rides and light the menorah. That's the whole point of this Hanukkah lighting event. It brings other people to understand who we are because, unfortunately, we are very few in number and most people don't even realise what, you know, somebody Jewish is until they get to know you personally.

10:57So, you know, the idea of Hanukkah lighting in different places is such a wonderful idea. And my only, and my sadness now, I feel that the idea of doing the Hanukkah lighting in various spots in the city will now take more curtailed situation and will have more police presence or security presence. and it will lose that sort of enjoyment of everybody being around. How do we stop this, Paul? How do we tackle anti-Semitism and actually solve this issue if you think it is possible? That's a really million-dollar question. I come from a marketing background and for the last two and a half years I've been working in the space of being able to provide students, both primary, high school and university students, tools to be able to push back against the hate speech, whether it's on campus, in school or online.

12:01And some of the stuff that I have seen that these kids are being exposed to is just horrendous. Now, for every one pro-Jewish or pro-Israel message these kids see, they get 56 anti-Semitic, anti-Israel messages. The thing that I've been fighting against is the hate speech where you've got globalize the Intifada. And I even wrote an ad a year and a half ago which said, what does it mean if globalize the Intifada actually happened in Sydney and showed an example of it? And I cannot believe it that it is almost word for word what happened on Sunday. So now people can actually understand what this hate speech actually means and can demonstrate it.

12:51And hopefully, hopefully, a firewall will be created where people will now start to be able to push back against it or at least start questioning what it actually means. The impressions I have and my position is it's probably becoming a little bit clear is a bit different. I see very thoughtful, very attentive young people who are looking for a language to describe what they're seeing. And they are seeing horrifying violence on their screens and in their world. And I'm seeing a lot of them being able to distinguish between what a country is doing and the Jewish ethnicity and the Jewish religion.

13:34And I can simply only attest to that from my own experience with my students and with many, many people in my life who are very passionate about human rights and who are very, very supportive of Jewish people, but not of what Israel is doing and of Israel's policies. And I think that distinction is very important if we are to fight racism, that we can make distinctions like that and we can recognize our shared humanity. Ohad, Sharon, Eva and Paul in Australia. I'm James Reynolds. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

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15:55Reports from across the world suggest that anti-Semitism is on the rise, particularly since the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Recently, here in the UK, two men were killed during an attack on a synagogue in Manchester. Earlier this year, two Israeli embassy staff members were shot dead outside a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C. And a few weeks later, in the US state of Colorado, a group of people raising awareness for Israeli hostages in Gaza were attacked. We wanted to hear from Jews around the world then about the challenges that they face. Rabbi Benachem is chairman of the European Jewish Association.

16:32He's in Belgium. Deborah is in Berlin. She's a board member of the Young Forum of the German-Israeli Association. And Brandon is in Colorado. He's director at the Jewish Community Relations Council. Just in Colorado here, we've seen swastikas drawn on the sides of highways on public property so that everybody who was going skiing would see it. I was personally at a walk for the release of the hostages and there was a person yelling at us, arm Hamas, arm Hamas beside it. And, you know, living in Colorado, we saw the boulder attack here personally. I knew folks that were killed and injured in that.

17:10So it's been something that we felt acutely. Growing up, I experienced anti-Semitism at school. Kids told directly to my face that they hate me just for being Jewish. My family, they are from Odessa, Ukraine. They escaped from the former Soviet Union because they couldn't live there freely as Jewish people. and they came to Germany to ask for their kids to have a free life, to have the possibility to express our Jewish identity. I remember my dad saying that he felt like he failed because he couldn't give to me what he wanted to. After the attack on October 7th, I lost quite a few friends because of anti-Semitic remarks that I never expected to come from them Do you mind me asking what kind of thing?

17:59I would say very connected to conspiracy theories, but Jews controlling the media and that Jews in Israel are richer than other groups and so on. And that was coming from good friends? Yes, good friends, yes. Very good friends, actually. They've come to my home, they've seen my family, we've celebrated Jewish holidays together. So that was very shocking. I must say, as being the chairman of the European Jewish Association, I hear these kind of messages and information also from many colleagues all around Europe. And I must tell you, I think that people really do not understand how much anti-Semitism today is something that almost every single visible Jew experience all around Europe.

18:46The level of hatred against Jews breaks its record every single day. The conflict of the Middle East, which is, this is the current excuse now, but, you know, the last war in Gaza started on October the 7th, 2023. It was not paradise before that either. It's already for too long that we see a lot of anti-Semitism, a lot of hatred against Jewish people. The main issue is that the vast majority of the governments, of the leaders in the past were much more committed to combat anti-Semitism for various reasons, does not care at all now. It became a norm to hate Jews. It became norm to hate Israel.

19:26It became norm to accuse the Jews of the diaspora for what happens in Israel. And government does not do what they have to do. And we live in such dark time that only Holocaust survivors could say that it really reminds them the years before the Holocaust. As you explained there, anti-Semitism has been on the rise in various parts since October the 7th and the war in Gaza started again. Do you think the way in which the Israeli government has gone about prosecuting the war has made that worse? I'm not saying that is an excuse for anybody being anti-Semitic because of course it's not, but do you think that has made the issue worse?

20:08There is a war on our continent in Europe between Russia and Ukraine for the last three years. Over one million people died in this war. I did not hear of any Russian person who was kicked out from a restaurant in Europe. I did not hear of any person carries Russian name who made an order via Airbnb and then it was canceled because it carries Russian name. I did not hear of any people that just because they have, I don't know, they shared some culture or food or whatever it is, that they were trying to book all what was an event, end of schools, and it was rejected. And what we see today is completely unrelated to what's really happening or not happening in Gaza.

20:50This hatred was many years ago. It was for the last 10 years, for the last 20 years. It actually continued to break its record. And I think that, you know, in the history, we're quite experienced, you know, the Jews. The Jews lived in Europe, actually, before Europe was called Europe, for over 2 ,000 years. And every time there's another excuse to hate Jews. It's really not about Israel. I think anti-Semites will always find a reason to attack Jews. And we see it on campuses. We see it everywhere. people, for example, going on so-called pro-Palestinian protests and chanting, globalize the Antifada, gas the Jews, and so on.

21:28And you just understand this has nothing to do with Israel. This is just pure hate against Jewish people. I do think the war with Hamas is playing a key part of this. I think more than anything, that's creating a permission structure for anti-Semitism in two real ways. I agree with the other callers that there is a thread of people that are anti-Semitic that hate Jews. But I also think that there are people who exist in our world right now that is full of reductive thinking and black and white narratives and is not able to hold complexity. And in that moment, the way that they are interpreting and understanding the war between Israel and Hamas feeds their own anti-Semitism and distaste of Jews.

22:18So they may not be anti-Semites in their hearts the way that, you know, we've always been describing, but just in this really broken political environment, they are finding themselves in solidarity with anti-Semites, parroting anti-Semitic talking points because we just don't exist in a culture that can understand complex and hard things at the same time. And I want to be clear, just because that's true doesn't mean that that's justified. Again, the attack in Sydney had nothing to do with Israel, nothing to do with the prosecution of the war against Hamas. I mean, they're totally unrelated things.

22:53But the fact that we live in a world where people link, you know, the IDF's response in Gaza to the celebration of Hanukkah on a beach in Australia kind of just shows the shallowness that I'm talking about. And how do all of you deal with this? So I've been having the same conversation over and over again with my family and my parents in particular are frightened for me to attend Jewish events and I completely understand why. But I continue to go because I want to and because I feel I need to. And being afraid and withdrawing from public Jewish life is exactly what the anti-Semites want. For us to stop celebrating who we are and after the attack, I felt a strong need to be surrounded by other Jewish people And I went to a Hanukkah event and lit the first candle together with many other young Jews.

23:40And that sense of community was very important to me. Yeah, I agree with that. So I also run a Jewish organization that does community relations and political advocacy work. The way I deal with this is just trying to make relationships with non-Jews. You know, I think that there are a lot of people that don't understand Jewish identity, that don't understand why a Jewish person in Belgium or Germany or the United States would care about what's going on in Israel. So I kind of find that the answer to this that I'm seeking is trying to build community and show other folks, at least in my state, whether they're Christian or Muslim or Latino or African American or anything, that the Jewish community and their community often have a lot of shared values and that the risks and security threats that we're facing are largely downstream of the same nefarious forces.

24:33So trying to show that we're all in this together, that our safety is all tied up in one another, and that mutual understanding is the way forward. I think that one of the things that everybody has to understand is like that, you know, my kids were born in Belgium. I personally was born in Israel. My father was born in Belarus. His father was born in Lithuania. His father was born in Poland. And the reason why the Jews, and this is the story of every Jewish family, that every generation is born in another country, is because the safety and security of the Jewish people is in the hands of the governments.

25:07If the government wants Jews to live in a country, they have the tools to ensure the safety and security. And what we see today is that the governments, at least in Europe, do not do the necessary in order to ensure Jewish life on this continent. And for this reason, if nothing is going to change, We will see more and more and more Jews leaving every single country where they do not feel safe and secured. And Europe will be a place without Jews. That will be a big failure for this continent. It will be very sad for the Jewish people, but it will be a strategy for Europe itself. Rabbi Menachem, Deborah and Brandon.

25:45Thank you to them and to all of our guests this week for sharing their experiences. I'm James Reynolds. You've been listening to The Documentary from the BBC. World Service.

26:03The interview. The best conversations from across the BBC. Today we are spending trivians on war and peanuts on peace. With the people shaping our world. You're making decisions that will have long-term consequences for the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Wind power in the United States has been subsidised for 33 years. Solar for 25 years. That's enough. The interview from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.