From Jerusalem to Bondi

I was about to begin teaching my class on Sunday when one of the participants, a fellow Australian olah, put her telephone in front of me. Together, we watched the terrible scenes at Bondi Beach, where both of us had spent many happy hours. We were in shock.

Then, as other participants entered the class, we watched the video of the hero, Ahmed al-Ahmed, tackling one of the gunmen.

It was a perfect reminder that precisely when we see the very worst of humanity, we can witness the very best. We have seen it in Gaza and we saw it at Bondi Beach.

It also was a reflection of all of Australia at this time – the very best alongside the very worst; polarisation to the extreme. A country that was once easy-going and middle-of-the-road has become a hotbed of extremism and a divisive discourse, while not entirely losing, in many places, the values of the past that had made the country home for so many refugees from the troubles of the world.

I returned from a speaking-tour of Australia, representing Women Wage Peace, just before Rosh Hashanah. The invitation to speak in Australia came from Australians very concerned about the direction the country was taking, led by a group within the Victorian Synod of the Uniting Church. They were astute and caring people who saw the dangers in the discourse of hatred and blame, of a zero-sum game where only one narrative can prevail, that had come to the fore after October 7^th, 2023.

I toured with my colleague, Riman Barakat of FeelBeit. There is an element of irony that we, an Israeli and a Palestinian, were invited because we modelled the values of respectful dialogue, the motto of “no blaming, no shaming,” the perspective that we need to respect and have empathy for our different past experiences and a will to build a shared vision for our future, and for the futures of our children and grandchildren. More than anything else, we modelled respect for difference and appreciation of the dignity of every human person.

These are the values of Women Wage Peace, of our Palestinian partners, Women of the Sun and of many other peace-activists here. These are the values that our hosts wanted to hear. These are the values that our hosts wanted other Australians to hear. An Israeli and a Palestinian had something important to say to Australians.

Throughout our tour, we promoted the message that those who felt that to support the Palestinian people meant to hate Israelis and Jews, or to support Israel meant to hate Arabs were very, very wrong. Genuine support for the Palestinians is to support peace; to truly support Israel means to support peace. Only in peace can each and both of our peoples flourish. Only with peace is there a future in the Holy Land that we both share.

Sadly, we were not able to spread our message far enough. Many simply did not want to hear. So, although we had many wonderful moments were audiences told us what an impact we had on them, we clearly did not reach those so full of hatred that they would not listen to another message. We could not compete with the well-funded spewers of hate.

And we could not compete with an environment in which governments at all levels had decided to ignore breaches of the law and clear incitements to violence.

Only last week, I reported on my experience. I described how the Australia I encountered in this visit was so different from the country in which I grew up and raised my children. I had already noticed the changes (see https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/no-longer-a-second-home/) but to witness them first-hand was different again.

When my colleagues heard about the Bondi massacre, many of them commented that I had predicted such an event. I had not – at least not consciously – but it was a natural consequence of the description I gave of hate-speech not only tolerated but encouraged and breaches of the law tolerated if not celebrated.

One of my key “findings” was that language had been weaponised to such an extent that there was no safe place for an exchange of ideas. Those with differing views could no longer find a way of entering into dialogue and respectful discourse. This was true for the public sphere, including politics, the arts, education and business, and even in private spaces.

The horrific attack on Bondi Beach was not inevitable. Better intelligence might have picked up the activities of this father and son; a police-presence at the event might have been a protective force. We will never know.

But there are some things we do know. We know that hate-speech leads to hate-crimes. We know that permitting small breaches of the law will enable more serious breaches. We know that the environment created by the violent anti-Israel and antisemitic so-called “protests” and the tolerance of them, gave encouragement to extremists and gave them confidence.

And we also know and remember that the hero of the day was himself a Muslim – an Australian Muslim, who had not abandoned the values that we once called Australian values and who went above and beyond.

All our faiths teach us that each human life is of infinite value. Preserving life is a religious obligation. Those who murder, defy their religions. They defy the law and morality. They defy their humanity.

I hope that Australia can find its way back to these universal values it once held. I hope, too, that we in Israel can find our way to acknowledge that the hate-speech here has dangerous implications with the potential for evil. Let’s all learn the lessons of Bondi Beach.

And let us pray for the full recovery of the wounded, for the comfort of the bereaved and for the souls of the Bondi martyrs.