Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It takes a long time to grow a tree, but it can be cut down in an instant. When you think about what happened on 7 October, you think about how the lives of too many innocent people were cut down in an instant. I think about the Nova Music Festival, where hundreds of young people were out there celebrating. I've been to music festivals just like it. I know that many people in all our electorates go to music festivals, to go and be free and be young. Yet those lives were taken, and you hear stories of people not knowing which way to escape, not knowing which way to turn, not knowing which way was safe. That is what happened on October 7.

I went to Kibbutz Kfar Aza. The young people were on the border of the kibbutz. They were the first people attacked. You see the scale of these areas. It wasn't an operation by a small group of people; it was a large operation of people who took machine guns and went and targeted civilian people. I think about when we went to Sderot, a town commonly known as one of the most bombarded towns in the world. If you're in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, it takes about 90 seconds from when the siren goes off to when a rocket will land. In Sderot you've 10 to 15 seconds to get to a bomb shelter. We were there, and I saw the CCTV footage of a father holding his daughter in his arms, leaving a car, running for safety for those 10 to 15 seconds. He was killed in cold daylight.

These images are ones that haunt me every single day. I mourn for those who lost their lives, and I think about the experience of the Jewish people and the Jewish community who look back at that day, at the largest loss of Jewish life, of our people, since the 1940s. It breaks my heart, and it broke our community's heart. In synagogues around this country the pain still lives with each and every Jewish Australian. I think to myself: how do you move forward from that; how do you bring people with you and reach from that moment of darkness towards a moment of a better future? It is so hard, because here in Australia the Jewish community, like so many around the world, have experienced a rise in antisemitism that I have never experienced in my lifetime. You only have to go online. I'm sure that any person in this place who has made a comment about this conflict will know that the sort of hate you receive back is just extraordinary. It's relentless and it's devastating.

Often the way it's targeted at Jewish people here in Australia is that somehow they don't deserve a place and time to have a say, to make a contribution to this debate. I think about what's happened in our schools. I think about what happened to my office, for goodness sake. It wasn't a comment on the Middle East; it was a comment showing me with horns on my head. I'm a proud Australian. I love this country. I love what this country has given me, what it has given my family and what it has given my community. But that sort of nonsense doesn't belong on our streets. I think about the fact that on our streets we've had some of the most aggressive and unnecessarily confrontational protests, with people holding up symbols of hate and terror. That doesn't belong on our streets either.

I say that all of this, the darkness and devastation that has happened to me, my family, my community and my country, is real. I also ask how, knowing all of that, we can extract ourselves from this and recognise that we are all humans, that we have a shared humanity. I think of my friends in the Palestinian community—and I have many—and my friends in the Lebanese community. Do they not feel the same anxiety and pain when they look at families back home? Do they not feel, when looking at war, the same sense of loss and devastation that my own community feels? Surely the lesson of all of this, knowing what I and my community have been through, is not to think, 'How do I scream the loudest? How do I ensure I get my place in the sun,' but, rather, 'How do I open my hand, reach out to other communities and say: "We are all one human race. We are all one people. We all want to live and we all want to hand over to our community and our kids the keys to a future in a world of peace and dignity"'?

I want to see Israelis be able to live and work free from the threat of terror and violence. I want to see Palestinian kids grow up knowing that they have a future too. I want to see Lebanese families be able to live comfortably. I know that the destabilising forces in the region, led by Iran, are having devastating impacts right across the region. The world needs to be alive to that and honest about it, and we must be a part of the international efforts to confront that terror. But I also know that here in Australia we can do more to reach out to each other. I say this as a proud Jewish Australian: the Palestinian people and the Lebanese people are not my enemies. We are all people. We all must think about the future that we need to build together.

Today, in this place, this motion recognises the pain of 7 October. It recognises the fact that, for no excusable reason, thousands of militants came in and ripped apart communities and traumatised a country. There are still over a hundred hostages in the tunnels of Gaza right now, and that is causing the most devastating pain for people right around the world and, of course, in Israel. I also recognise the fact that we are all humans, and that Yitzhak Rabin and many other giants of Israeli society didn't seek war; they sought to build peace. Those who seek to build peace will be remembered kindly by history. We have to be the peace builders, too, and we have to be the people here in Australia who say to all communities and all Australians: you belong; you are part of Australian society. We want to see a shared future of people who share our humanity, our love of life and our celebration of culture, diversity and multiculturalism. We want to see a better future for all people—for those here in Australia, for the Israelis and Palestinians and for all people in the region as well.

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