Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I remember vividly, on the morning of 8 October 2023, the first conversations I had expressing what I thought would be an urgent need to put in place protections for places of worship in Australia, such as synagogues, churches, mosques, Jewish schools and community centres, because I knew from bitter personal experience that there would be terrible ramifications from the horrific massacre of October 7, the unleashing of that dreadful, dark hatred and violence that saw the largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. There was the massacre of 1,200 people and the capturing of 250 hostages; the 15 months of war, death and destruction; the loss of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian lives; and the displacement of millions. There is the deep, indescribable pain of Jewish Australians who lost loved ones in the kibbutzim and of the Palestinian Australian teacher in my electorate who lost a dozen family numbers in the bombing of Gaza, and they are joined only in the darkness of their grief, which is the sad remaining remnant of shared humanity.

Now there has been the unleashing of the vile scourge of an ancient hatred, antisemitism, upon Jewish Australians. There is what I can only explain as a dark dread in the pit of my stomach that these ancient animosities, these ancient hatreds, that have wound their way through thousands of years have now come to hurt our people in Australia because of their faith or ethnic background. Antisemitism is a violent, ancient hatred. It's run its wicked course through history; through the pogroms of Europe to the culmination of the greatest horror mankind had ever perpetrated on itself, in the Holocaust; and now into our Jewish Australian community, who feel this ancient scourge in an unprecedented way in modern-day Australia. I considered in late 2023 that we would be facing not only a political storm but also a moral storm. In those moments in the eye of the storm, it's important to hold fast to the mast that is our principles, to go through the battering of the storm to find calmer waters on the other side.

But what are these principles? No Australian should be subject to violence and hatred because of their faith or their ethnic identity. This goes to the heart of social cohesion: that we can disagree, that we can have deeply held viewpoints of the world that are different from one another, that our society works only when we are able to navigate those differences peacefully and respectfully without resorting to violence or hate speech. At every turn, the government has unequivocally condemned antisemitism and has taken extensive policy and legislative measures to protect the Jewish Australian community and tackle antisemitism, but legal sanctions from any government can go only so far. The deep hatred within people who think that violence is a legitimate form of expressing their political or ideological views has to change. It has to be addressed beyond legal sanction, and that happens when representatives in this place, grassroots communities across Australia and every individual Australian citizen understand that we all have a responsibility to engage and navigate our differences peacefully.

I confess that I don't know whether the rise of antisemitism that we have seen across Australia is from a very loud and violent minority or whether what we're seeing is an unleashing of an ancient hatred that has always existed, lurking underneath. I sincerely hope it's the former. In my heart I believe that the vast majority of Australians are inherently good people who give each other a fair go regardless of their faith backgrounds and reject violence and hate as a means to an end. This small but vocal and loud minority who hold hatred in their hearts, who seek to break down our cohesive society through violence and intimidation—the leadership here in this place and across the country, in every community, in every citizen believing in and committing to their nation and citizenship, and the responsibility to protect it from violence are what will defeat that hatred.

Unfortunately, we have seen in this place those who have sought to use the human tragedy to politicise attacks on Jewish Australians for their own short-term political gain and, worse, fanned the very flames of hatred. That's an abrogation of responsibility as democratic representatives. We have to see beyond the short-term political prism to take actions and speak words that go to protecting and supporting all Australians regardless of their faith or identity, calling out the hatreds such as antisemitism, not sowing division and discord to make short-term political gain. This is our responsibly to the Jewish Australian community so that we can once again make sure that they feel safe and secure in this country.

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