Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

The day of 7 October 2023 is one that forever changed Israel and sent shock right around the world. The images that are seared onto our memories and into our collective consciousness are from the photographs of those that were killed and those that were taken hostage, but they're also from the body cameras that the Hamas terrorists were wearing. They live streamed their atrocities to the world.

Those terrorists were armed with machine guns, knives, grenades and RPGs. They invaded a music festival, where they raped and murdered terrified attendees. They set up roadblocks along highways to gun down unsuspecting families. They infiltrated villages, where they shot victims point-blank and burned homes with their families inside. Innocent people were raped and they were tortured and they were mutilated.

One thousand one hundred and thirty-nine innocent people were targeted and brutally murdered in Israel by Hamas. Thirty-six were children. The youngest was 10-month-old Mila Cohen, who was shot. Three hundred and sixty-four were young people attending a music festival. Two hundred and fifty more innocent people were taken hostage and have been hidden in the Hamas tunnels of Gaza under civilian infrastructure in conditions that can only be found in our nightmares. Senator McGrath just named those hostages. Around 100 of them remain in captivity. Some of those are already confirmed dead, but their families cannot bury them.

This was not an act of war. There were no rules of engagement. There was no Geneva convention. This was not an act of defence. There was no distinction between civilian and combatant. October 7 was a massacre. It was an act of pure barbarism beyond all comprehension. The trauma inflicted in this one day in this one act has echoed around the globe.

But, as unspeakable as it was, rather than a unified outpouring of grief and of comfort to a community that were racked with their own grief, over the past 12 months that anguish, the anguish of Jewish people in Israel and around the world, has been compounded by fear. Antisemitism, an ugly phenomenon that many felt had been relegated to history, has returned. It has bubbled up. It has boiled over, even in Australia. It's on our streets, it's in our social media and it's in our universities. And it's particularly rampant in my home state of Victoria. In fact, according to Australia's antisemitism envoy, Jillian Segal, Victoria is the worst state in Australia for antisemitism.

As of a few weeks ago there were more than 800 antisemitic incidents recorded just since October 7 last year. That is up from just 200—although 200 is too many—in the previous 12 months. Just last weekend a woman in her 60s stopped me at the gym and said that she was a fifth generation Jewish Australian woman, that her father had fought for Australia in World War II, and that, for the first time in her life, she was scared. Another woman stopped me in the supermarket and showed me her small tattoo of the Star of David on her arm. She said that she would no longer wear her necklace in public. What's happened here? This is my neighbourhood. This is my home, our home. This is their home. When did fear become acceptable?

It's not just older Jewish Australians either. There are hundreds of submissions to the inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024. But there is one in particular I want to share from a young woman named Mia. These are her words:

October 7th was an unimaginable terror. It is still unfathomable. For me, October 7th in Australia started off as a normal day, I watched the St Kilda Women play footy with a mate and stayed off my phone for most of the day. During half-time, my phone blew up with notifications about rockets entering Israel but growing up like this, you become desensitized so I didn't think much of it. On the morning of October 8th, I woke up to horror that is still engraved in my heart and my mind. I knew this moment would change the trajectory of my life, however I didn't understand the impact it would have on the international community as well, especially not the Australian. I could've never imagined it would get like this.

She then goes on to talk about her experience at university:

A place that was new and exciting, over time became a place I was reluctant to go to. I felt unsafe with the crowd of abusive Pro-Palestinians that protested inside my University. I was constantly being reminded of October 7th, but this time, it was about its "justification". The anti-israel crowd was intense and unforgiving, stopping individuals in crowded hallways and spewing hateful language. This hateful language was not just anti-Israel, but anti-Jew too. False and misleading information gave rise to hate on campus. I felt extremely unsafe and hid my Magen David necklace, with my grandmother begging me to take it off.

She finished her submission by saying:

I felt no support from my fellow classmates or even fellow Australians. I felt alone in this fight. This is an experience I do not wish on anyone else.

…   …   …

Please help protect us, I am not asking for much, all I want to do is feel safe in my community.

Well, Mia's right. She's not asking for much. She's not asking for much at all. By making that submission to a Senate inquiry she's asking for our help, for the help of everybody in this chamber. Every Australian has the right to feel safe in our country—every single Australian. It's not acceptable that our Jewish community don't feel safe in our country and that they don't feel safe in their homes. It's not right that Jewish schools need to have armed guards. It's not right that students like Mia feel unsafe wearing Jewish symbols out in public. This is not an Australia that I recognise, and it shouldn't be an Australia that anybody recognises—and certainly not one that we accept.

There is a dark irony that those who are so quick to cry racism in this place when it suits them are also the ones that condone or even occasionally whip up menacing behaviour outside of these walls. There is no excuse for antisemitism and there is no place for antisemitism in Australia—period. It is the ultimate form of bigotry. 'Never again is now' is a phrase that was repeated many times at yesterday's rally on the lawns of Parliament House, and there is good reason for that. The parallels between October 7 and the 1930s are chilling. If we don't take a strong stance on antisemitism now, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past. Never again is now.

Journalist Peter Hartcher said it most eloquently when he said:

Australia is a sanctuary from ancient hatreds, not an incubator for them. It begins with respect. For all.

I hope that, yesterday, Jewish Australians everywhere felt that respect from their fellow countrymen. I hope they felt it as thousands of Australians stood shoulder to shoulder with them in solidarity with their grief, willing them to ease the weight of their anguish by sharing their pain.

Yesterday was Australia's opportunity to pay our respects to the memories of the 1,200 innocent people murdered and massacred on October 7, to pray for the hostages that are still held by the terrorist organisation Hamas, to grieve for the families who have lost those dearest to them and to stand in solidarity with our Jewish community so that they can feel a little safer, sleep a little sounder, knowing that the people that they have put here to represent them stand against antisemitism and stand in support of Israel.