Right now there is a serious anti semitic incident in Australia on a daily basis. Life for Jews in Australia is subtly and not so subtly different to life for other Australians. Our schools are protected by armed guards and barbed wire, when any Jewish community org holds an event it withholds the address until a few hours before the event and the event is manned by volunteer security guards, Jews have been doxxed and subject to vile harassment for being Jewish, community members are in a state of siege and fear. We are a community of 120,000 that was largely established from the ashes of the Holocaust 80 years ago. That includes my family; my mum survived the Holocaust and arrived in Australia with the tiny remnants of a large extended family in the late 1940’s. We have given a lot to Australia as a community and received much in return. Our contribution includes two heads of State, a High Court Chief Justice, Australia’s greatest soldier and a Federal Treasurer as well as many others who have transformed the country in the arts, law, business and the community sector. Social cohesion in Australia is at an all time low and a tiny community making up 0.5% of the Australian population is in the firing line. It is completely legitimate to hold varying views on the war that has taken place between Israel and Hamas and the other Iranian proxies. It is not legitimate to glorify savage attacks on civilians and it’s certainly not legitimate to take the hatreds from the Middle East and create a climate of fear for the Jewish community in Australia. There have been some remarkable displays of support for the Jewish community from a wide cross section of Australians. To those who have sat on the sidelines to date we need your solidarity and explicit support. These actions by anti semites are not acceptable in Australia. And to those who are going to reply with “what about the people of Gaza”, my heart breaks for innocent civilians that have suffered in Gaza and other parts of the Middle East.