One of my dearest friends is from Israel. I didn’t know she was, it had never come up. Why would it? Honestly I couldn’t care less where she is from. She was my friend, simple.
And so it was through her social media posts that I began to learn of the invasion of Israel on October 7 2023. I read her posts with horror as I learnt of the horrific attack by Hamas on innocent unarmed citizens. Teenagers at a music festival, families in their homes. Old, young, babies, children, it didn’t matter. Burned, slaughtered and raped. The only lives that were spared were the 250 hostages. Available for the world to see in real time as proud terrorists go-pro’d the whole thing.
What happened next however has been even more shocking. Before we could even know the full extent of the barbaric crimes that were committed on October 7, a new movement began. Before the charred remains of Israeli victims could even be identified social media was awash with Palestinian flags. Before the children could even be buried a new generation was calling Hamas “Freedom Fighters”.
On October 9, while israel was mourning the biggest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, thousands upon thousands of protesters marched in front of the Sydney Opera House with Palestinian flags chanting “Gas the Jews”.
The world seemed upside down? What was I missing? 1200 Israelis were slaughtered, unprovoked, by Hamas, an Extremist Islamic Terrorist group and over 250 innocent civilians had been kidnapped and dragged into Gaza where they then copped the additional humiliation of being beaten, screamed obscenities at and spat on by by standing Gazans. And people here in Australia were cheering on the perpetrators. Two days after the massacre!
I live in a suburbs in Melbourne Australia that has been named the most multicultural suburb in Australia. We have inhabitants from 99 countries living in my suburb. It has always been a source of gratitude for us that our children get to experience different cultures, different coloured skins, different food, a huge array of different names and that white skinned kids are not a majority. Our suburb is a true melting pot. So it was with shock and embarrassment that October 7 exposed a naivety in me, that I had truly believed as a society we had moved past this. Boy was I wrong.
The vicious and targeted onslaught I have witnessed against Jews over the last 8 months, has been nothing short of evil.
I was confused? Where was the #bringbackourgirls campaign, like the girls that were stolen by Boko Haram. Where were the women of the #metoo movement? Where was the LBQTI support for Israel that is the only country in the region that supports gay rights? Where was the global support like the media attention of the British millionaire that ran out of air in the submarine?
Crickets.
I’m not old enough to remember World War 2 and the destruction of the Nazis by the Allies. But I’m old enough to have been educated about the horrors of the Holocaust, where 6 million Jews were exterminated in one of the darkest moment of our modern history.
I was watching a series on Netflix that was set in 1319 in Spain where the Jews had separate quarters, were subjected to random violence and were blamed for everything from the plague to a bad hunt. My 12 year old son said to me “Mum, why does everyone hate the Jews”. Before October 7 I would have told him that they don’t. We have evolved and become more civilised. We no longer judge someone based on where they were born or what book they read from. But I was wrong. Stupidly naive. Insulated from a hatred that is so entrenched, that it causes people to accuse girls who were slaughtered and had their breasts cut off and nails inserted into their vaginas, liars. And call the men that annihilated entire families in their pyjamas in their homes including elderly and children, as freedom fighters.
The hundreds of comments, posts, swastikas, hate, rape denying, victim blaming - all before Israel had retaliated with one single bullet. I am not the same person I was before Oct 7. I was naive, blind, stupid. Now I am awake, and heartbroken for a lost world that I believed I lived in.
What on earth does any of that have to do with the lack of compassion towards the sexual violence, rape and slaughter of over 1200 unarmed civilians? Where do you live Sharon? Australia? So you would be totally ok with Indigenous Australians storming your home with ak47s and rpgs and raping your daughters and slaughtering your family in pyjamas?
I can only agree, Kelli. Shocked and heartbroken and basically not speaking to anyone any more in case they break my heart some more. My father always told us that antisemitism never goes away. We didn't doubt that it persisted a little but thought he was living in the past if he said it could get this bad again. And here we are.