I’m Jewish. I’m a creative. I was doxxed. How could this happen in Australia?

Aged six, I overheard mum say she’d been denounced as a Jew in 1939 by her Polish primary school classmates and rounded up into the ghetto. Born here, I decided that wasn’t going to happen to me. When the other Jewish kids filed out of my grade one class for religious instruction, I stayed with the Christians. I can still recite the Lord’s Prayer. Not to boast, but I was picked to be Mary in the Christmas play. Mum said it was OK because Mary was Jewish.

I got older and learned that nobody cared if I was Jewish. I relaxed. I picked a footy team, became head of the 1971 SRC at Balwyn High, eventually joined the ABC, was on air for years and was twice voted by my peers to be the staff-elected director.

Apart from the occasional lunatic writing complaints in all caps about how Hitler didn’t do his job well enough, I had little reason to feel any threat.

I didn’t discuss my thoughts about Israel. It wasn’t relevant to my work. Even my closest friends never asked me. How things have changed.

I am one of the nearly 600-strong WhatsApp support group of Jewish writers, artists, musicians and academics formed in the wake of the October 7 massacre in Israel. A list of our names, photos and other details was compiled and was last week made public by pro-Palestine activists. Our diverse group of progressive Jewish creatives, who were horrified by the emerging antisemitism in our circles, are now being accused of being “repulsive genocidal predators” and of “infiltrating a wide range of institutions” with vindictive and malicious intent, no doubt part of the imagined ultra-powerful Zionist cabal controlling the world.

There’s an old Yiddish joke about a poor Jew in the late 1930s happily reading the antisemitic German newspaper Der Sturmer, because only there could he read about how rich and powerful he was. And we all know how that ended.

It’s not a joke for the Jewish Australians who have had to move from their homes, had their families and businesses threatened, had an exhibition cancelled, or been confronted in their workplaces and asked by overbearing cultural enforcers to pledge their support or sign one of the many open letters of anti-Zionist condemnation doing the rounds. Silence is taken as complicity.

On October 9 I had a call from my youngest grandchild. The eight-year-old had heard the horrible news from Israel. She asked me if this was the start of another Holocaust.
It was a heartbreaking, important question. I reassured her it was not. This time Jews have Israel which can defend its citizens. And in Australia we are a long way from the violence.

But that same day, at Sydney Opera House, some pro-Palestine supporters celebrated Hamas’ October 7 killing, rape and abduction of civilian hostages – this was before any defensive action by Israel. How could anyone who supports an Australian government-listed terrorist entity take to our streets with impunity? I felt nervous.

Jewish schoolchildren went to school in civvies fearing they would be identified as Jewish on the tram. A group of flag-waving pro-Palestinian supporters swarmed through our local area on November 10, claiming a firebombing at a local restaurant owned by a pro-Palestinian activist was the work of Jews. Police have confirmed it was not.

I noticed a drop-off in responses to my social media posts when I shared the best writing on the war. Those who in the past admired my work went quiet. Old friends stopped calling me.

On October 21, literary journal Overland published an open letter addressed to the prime minister and the arts minister describing the October 7 events as needing to be contextualised. In other words, the slaughter could be justified. It was signed by over 1000 people. When a friend asked me to sign an open letter partly in response to Overland’s, I agreed and joined the WhatsApp group set up to provide support to fellow Jewish creatives in their workplaces.

The group became a place where we could reassure those who were feeling the intimidation from anti-Jewish colleagues, groups, and cultural organisations making one-sided public statements about a far-off war. Jewish board members across such organisations including the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art felt so unwelcome that they resigned. The group shared experiences, articles, and reports, much like any other group of people with a common experience.

I’m sure you have your own WhatsApp groups too, including advocates and activists in the mix as this one does. It’s part of living in a democracy. In a democratic society we accept all lawful civic activities. Intimidating all members of the group by publishing their photos and other details has no place in modern Australia.

But it’s as if I am in a different Australia. Antisemitic stickers are pasted on shopfronts, reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s urging a boycott of Jewish stores. I saw a young woman in Chapel Street tearing down a poster of an abducted baby hostage and found it hard to reconcile this with my country, my community, my experience of living here all my life as an Australian Jew.

The Overland site alone now has eight pro-Palestinian open letters from groups of Youth, Writers and Creatives, Melbourne Uni Staff, Students and Alumni, Academics in Australian Universities, Booksellers, MEAA members, New Zealand Academics, and Legal Scholars.

As Crocodile Dundee might have said: Now that’s a lobby!

This article ran in The Age and other 9 newspapers across Australia on 14th February, 2024