We Jews in Sydney Have Feared This Day for Years |
In the beginning, the Sydney police issued a warning. Jews: Do not go to the city. Do not go to the Opera House. Stay at home.
My mother and I were on our way to the Opera House when we read the emergency warning on our phones. We are Jews. We are law abiding. We turned around and went home. What would people have said if they had told Christians to stay home, prohibited them from going to the city and the Opera House?
This was October 9, 2023, the beginning of a journey for Sydney Jews that ended this past Sunday, when two gunmen who were motivated by Islamic State ideology opened fire on a Jewish celebration at Bondi Beach.
That night two years ago, I asked a builder to survey our basement, to see if we could shelter from a mob there. The builder looked around and frowned. “What’s the problem?” she asked. “Won’t the police protect you?” I was confused; why would the police do that?
I am a fifth-generation Australian. On my mother’s side, the ancestors arrived in 1858, fleeing czarist persecution. My mother graduated from the Methodist Ladies’ College and her mother from the Presbyterian Ladies’ College. Their manners were fit for the queen’s table. My father survived Hungarian fascism, Nazism, and Stalinist communism before disembarking at Sydney Harbour in 1957. There was no running water in his mother’s kitchen, or queens’ table manners.
My parents met in Australia and settled between the Pacific Ocean and Sydney Harbour. Bondi Beach is on the Pacific side. On the harbour side are many little beaches. All year, our windows are open to the ocean breeze and the trees are ever blue-green. In this paradise, four generations of our family live with our neighbors in peace.
The night the police warned Jews not to go to the city, a mob was marching from the Town Hall to the Opera House, and when they arrived at the iconic white sails, they rioted, chanting