The Curtain Has Been Pulled Back |
I have been trying to find the right words for what has changed since the 14th.
Not just what happened, but what happened afterwards.
For a short moment, there was a kind of national pause. People reached out. Some were clumsy, some were heartfelt, but the instinct was human. Are you okay. Are your family okay. What do you need. It mattered. It mattered more than most people will ever know.
And then, almost before we had even caught our breath, the country moved on.
Life always moves on, I know that. The news cycle turns, priorities shift, people have their own crises. But this felt different. It felt like the concern had an expiry date. Like the compassion was rented, not owned.
Since then, I have been walking around with a strange heaviness, because I feel like the curtain has been pulled back. And what I saw was ugly.
Not everyone. Not even close. There are good people everywhere. There are people with decency and courage, people who check in, who speak up, who do not need a script to understand that Jewish Australians should be safe, and should be treated like full citizens, not a problem to be managed.
But on the whole, something has been exposed. A readiness, in too many places, to excuse things that would never be excused if they were aimed at anyone else. A casual tolerance for intimidation, for slurs dressed up as politics, for the idea that Jews are somehow fair game provided the packaging sounds righteous enough.
And once you notice it, you cannot unnotice it.
It is in the way conversations suddenly change tone when someone realises you are Jewish. In the hesitation before a colleague decides whether to say something supportive, because they do not want to be seen as taking sides. In the way Jewish people are expected to prove their pain before it is believed, and then prove their innocence before it is permitted.
You start to feel it in your body. The little scan of a room. The calculation before you wear something visibly Jewish. The reflex to keep things quiet, not because you are ashamed, but because you are tired. Tired of being asked to explain, to justify, to educate, to stay calm.
And that is the part that breaks my heart. Because it is not only fear. It is grief. Grief that this is what it has come to in a country we love.
For years, I think many of us held onto the idea of a silent majority. The decent centre. The quiet Australians who might not always understand, but who would draw a line when it mattered.
After the 14th, I am not sure that centre is as solid as we hoped. It is there, but it is softer than it should be. Too easily pulled along by slogans. Too willing to look away. Too ready to let organised hostility set the temperature while everyone else tells themselves it is complicated.
And when you start to feel that, the conversations change.
They become smaller and more personal. They happen at kitchen tables, late at night, after the kids are asleep. They start with a question that feels disloyal to even say out loud.
Do we stay, or do we go.
It is not a dramatic question. It is not a threat. It is not politics. It is the most ancient Jewish question there is, asked in the most modern Australian setting.
Parents are not thinking in headlines. They are thinking about schools. About safety. About whether their children will have to shrink themselves to fit. About whether the future is going to ask them to carry a burden that no child should carry.
And there is guilt either way.
If you stay, you wonder whether you are being naive, whether you are asking your family to live with an ever-present edge that should not exist in the first place.
If you leave, you wonder whether you are surrendering something precious, something that was built by generations of Jewish Australians who loved this country and helped build it too.
I do not judge anyone for how they answer that question. People will do what they must to protect their families and their sanity. What I cannot accept is the idea that Jewish Australians should be pushed into making that choice because the rest of the country could not be bothered holding the line.
Because that is what this comes down to. The line.
Every society decides, sometimes quietly, what it will tolerate. What it will excuse. What it will explain away. What it will normalise.
If we have learned anything, it is that a rough future is not inevitable. It is manufactured. It is created when intimidation is met with silence, when institutions value comfort over clarity, when leaders speak strongly for a week and then return to vague language because it is easier.
Solidarity cannot be a moment. It has to be a habit.
It has to look like people speaking up when it is inconvenient, not only when it is popular. It has to look like schools and universities enforcing standards, not issuing statements. It has to look like employers taking harassment seriously, even when it is dressed up as activism. It has to look like friends who do not ask Jews to shrink, soften, or stay quiet for the sake of everyone else’s comfort.
Most of all, it has to look like this simple truth being treated as non-negotiable.
Jewish Australians should be safe in Australia.
Not conditionally. Not briefly. Not as a favour in the aftermath of tragedy. Safe as a baseline, every day, in every suburb, in every workplace, on every campus, at every community event.
I still believe there is so much good in this country. I still believe Australia is worth fighting for. But I am done pretending that what we have seen can be waved away.
The curtain has been pulled back now.
The question is whether enough Australians are willing to step forward, and choose something better, not just for Jews, but for the kind of country Australia claims to be.