A shocking moment at Sydney Writers’ Festival

I’ve been on the frontline of advocacy work for decades: 17 years as chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, where combating antisemitism was foremost among my responsibilities, preceded by 18 years editing the Australian Jewish News, whose pages I utilised to shine a light on all manner of bigotry, from First Nations issues to Islamophobia to LGBT rights to anti-Jewish racism.

The latter brand of hate manifested in a plethora of ways, all of them pernicious, all of them hurtful.

Yet in all that time, and despite being targeted - both as a community representative and indeed, personally - by antisemitic words and deeds, I never encountered in an open public forum the gutter-dwelling slur that Jews have “tentacles”. Until now.

The venue was the Sydney Writers Festival, which annually features international and Australian authors and attracts thousands of patrons, creating a collegiate environment which is conducive to articulate presentations by current writers and to respectful debate. And is a supposedly safe space.

One such session, a few days ago, focused on antisemitism and featured two erudite speakers - British barrister and author Philippe Sands, best known for his landmark book East West Street, on the origins of genocide and crimes against humanity; and Melbourne author Michael Gawenda, former editor of The Age, whose book My Life As A Jew was published three days before the October 7 massacre. A thoughtful conversation ensued, adroitly chaired by Michael Visontay, commissioning editor of The Jewish Independent.

Then an unidentified woman rose to her feet during the Q&A segment and brazenly announced that the speakers and the audience were sidestepping “the elephant in the room” – the “tentacles” of Australia’s “Israel lobby”.

Allegations that there is a nefarious Jewish lobby out there are tired and hackneyed, and ignore the fact that lobbying is an integral feature of democracy, whether it be the railway workers’ lobby, the teachers’ lobby or the pharmaceutical lobby. What sent a cold shiver reverberating among many of the Jewish members of that audience was the reprehensible trope that Jewish Australians have “tentacles” and utilise them to unduly bend society to their will, and thrown out so extraordinarily casually, confidently and unashamedly in a public forum of several hundred people.

Sadly symptomatic of the upsurge of anti-Jewish racism which has damaged our country’s long-held claim to be the most successful multicultural nation in the world.