Chanukah candles have become memorial flames

For years we warned that the words we allow to fester would one day ignite. That the slogans painted across synagogues and Jewish schools, including “Gas the Jews” and swastikas, would not remain graffiti on walls but would one day become blood. We warned that when hatred is excused as opinion, when intimidation is tolerated as activism, when history is dismissed as politics, words turn into actions and actions turn into violence.

Now, fifteen of our brothers and sisters, children, mothers, fathers, even Holocaust survivors, are gone. Murdered in the very place where light was meant to shine. Bondi’s Chanukah candles have become memorial flames.

This tragedy was not born overnight. It was seeded in silence. It was allowed to grow in the complacency of those who said antisemitism has no place here but did nothing when it appeared on their doorstep. It was visible in “Free Palestine” rallies where Jews were spat on, and it led to Jewish students hiding their last names, removing their kippot, and concealing their Stars of David. These protests became breeding grounds for extremism. Not every protester was antisemitic, but antisemitism was present at every protest.

The time for words alone is over. The time for statements of condemnation and moral equivalence has passed. The next generation of Australians deserves more than our grief. They deserve our courage. Only education can transform this nation’s tears into understanding, and only education can rebuild what hatred destroys.

The time for action has long passed. It passed the moment Jewish children were forced to walk into class past the words “Die Jew” scrawled on their school walls. It passed when a masked mob descended on a Jewish business, hurling chairs through its windows as if attacking the people inside. It passed when Melbourne’s oldest synagogue had its doors destroyed and burned. It passed when the former home of Jewish leader Alex Ryvchin was set ablaze, a fire meant to terrorise an entire community. And it passed when Adass Israel Synagogue, raised from nothing by Holocaust survivors who believed Australia would be safe, was engulfed in flames and reduced to ash. That blaze was not random.

Graffiti was the warning. Fire was a consequence. But what happened on Sunday, the horror we witnessed, was the inevitable next step. Unless Australia changes course and breaks this pattern, it will not be the last. More Australian Jews will face the same heartbreaking danger as the fifteen innocent souls taken from us.

Chanukah teaches that even in desecration, light endures. This must be the moment Australia chose to ensure that no Jewish Australian ever again needs to hide in order to feel safe.

Australia was once a beacon of refuge. I came here as a baby after the Holocaust, with parents fleeing hatred and violence directed at our people, believing this country would offer the safety that others had denied them. Let this be the moment we rebuild that safety, the safety the Jewish community believed it had when we first arrived on these shores.

And as we light the candles each night for the rest of Chanukah, may we ensure that the flame of humanity will never again be extinguished by ignorance and hate.

May the memories of all who were taken from us be a blessing, and may they compel us toward action, courage, and light.

I respectfully acknowledge the traditional owners of this land. I acknowledge the Boonwurung and Wurundjeri people of the Eastern Kulin nation. I pay my respects to their elders both past, present and emerging.