Published: 17 January 2024
Last updated: 9 August 2024
The prospect of some Indigenous activists hijacking January 26 to campaign for Palestinians is deeply disappointing.
The Australian Jewish community is widely supportive of Indigenous Australian causes. Jewish leaders, most prominently Mark Leibler, have been instrumental in working for reconciliation; Jewish lawyers led the Mabo case; the Jewish community campaigned strongly in favour of the Voice to parliament, and Jewish initiatives such as the Shalom Gamarada Scholarship Program offer opportunities aimed at closing the educational gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
The support of the Aboriginal community comes in part from a strong Jewish tradition of fighting for justice, and in part from a sense of commonality, as a minority people with deep attachments to land, memory and culture.
Jewish people see parallels between the racism experienced by Indigenous Australians and the antisemitism experienced by Jews. We feel that we understand the Aboriginal attachment to land because it echoes our attachment to Israel. In both cases, land is a thread which runs through our history, our stories, and our experience of cultural connection. Both peoples know what it is to fight for the right to retain our culture, to honour the experience of our ancestors, and to be determined to pass on our identity to our children.
