Jews have lived experience: listen to our fear

Most people who’ve been to therapy know the rule about the word “should”. It always needs to be unpacked. Who says you “should” do something? Why “should” you? 

As a woman, I don’t feel safe walking on the street late at night on my own. This lack of safety isn’t predicated on nothing. It’s based on years of being harassed on the basis of my gender, friends who’ve been attacked on the basis of their gender and story after story in the media about women being harassed or attacked on the streets all over the world, including in Australia. 

I’ve had men argue that I “shouldn’t” feel unsafe, that there’s no reason for me to feel unsafe, it’s an irrational fear and unfounded. Does this make me feel safe or safer? Of course not. It makes me feel unseen and dismissed. Because this lack of safety is based on my own trauma and my own experience. It’s something a man might try to understand but will never fully understand in the same way that I do. Just like I will never understand what it’s like to use a urinal. But I digress.   

In October last year, I went to a book launch for my dear friend, Josh Bornstein. It was just a few days short of the anniversary of the October 7 attacks and he was asked a question by the audience about the safety of Australian Jews and whether there was basis for that fear - whether we "should" feel fearful. The answer he gave resonated with me and has most days since. 

He observed that it’s not for anyone else to say whether those fears are founded or unfounded. If someone feels unsafe taking part in public discourse because of their ethnicity or culture, in going to their place of work or study or venturing into public places with their families, that is a problem for us all. 

It should go without saying but I will state it anyway: whether Jewish, Aboriginal, Muslim or from any other minority or marginalised group, everyone in this country has a right to feel safe engaging in public life. 

I would even go a step further and say that when you’re on the outside looking in on someone’s lived experience, you have no idea what’s founded or unfounded. You have to trust that someone who has been subjected to a specific form of racism or bigotry that you haven’t, knows better than you what it looks, sounds and feels like. That when they define what is or isn’t unsafe for them, that they know it better than you. 

That’s what centring lived experience means in practice. If you haven’t been through it, you cannot disregard or dismiss someone else’s reality.  

While commonly used in anti-racist circles, the term "cultural safety" was first used in a medical context, specifically by Maori nursing academic Irihapeti Ramsden in her paper "Cultural Safety and Nursing Education in Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu’. 

Ramsden's definition outlines that the onus for cultural safety is on medical practitioners. Only the person receiving the care can define that space as culturally safe. What this means is that no one else can describe a situation as "culturally safe" except the individual from the minority or marginalised group in question. In summary: you cannot tell someone a space is culturally safe for them; only they can confirm if they are culturally safe. 

Someone who has lived a reality of anti-Jewish racism, whether family murdered for being Jewish, being subjected to it by peers or friends, experiencing it in the workplace, or in relationships, knows how it feels. What it looks like. The smell. The taste. The prickle on the back of your neck as your goosebumps pop up and you start to argue with yourself in your head, opposing dichotomies, trying to convince your conscious self that it’s all in your imagination when you know that it’s not. 

Last month, as we watched a Jewish communal leader’s former home targeted by arsonist(s), and a childcare centre adjoining a synagogue covered in hate-filled, anti-Jewish graffiti, burn down to the ground, I think almost all Australian Jews were shocked, but not necessarily surprised that this is where we’ve landed. This week we have a caravan of explosives apparently targeting a synagogue and more defacing of Jewish day schools.

Hatred of Jews didn’t suddenly appear in 1939 or magically disappear in 1949. But the rising of the tide since October 2023 is something the vast majority of Jews, irrespective of our politics, could see and feel deep in our souls. We have been here before. 

The two polar opposites of the community have tried to obfuscate this spike in their own ways. One side claims that any criticism of Israel equates to anti-Jewish hate. I don’t subscribe to this theory, and nor do many Israelis (whether Jewish, Muslim, Druze or other) who can and do criticise the Israeli government from both within and outside its illegally expanding borders. This includes criticism of its actions recently, historically and otherwise. It’s no different to the way Australians from all walks of life criticise the Australian government, both current and historic. 

At the other end of the spectrum are those who tried to belittle this growing filth, claiming that there isn’t an anti-Jewish hate problem, it was just sensitive souls confusing it with anti-Zionism. I don’t buy this either, and clearly history shows it was a glib and dismissive argument.

The issue in my view is that criticism of Israel and of the Jewish desire for a Jewish state are often intertwined with anti-Jewish hate, and the location of the line between the two can be hard to pinpoint. 

This is where we circle back to lived experience; the line is where those who have been the victims of anti-Jewish hate say it is. We may not all agree. The line is not static; it moves. It’s subjective and it requires nuance and interpretation. 

But it is not and certainly never will be for non-Jews to say what is and isn’t anti-Jewish racism or to dismiss or belittle a Jewish person they say they feel unsafe. If those outside my community – those who do care about racism towards all people and just not applying anti-racism standards selectively – were listening when we were warning of this day instead of shouting over us, maybe they wouldn’t be surprised at the escalation of attacks either. Shocked yes, but not surprised. 

That much of this behaviour has emanated from the left has been a source of particular pain for me, as someone who subscribes to left-wing politics, a core component of which must include listening to and prioritising marginalised voices.

As a close friend said, you can’t be half an anti-racist. You are either anti-racism or you’re not. You either hold these values for everyone, or you don’t. 

From those, both within and outside the Jewish community, who shouted over those with lived experience of this hate, those of us warning that the vitriolic rhetoric in which they were engaging was contributing to our lack of safety, there is a profound silence now. A lack of acknowledgement of where the community finds itself. 

This silence has made one thing very clear. It confirms that respecting the line between hate and criticism was never their concern or interest and never will be. It is a message that won’t be forgotten.