Friends like these: Non-Jewish Australians speaking out against antisemitism

Jennifer Westacott, Chancellor of Western Sydney University

Jennifer Westacott can remember the transformative moment in her appreciation of the extent of antisemitism: it was the realisation that the Holocaust was state-sponsored genocide, that every institution was focused on annihilation of the Jews.

“I’d grown up as a person who was never afraid of the state, who never had reason to fear the institutions of the state,” she tells The Jewish Independent. “Walking through Yad Vashem, I tried to imagine Jews in the camps being aware that no institution would save them. That no intervention was possible. I cannot imagine what that would be like, to know that the entirety of an institutional set of arrangements was focused on one of the greatest, if not the greatest, acts of immorality.”

Westacott, who has spoken out strongly and repeatedly against the upsurge in antisemitism in this country, has joined the board of Josh Frydenberg’s recently established Dor Foundation because she is appalled at “how quickly antisemitism got out of the box, how quickly it was unleashed.

“Multiculturalism has been a tremendous success in this country, but that’s not to say there aren’t things that need fixing. We must be constantly vigilant to guard against fragility and threats to our social cohesion. Antisemitism is a threat to our multiculturalism and a threat to our democracy. We have to keep working at it and ensure that our institutions uphold society’s values. 

“While we have been a successful multicultural society, we have to remember that Indigenous Australians do not share the same experience. Together, as a nation, we have much work to do to improve Indigenous health, incarceration, education and living standards.”

Professor Westacott said the aim of the Dor Foundation is “long-term action, to make permanent change to this tide of antisemitism. It’s not enough to stop the symptoms. What really disturbs me is how these hatreds lie dormant and that it doesn’t take much to get them out of the box.

“I want to be part of something that identifies generational change in two specific areas – social media and universities. We are building alliances and partnerships and we’re in this for the long term. In 20 years’ time, we want to be able to say we saw something and stopped it. That’s an incredible mission. We have to turn this around.

“It’s hard to watch the pain and fear in our country, to see my friends feel this fear. It brings up horrific memories for many, it’s an inner trauma that surfaces. If people fear that institutions aren’t there to protect them, that is tremendously worrying.”

Public figures “have a responsibility to speak up”, she emphasises. “You can’t stand back and watch things happen, even if it means you get criticised. There were no encampments on my campus, even though we did have protests. The Vice-Chancellor, Distinguished Professor George Williams, also a person of principle and moral clarity, and I have been as one on this issue.

“We set a standard from the outset, making it clear that people had the right to protest, but not to express hate speech, racism or antisemitic views. So when we saw those things happen, we respectfully shut them down and we didn’t have the issues that other universities had. We have clear moral principles and we didn’t let those things happen on our campus, just as we wouldn’t allow expressions of homophobia or Islamophobia. Universities must be a safe space. The challenge is to be consistent.”

Marcia Langton, Indigenous rights advocate

Marcia Langton first became aware of Jews and the Jewish story as a school student in Queensland, “when those of us who didn’t fit in – a Lutheran, a surfie, a Jew, a Seventh Day Adventist and myself as an Aboriginal kid and a few others – were forced to sit in silence on a bench for two hours every Tuesday while Catholic and Anglican students attended religious instruction classes”.

“One day, our history teacher asked what we were doing there,” says the Professor of Indigenous Studies at Melbourne University.

“He was upset when we told him, so he started a debating club and invited us to join. Our first challenge was to debate whether the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk during the Vietnam War was an effective form of protest. Hanging out with Reuben, who was also on the bench, was my first encounter with a Jewish person, although we hardly spoke.

“Meeting Jewish people later in life and hearing about Jewish history, those memories came flooding back and I realised Jews have suffered forms of persecution that I’m well familiar with.”

A leading figure in the Indigenous rights and advocacy space, Professor Langton has earned widespread acclaim from the Jewish community for her unequivocal denunciation of antisemitism, dating from long before, but particularly in the wake of, October 7, 2023.

“I was on Q&A in 2019 after neo-fascists marched along the St Kilda foreshore, doing Nazi salutes, intimidating the public and daubing slogans on a Jewish aged- care home,” she recalls. “I was enraged that there was no law to stop the march, and I said a key issue our country was facing was that many Australians didn’t understand antisemitism. And that we needed education on that issue.”

Professor Langton was in the headlines recently when she published a withering critique of a Queensland University of Technology conference which was billed as an anti-racism symposium, yet featured a speaker who “presented hateful stereotypes of Jewish people that have been used to persecute them for centuries”. The speaker “deeply offended Jewish Australians and other Australians, including me”, she wrote.

“I am not Jewish, but I have contacted Jewish friends to say I am sorry for them and their children with the increasing and dangerous antisemitic attacks on them, their synagogues, their businesses, homes and property. As an Indigenous person who understands racism and discrimination from thousands of first-hand experiences, the idea that anti-racist legislation and norms do not apply to Jewish Australians … is an alarming trend.

“Jewish Australians are entitled to the same standards of community safety we all expect and which apply to all Australians of any ethnicity. No one is an exception, no group is an exception.”

After relocating to Melbourne, Professor Langton was struck by the richness of Jewish culture and ritual and the longevity of Jewish history and persecution.

“I realised that for both the Indigenous and Jewish peoples, it’s important to commemorate the genocide, particularly so that future generations understand their history. It’s a tragic moment when parents confront their children with it, but it’s essential to find a way to assist young people come to terms with it. It requires special forms of education, as well as counselling. We need to find systemic ways to teach young people not only how to be anti-racist, but how to live a positive life in the midst of social hatred.”

Frequently the target of threats and abuse as a result of her denunciation of antisemitism, Professor Langton dismisses the perpetrators as a minority. “Most Aboriginal people I speak to are disgusted by racism. The majority Aboriginal view I’ve observed is that immigrants should work to make Australia a better place and not bring ancient hatreds here. We need to create a non-violent society with protection of human rights for all.

At pains to emphasise her community’s awareness of the pivotal involvement of Australian Jews in advancing Indigenous rights, Professor Langton said “Jewish lawyers stood up in the 1950s when it was unfashionable to do so and would have caused them social death. Their courage is remembered. We wouldn’t have legal rights or Native Title if it were not for brave non-Indigenous luminaries like Ron Castan standing up for us.

“It’s important that Australians recognise the Jewish record of developing human rights in this country - particularly the naïve protesters who blame Jewish Australians for the Gaza war. There is certainly an element of the surge in antisemitism that can be attributed to that naivete. We need to make that clear so that people snap out of this ignorance.”

Arash Behgoo, Middle East researcher

Arash Behgoo lived under the rule of the people who trained Hezbollah and Hamas. “The Islamic regime was in power in Iran when I was born,” he says. “I lived there for 39 years, so I have a deep understanding of their worldview.

“In a world dominated by a victimhood narrative, you aren’t welcome if you speak up. But at some point, you need to do what’s right and say what you think. I love Australia, and if some people here don’t know about the beast Israel is up against, I have a duty to let them know. What really upset me after October 7 was that I knew people wouldn’t believe it had happened.”

Born in Tehran in 1980, the straight-talking Behgoo immigrated to Sydney with his young family in 2019, became an Australian citizen and is a passionate ally of the Jewish people.

“A friend and I wanted to demonstrate our support after October 7, but didn’t know where to go,” he says.  “We heard about a rally that was to be held a few weeks after the massacre. We turned up with an Iranian flag – which we explained to the security people is the flag of Iran, not of the Islamic Republic - and with an Israeli flag. It was a special moment.”

Arriving in Australia with expertise in engineering and management, Behgoo acquired an MBA at Macquarie University, but has taken a break from corporate life to focus on managing investments, researching, writing – and speaking out. “My decision has given me the freedom to do what I do,” he says. “Under the regime in Iran, I couldn’t speak freely. I decided it was enough of the silence. Here I express my views. It’s my duty.

“People think that Iranians who stand with Israel do so merely because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But the issue goes far deeper. The Iranian and Jewish nations share attributes and experiences: both peoples have a strong sense of national identity and both have been exposed to forces which have treated them brutally and demanded that they abandon their identity. And both peoples value life.”

The regime’s apparent “obsession with Palestine” is not merely about Palestine, he says, “it’s a claim that ‘everywhere is ours’. What bothers me about the antisemitism is the narrative of victimhood and gaslighting. The Islamic Revolution says anyone living under a law which is not sharia is oppressed, even if they don’t know it.

“The aim is to lift you out of your state of being sub-human. This is the view of the caliphate that took over Iran and tried to expand into Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Gaza. It doesn’t believe in borders and interprets the ummah as the collective of every subject of the Ayatollah, including Jews.”

The Iranian Australian community numbers about 120,000, approximately the same size as Australian Jewry.