Published: 1 November 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
That it occurred inside their prayer sanctuary in 2018 while they were practising their religion in the so-called “Land of the Free” beggars belief.
Or does it? In a country that proudly defends the second amendment’s right to bear arms, with a dystopian president whose moral ambiguity gives oxygen to extremists, and in a world in which anti-Semitism is on the rise, perhaps an event like Pittsburgh was more a question of when, not if, it might happen.
But it was compounded by Donald Trump’s remarks that Robert Bowers, the suspected assassin who allegedly yelled “All Jews must die” as he opened fire, could have been thwarted had there been an armed guard at the Tree of Life synagogue.
As Chemi Shalev put it in bluntly in Haaretz: “He [Trump] was essentially blaming the Jewish victims for their own death.”
But Jewish leaders in Australia were probably whispering similar remarks to Trump. For here, unlike in America, the doors to synagogues and Jewish institutions are patrolled by armed guards with unarmed volunteers from the Community Security Group acting as a deterrent.
And there’s another major difference: About 40% of Americans say they own a gun, or live in a household with one, according to a recent survey.
After the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania in 1996, in which 35 people were slaughtered, Prime Minister John Howard banned all semi-automatic weapons and through a gun buyback scheme, more than a million illegal firearms were destroyed.
The National Firearms Act effectively reduced gun-owning households here in Australia by half. And there have been no mass shootings on the scale of Pittsburgh or Port Arthur since then.
So, what happened in Pittsburgh would probably not have happened in Sydney or Melbourne – and not just because we’ve got guns at the door.
[gallery columns="1" size="large" ids="24036"]
In 2011, I wrote a controversial piece questioning the millions of dollars we spend annually on security. This week community leaders were, tragically, proven right. I was wrong.
In 2011, I wrote a controversial piece for the Australian Jewish News, questioning the millions of dollars we spend annually on security, especially given the exorbitant cost of Jewish education, which is making it unaffordable to many in the community.
I dared to imagine what we could have done with the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars we have collectively invested in fortifying our community institutions – walled compounds, CCTV cameras, gun-toting guards – and I questioned what impact this may be having on our children.
The inevitable response from community and security chiefs was the astronomical amount of money we spend annually is an insurance policy – better to be safe than sorry.
This week they were, tragically, proven right. I was wrong.
And the government of the day – Liberal or Labor – keeps plying the Jewish community with funding for security as Jewish leaders no doubt make an impassioned case for increasing it.
Indeed, on the eve of last weekend’s Wentworth by-election, the Morrison government announced – regardless of the result – a boost of $2.2m in security funding. This was, unsurprisingly, welcomed by Jewish leaders who said it will “go a significant way to ensuring Jews can continue to observe their faith in safety” and that “ensuring the safety and security of all its citizens is the first duty of any government”.
The challenge to remain safe from anti-Semites like the Pittsburgh murderer and remain free to bring up our children as proud Jews in the 21st century is a virtually impossible calculus.
None of this is in dispute, and we are grateful that we have security to ensure we can practise our religion free from the threats of those who hate us.
But here’s what Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto said on Sunday: “If we get to a point where every synagogue needs armed security guards, that’s not the kind of country or city I would want to live in.”
Mr Peduto, that is precisely the kind of country we live in here in Australia. And it has been thus for so long that we have become normalised and desensitised by the macabre reality of being welcomed to our houses of worship by armed guards. It is no longer shocking, though it should be. It is simply a sad reality of the turbulent times in which we live.
But at what price? Slowly but surely, we seem to be ghettoising ourselves and our children, implicitly teaching them about the value of building walls instead of bridges.
The challenge to remain safe from anti-Semites like the Pittsburgh murderer and remain free to bring up our children as proud Jews in the 21st century is a virtually impossible calculus.
READ Stop erasing the Jewish victims of anti-Semitic violence (Tablet)
LISTEN Deborah Lipstadt on the deadly politics of white identity (ABC)
Photo: Rabbi Ben Elton speaking at the Jewish community vigil for Pittsburgh at the Great Synagogue in Sydney on October 31 (Robert Klein)
