Lived experience, paranoia and slippery antisemitism

A couple of weeks ago I tried to escape my world of Israel news and Jewish communal anxiety for a Sunday matinee performance of Sunset Boulevard. At the interval, I emerged in search of ice cream and instead found a pro-Palestinian protest.

The invasion to my precious moment of leisure made me feel uncomfortable. The repeated slogan “From the river to the sea” made me feel threatened, because I know there is no way Palestine reaches from the river to the sea without killing or displacing some 40% of the world’s Jews.

There is a world of difference between the discomfort and the threat.

There is also a good deal of subjectivity. I know other Jewish people who feel frightened by protesters in keffiyehs and a few who don’t think “From the river to the sea” threatens Jewish lives.

For every Jew who says, “It’s like living in the 1930s”, there’s another who considers his fellows paranoid. Most of us sit somewhere in between, aware of a degree of antisemitism we have never experienced before, but holding on to the belief that most Australians are not haters.

Australia’s first Special Envoy to combat antisemitism Jillian Segal will have her work cut out for her, not only in developing policies and programs to address the rising tide of antisemitism but also in dealing with the complexity and slipperiness of its modern manifestations. 

The tensions within the community are illustrated by some of the correspondence I have received as Editor of The Jewish Independent in recent weeks.