Time for Jewish leaders to confront systemic racism against First Nations peoples

GEORGE NEWHOUSE: Jewish communal institutions and media seem strangely silent about the systemic prejudice suffered by indigenous Australians

WHY SHOULD THE Jewish community be concerned about the systemic racism that is leading to the tragic health, justice and socio-economic outcomes afflicting indigenous Australians?

For me it comes down to three things:

My Jewish teachers and rabbis who taught me to love others, to heal the world and seek justice as a basic tenet of my faith. In fact, the first line of my bar mitzvah portion (one of the most moving days in a Jewish boy’s life), begins with the words “Justice, Justice shall you seek”.

Secondly, I grew up surrounded by Holocaust survivors and felt a deep anger about the injustice of their torment. So when I became aware of the discrimination, violence, harassment, abuse and mistreatment of First Nations peoples I could not turn away from their injustice and was compelled to act.

I think the late lawyer and advocate Ron Castan said it best when he wrote: “My determination not to stand by and see the Jewish people downtrodden and persecuted was meaningless if I was standing by and seeing another oppressed people downtrodden and persecuted within my own country.”

Finally, at a deeper level, I recognised that I, like many Australians, had benefited from the colonial system, from theft of another people’s land, from genocide, violence and murder and from the destruction of First Nation's cultures and families.

But what about our communal responsibility? When William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines League marched on the German consulate in Melbourne in 1938 to protest about Kristallnacht, they saw the moral imperative to fight against racism at home and abroad.

Isn’t this the time to reciprocate their brave stance?

The Australian Jewish community has persuasive power to help make societal change. Jewish institutions and media are extremely effective in attacking antisemitism wherever it raises its ugly head – and we should commend them for this. But unless there is a swastika involved, they too often seem strangely silent when First Nations peoples are victims of systemic prejudice, racist attacks and vilification almost daily.