Bondi shooting: As Parliament promised to end the scourge of anti-Israel hatred, one Jew walked out in disgust

As she watched speaker after speaker call for the eradication of anti-Jewish hate, Victoria Teplitsky wasn’t feeling grateful for Parliament’s day of condolences for the victims of the Bondi Beach massacre, including her father, Semyon, who may lose a leg.

The 53-year-old retired childcare centre owner was already annoyed with many of the speeches when when one politician declared Islam “is a religion of peace”. That was when she walked out of the public gallery.

“I thought: ‘are you serious?’” she told The Nightly. “At the end of the day we’ve heard a lot of blah blah blah and we don’t believe a lot of what of this current government says.”

Ms Teplitsky achieved minor fame in the Jewish community when, in a live television interview with the ABC in the days after the attack, she accused the national broadcaster of stoking anti-Jewish hatred through its coverage of the Hamas-Israel war.

“Is this what you wanted?” she asked two TV reporters at the time. “Is this enough now? Will you listen to us?”

The comments were seen by many Jews as so perfectly summing up their anger at what they regarded as the Albanese Government’s pre-December 14 inaction that Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted the footage on its Facebook page.

Sectarian hatreds

In Canberra on Monday, Ms Teplitsky said she wasn’t interested in joining the victims’ family members granted a private meeting with the Prime Minister. She shares the disappointment of Jewish groups in the Government’s decision over the weekend to abandon an attempt to make racial vilification a criminal act.

The measure was defeated by an unlikely agreement between the Greens Party, which has close ties to the anti-Israel movement, and conservative Coalition MPs worried about losing voters to One Nation if they criminalise forms of public speech.

Ms Teplitsky is willing to say what Jewish leaders tend only to say in private: the primary threat to Jewish Australians’ safety are the extremist Muslim activists importing sectarian hatreds from the Middle East.

“We are fearful of radical Islam,” she told The Nightly. “From our perspective there is no such thing as Islamophobia. It does not exist. Fear for me is very real and legitimate. I know Muslim people who fear Islamists. It is enough playing politics with our lives. Can’t you just say it as it is?”

The claim there is no anti-Muslim hatred is unfair. Just ask Ismet Purdic. The chief imam of the Noble Park Bosnian Islamic Centre was almost run off a highway in Melbourne a week ago and then attacked by 23-year-old Brendan Nicholls, according to the police. Charged with criminal damage and assault, he is being held without bail.

Brenton Tarrant’s 51 victims would, if they had survived his murderous rampage through two Christchurch mosques in 2019, dispute Australia does not generate anti Muslim-hatred.

Mainstream Muslim leaders have repeatedly condemned the violence of December 14 and raised legitimate concerns about being pursued under the proposed vilification law.

Praying in war

But in Australia today the evidence is compelling that Jews are more likely to be subjected to physical and verbal violence than Muslims. The causes, which are neither simple, fair or obvious, will be investigated by the royal commission into anti-Semitism and social cohesion.

In the meantime, Jews such as Ms Teplitsky appreciate parliamentarians’ rhetorical support. But it isn’t enough to overcome their cynicism towards the Government, which they accuse of contributing to the hostile environment by appearing to side with the Palestinians over a distant war.

One of the speeches that rose above the many moving words was delivered by Julian Leeser, the senior Liberal Jewish MP and education spokesman. Mr Leeser explained how his father attended weekly Jewish services as a prisoner of the Japanese in World War II on the Thai-Burma railroad – a place among the saddest in Australian history.

“There is much I grieve for today,” he said. “But it is the loss of the truth that ‘Australia is good to Jewish people’ that crushes me.”

On the Labor side, former Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus read a Jewish mourning prayer wearing a skull cap while all members of the House of Representatives stood out of respect. Spoken in the Aramaic language of Jesus, the prayer was a reminder of how ancient Judaism is, and the prejudices that follow it.

“For every person murdered there are family and friends left behind,” he said, in English. “It’s a reminder of how fragile our shared sense of peace can be and how vital it is that we protect it together. There are some who want to take that from us. We must not let them. You don’t have to be Jewish to feel this in your chest.”

It was hard not to ponder whether the government might have not been so enthusiastic in its support of a Palestinian state if Mr Dreyfus had not been stripped of his Cabinet rank last May.