JUSTIN AMLER: Australian Jews no longer recognise their country, as heard by Bondi royal commission

The testimonies coming out of the royal commission on anti-Semitism are harrowing.

Witness after witness has spoken on how their Jewish existence in Australia is under threat. They don’t recognise the country they once knew, the safe haven many believed it was.

And sadly, they report terrible incidents targeting Australian Jews which have understandably made them fearful — fearful for their families, fearful for their future and fearful that they will one day be forced to leave this country.

It may already be happening. Two of the witnesses called by the commission this week said they are actually departing Australia, in part as a result of their anti-Semitic experiences here.

These feelings, while shocking to many Australians, are not new in Jewish history. Over the centuries, Jews have been driven from country after country — England, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Russia and beyond.

Even in the United States, during their Civil War, General Ulysses S Grant expelled “Jews as a class” from parts of the country — an order later revoked.

Back in 1934, my grandmother, then 13 years old, accompanied by her even younger brother, boarded a train at Ponevez in Lithuania, leaving behind everything she had ever known — her friends, her family, her home, even her language.

She did it because her father had seen what was happening in the society around him. He had left for South Africa in the hope he could create a safer future and bring his family over. He had seen the violence. The hatred. He knew survival would require leaving everything behind.

And he was right.

Because a few years later, when the Nazis invaded Lithuania, they, together with some willing local accomplices, murdered more than 90 per cent of Lithuanian Jews.

If not for that decision, my family line would have ended in the forests of Ponary, where 100,000 people were marched to the edges of massive pits and gunned down. And that was exactly the fate of all of my mother’s uncles and aunts and cousins.

Since the October 7 pogrom in Israel, when Hamas invaded, massacring, raping and murdering 1200 people, kidnapping a further 251, anti-Semitism levels around the world have not just spiked, they’ve exploded.

In Australia, incidents rose more than 300 per cent.

Commissioner Virginia Bell, head of the royal commission, said as much in her powerful opening remarks, noting that “the sharp spike in anti-Semitism that we’ve witnessed in Australia has been mirrored in other Western countries”.

Jews have seen a campaign of unrelenting hatred — synagogues attacked, Jews assaulted, homes and businesses targeted across the world.

And then there was Bondi. Fifteen people massacred by Islamist terrorists at a Chanukah event in December 2025 at one of Australia’s most iconic sites, in the country’s worst-ever terror attack. Bondi shattered any illusion that Australia’s distance would bring safety and security.

Some insist this explosion in hatred and violence is really about Israel and “Zionism”, not Jews, arguing that anti-Zionism — which has inspired not only street protests, but doxxings and efforts to cancel and exclude Zionist/Jewish artists, thinkers and professionals — is distinct from anti-Semitism. But if that were really true, Jewish schools, synagogues and individuals — many with no connection to Israel — would not be under attack around the world.

For Jewish communities, the passage of time since October 7 has not brought any greater sense of security, only growing anxiety. The Bondi attack was the apex of the series of ongoing assaults on our Australian Jewish community so far, but we have no reason to believe it was the endpoint. Even worse barbarities could still be around the corner.

Globally, the trend in anti-Semitic violence continues to point upwards.

The lack of seriousness in dealing with this clear epidemic threatens not only Jews, but social cohesion, the rule of law and genuine Australian multiculturalism which requires an overriding commitment to core Australian values — of democracy, mutual respect and tolerance, gender equality and the importance of facility in the English language, all underpinning integration into broader Australian society.

As well, it would be shocking to many Australians to learn that the position of Australia’s counter-terrorism co-ordinator was reduced to a part-time position.

But Jew-hatred is not a part-time concern for the Jewish community. It has become part of their everyday life in Australia. The sobering testimonies during the royal commission confirm that.

I worry that if this epidemic is not met with the seriousness, moral clarity and resolve it demands, history will not just echo, it will repeat.

And once again, Jewish families will find themselves at airports and train stations, leaving behind everything they built and everything they knew, in search of something their ancestors once had but lost: safety.

Justin Amler is a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council