Israelis, in between seeking safety in bomb shelters, worry about Australia’s Jews

Melbourne speech pathologist Keren Zelwer was in Israel last week seeing family. The most common question she heard was: “How can you live in a country with such rampant anti-Semitism?”

Concerned that international coverage of attacks against synagogues and other Jewish sites had made her home city sound like a Ramallah with trams, Mrs Zelwer recorded a video this week in central Melbourne wearing a Star of David, a small map of Israeli and a Hebrew-language pendant.

“I’m feeling completely fine,” she told her modest online following. “There are terrible issues but I just wanted everyone to know that we are not cowering. We’re not scared. We’re not hiding. We are proud Jews.”

As nazis brazenly march through Australian cities and thousands more regularly demonstrate support for the Palestinian cause, the Jewish mother of three has unexpectedly found herself immersed in a debate of profound consequences for her small community.

Jews in Israel, shocked by attacks on their Australian brethren, wonder why they do not stage counter protests or other forms of defiance. In Australia, home to an estimated 100,000 Jews, some question if they have a long-term future in a country that may have the most Holocaust survivors outside of Israel relative to the population.

Last year, in Tel Aviv, Mrs Zelwer went to a public square occupied by relatives of Hamas’s hostages. When the protestors discovered she was Australian, they all wanted to talk about the reports of prejudice, including the firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue about 3km from her home, which the government has concluded was ordered by Iran, she said.

“Everywhere I went in Israel, people were asking me about Australia,” Mrs Zelwer said today. “They’re running to bomb shelters and they’re worried about us.”

Doubting the data

Australia’s argument over the war is likely to intensify over the next month. Israel’s right-wing government has shrugged off conditional ceasefire offers from Hamas and has called up thousands of reservists for an assault on the terror group’s last stronghold, Gaza City, which could displace and possibly kill thousands more Palestinians.

Then, in three weeks time, Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong are scheduled to attend a United Nations meeting in New York, where they plan to formally recognise a State of Palestine, a diplomatic shift that horrifies many Australian Jews once proud of Australia’s contribution to the creation of Israel in 1948.

The last detailed tally of anti-Semitic incidents in Australia recorded a 316 per cent increase in 2024, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. In the same year 309 anti-Islamic incidents were recorded, from verbal abuse to a bomb, up from an average 66 a year in the previous seven years, according to the Islamophobia Register Australia. In NSW, since the war began, the police have recorded antisemitic 367 incidents and 38 against Muslims.

Some political activists, both on far left and right, question whether life is that tough for Jews in Australia.

“Isn’t it time to tell the Jewish community to grow up?” NSW MP Mark Latham told Police Minister Yasmin Catley on Wednesday.

“That’s offensive Mr Latham,” she replied. “You’re a white Australian male so you would not know what they’re feeling.”

Ms Catley said the true number of attacks was likely to be higher than the official tallies.

Considering emigration

While Mrs Zelwer has never personally suffered from anti-Jewish prejudice, which dates back thousands of years, she said. She lives and works in Caulfield, a popular suburb for Jews and feels comfortable wearing her Star of David necklace most days.

Since the war began on October 7, 2023, though, her behaviour has changed. Whenever talking about Israel in public, she automatically looks around to see who might hear and lowers her voice, an instinctive reaction that she realised she had taken with her to Israel.

“I don’t feel scared walking around on the personal level but I am extremely concerned about the future of Jews in Australia,” she said.

“I’m not thinking to move at the movement. I am more thinking about the future of my grandchildren here. I think it could go either way. It is a conversation a lot of people are having. I am not confident. There are people who are far more negative than me. I hope things will die down eventually.”

A majority in their own country, many Israeli Jews don’t understand why Australia’s Jewish community isn’t more militant. Mrs Zelwer said she agrees with local Jewish leaders that staging counter protests would likely inflame tensions and possibly lead to violence.

“Inevitably we will look bad and it will be used against us,” she said. “What we have on our side is we’re not disruptive. Sensible Australians appreciate that.”

Her post this week received 81 replies. Most expressed hatred or hostility towards her, Israel or Jews. One came from a musician named Jesse Rowe, whose response illustrated the extreme differences among Jews about the war.

“I am also Jewish and I do not call the 18,000 children killed in Gaza by the IDF ‘terrorists’” he wrote. “I do not stand with Zionism and I do not stand with the war crimes being committed by Israel.”