Honoured to be Australian

THE words of our national anthem urge us to “rejoice” as a nation, and Australia Day seems the ideal opportunity to do just that. As Australians generally – and as Jewish Australians particularly – we have much to rejoice about; living in a free and, as world standards go, an inordinately decent society that offers levels of tolerance, a celebration of cultural harmony, and an abiding sense of stability and peace perhaps unparalleled on the planet.

For a Jewish community, of which a great proportion descends from the post-Holocaust generation that arrived on what writer Serge Liberman aptly described as Australia’s “firmer shores”, this remote, somewhat barren continent provided a sense of salvation.

Jews in Australia have given back much to our country in their career achievements and through a sense of tikkun olam, contributing to the betterment of Australia and the world.

These qualities were recognised this Australia Day, as they are every year, with a number of Jews given Australia Day Honours. Indeed, this year Ronni Kahn was named Australia’s Local Hero.

As always, the recipients come from a diverse range of backgrounds. Their individual honours bring a collective honour to the Jewish community.

And yet, there is something unresolved about Australia Day, as there is in the entreaty to “rejoice” in our nationhood that Advance Australia Fair composer Peter Dodds McCormick made more than a century ago.

Australia Day is not Yom Ha’atzmaut. There is no stark line in the sand, no emotional climax – an independence war or revolution – that marks Australia’s birth as a nation.

As a country of pragmatists, we have a laidback attitude to national celebration, to the point that an advertising campaign was worked up this year to enthuse us. Our national adrenalin explodes at the footy finals.

In a society that evolved from forced transportation of convicts to a land whose Aboriginal inhabitants suffered as a result of the European arrival, Australia Day on January 26, the date the first colonists arrived in 1788, carries darker echoes.

When The AJN vox pop this week asked whether Australia Day or Yom Ha’atzmaut meant more to them, the answers favoured Yom Ha’atzmaut. We don’t think these members of the community love Australia less, only differently. On Australia’s national holiday, to “rejoice” quietly over a barbecue seems more “dinkum” than rallies and slogans.

Lessons not learnt from history

A PROMINENT Polish bishop reportedly accusing Jews of exploiting the Holocaust for propaganda purposes. A video on YouTube alleging that Israeli medics in Haiti are harvesting the organs of quake victims. A poll revealing that 42 per cent of West Europeans agree with the statement: “Jews exploit the past to extort money”.

Each of these stories is undoubtedly disturbing in its own right. That all three appeared within a few days of each other adds to the disquiet. The fact that they all emerged in the past seven days, however, beggars belief. For this week marked the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

And yesterday, around the world, ceremonies were held to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, mourning the victims of history’s darkest hour and pledging to combat religious and racial intolerance so that the errors of the past will never be repeated.

And yet, as the study released by the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism revealed, the oldest hatred is not only still with us, but was more in evidence last year than it has been at any time since the Shoah. That this was the case locally, as well as internationally, was confirmed by the report presented to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry in November.

Of course, much has been made of the Gaza War playing a key role in the spike in figures. And there is, without question, a clear correlation between the timing of many of the incidents and Operation Cast Lead.

But the three reports noted above and the not one, but two arson attacks on a synagogue in Crete in the past month cannot be written off in this way. Nor can several hundred other incidents of vandalism, assault and even murder cited by the report’s authors.

For all the good intentions of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, evidently the lessons of the past are not being taught in all quarters. Indeed, in some cases, the Holocaust itself is being appropriated to whip up anti-Semitic sentiment, with malicious claims that Jews exploit the Shoah and false comparisons drawn between the Third Reich and Israel.

In the aftermath of World War II, the world proclaimed “never again”. For those who suffer for no reason except that they are Jewish, the world is failing to live up to that pledge.