After Bondi: The limitations of law and the danger of walls

The threshold for hate speech is being lowered in Australia. The price for social cohesion could be the feeling of being constantly watched.

- Cory Alpert

On Monday, I was at a vigil in Melbourne for the victims of a mass shooting that happened in Sydney the night prior. It was ostensibly to celebrate Hanukkah, our festival of lights. Instead of the normally upbeat, almost kitschy feeling to the event, this was understandably sombre. Hundreds of us stood in a frigid public square, listening to leaders eulogise the lost and demand that more be done to combat this scourge of hatred.

Outside of that group of attendees was a line of police and reporters that gave the distinct impression of grieving inside a fishbowl.

Australia has been no stranger to antisemitic threats and attacks, especially in the last two years. In July, neo-Nazis marched on the streets as part of an anti-immigration rally supported by mainstream politicians. My own synagogue in Melbourne was firebombed.

This is the stuff of real, dangerous antisemitism, the kind that, left unchecked, propagates into much more serious violence of the kind we saw in Sydney last Sunday.

There is always a question of where to go from here.

Recently, antisemitism has become a favourite tool for cynical politicians to project whatever argument they were already trying to make.

Anti-immigrant groups in Australia are now using this attack as a cudgel to block migration into the country, supposedly in the name of protecting the Jewish community. Of course, it does nothing of the sort, and only gives credence to the arguments made by extremists of their own alienation from the rest of the world.