Thursday, 21 March 2024

Community safety

Paul HAMER (Box Hill) (10:08): 21 March is Harmony Day, which celebrates our cultural diversity, but this year has been anything but harmonious for many in Victoria’s Jewish community. Death threats, vandalism and promoting boycotts of local businesses, terminations of commissions and employment, public shaming of individuals, use of antisemitic tropes and slurs, online and in-person vilification, harassment of students at schools and universities and individuals being made to feel so unsafe in their own communities that they have needed to move to the other side of the city: these are all examples of what members of the Victorian Jewish community have had to endure since 7 October simply for being Jewish.

No Australian should be vilified or harassed on account of their religious or ethnic identity or the actions of a foreign government. This hatred stands against everything we pride ourselves on as a multicultural society. Those in the extreme left who are harassing and vilifying Jews or advocating for that harassment to continue should be condemned by all members of this house. Calling out antisemitism does not negate the immense pain caused by the war, either for Israelis who were killed on 7 October or continue to be held hostage or for the thousands of innocent Palestinians who have died or are suffering as a consequence of the ongoing fighting.

The last five months have been an incredibly distressing time for both our Jewish and our Islamic communities as we have watched the crisis in Israel and Gaza unfold. My heart goes out to everyone who is experiencing loss and grief as a result of this war, but this cannot provide an excuse for acts of hate on our own shores which not only are unacceptable but actively work against the peace and coexistence we all wish to achieve.