Leader of the Oppo­si­tion, Brad, thank you for your inspir­ing words.

As Jere­my men­tioned, with­in a short few weeks of your appoint­ment as Oppo­si­tion Leader you took the time to meet with the Vic­to­ri­an Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty – and so many of us. A few short weeks, but 12 years of cel­e­brat­ing Israel’s inde­pen­dence from 65 to 77. We will have you back more often.

You inher­it a long and proud tra­di­tion of com­mit­ted sup­port for the State of Israel and the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. We are pleased to hear that it will con­tin­ue under your lead­er­ship.

You described the impor­tance of going to Israel and learn­ing about the posi­tion from there. Thank you for that.

Four days ago I returned from a trip to Israel, as Australia’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the World Jew­ish Con­gress which met in Jerusalem. I have brought back one of the sounds of dai­ly life in Israel, which I will play for you now.

AUDIO: record­ing of Red Alert noti­fi­ca­tion sound.

What you have just heard, is a test of the alert sound on a mobile phone app known as “Tze­vah Adom” or “Red Alert”. If you are in Israel and you hear that sound, there is an incom­ing mis­sile to your area and you must trav­el to a bomb shel­ter imme­di­ate­ly.

I was in Israel for only 8 days, and yet I heard that sound four times – twice in Tel Aviv, once in Jerusalem, and once at Ben Guri­on air­port as I was prepar­ing to leave. The mis­sile attacks are designed to cre­ate pan­ic and max­i­mum psy­cho­log­i­cal impact. It is no coin­ci­dence there­fore that the alerts sound­ed at 2am and 4am overnight, on a Thurs­day evening when the streets were full, and dur­ing a busy peri­od at the air­port.

I want to locate this in an Aus­tralian, and Vic­to­ri­an, con­text. We all recall the ter­ror of the Bali bomb­ings. Imag­ine an attack many times larg­er, and sig­nif­i­cant­ly more vicious and depraved. Fur­ther, it was not com­mit­ted by a fringe ter­ror­ist minor­i­ty, but by fight­ers retained by an elect­ed gov­ern­ment for that very pur­pose. Now imag­ine that the mas­sacre occurred at sev­er­al farms just out­side Gee­long or Bendi­go. Near­ly two years lat­er, in an ongo­ing war caused by that attack, Vic­to­ri­ans are still being killed and are the sub­ject of end­less rock­et attacks. 

If you live in Mel­bourne and you receive an alert like you just heard, you have 1½ min­utes to grab your sleep­ing child and run to the clos­est bomb shel­ter. It would be in your house or apart­ment block, because in Israel for the last 75 years – near­ly its entire exis­tence – every build­ing has been required by law to have one. In Israel, I ran to those shel­ters when at din­ner with my cousins, and I did it in the hotels in which I was stay­ing. 

I was lucky to have that pre­cious 1½ min­utes. The alerts last week were for incom­ing cruise mis­siles from the Houthis, a ter­ror­ist group in Yemen. Those mis­siles crossed three coun­tries – three land bor­ders, and more than 2,000km of ground, to get to Israel. There is enough time for Israel’s defen­sive sys­tems to – hope­ful­ly – shoot the mis­sile out of the air and destroy it before the intend­ed tar­get is reached. My great­est risk was falling shrap­nel from the mid-air explo­sion, rather than the mis­sile itself.

I went to the Nova dance site, where 378 civil­ians were killed and 44 were tak­en hostage. It is just one of many mas­sacre sites. There are huge signs in Israel’s 3 pri­ma­ry lan­guages – Hebrew, Ara­bic and Eng­lish – warn­ing of the risk of rock­et attack from Gaza and of the loca­tion of the onsite bomb shel­ter. But the shel­ter at the Nova memo­r­i­al serves no pur­pose. That is because the bor­der with Gaza is less than 5 kilo­me­tres away. At Nova the warn­ing time is 15 sec­onds, which is not enough time to take shel­ter. Instead, the signs advise you to lie on the ground and cov­er your head with your hands.

Israel is at war – a messy and hor­ri­ble war. Peo­ple have died in Gaza and in Israel, and they will con­tin­ue to die in both places. That is a tragedy. But on one side, you have Iran using its prox­ies and pup­pets: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbol­lah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, to attack Israel over and over, even as I was in Israel last week. Hamas in par­tic­u­lar – list­ed by Aus­tralia as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion – is the elect­ed 0government of Gaza, com­mit­ted to the anni­hi­la­tion of Israel, and has said that it will com­mit 7 Octo­ber again and again. Hamas built a tun­nel net­work to hide its fight­ers, weapons, and the hostages that it took on 7 Octo­ber. By com­par­i­son, Israel has built shel­ters and sophis­ti­cat­ed defense sys­tems to pro­tect its cit­i­zens from attack.

This war will end and the suf­fer­ing on all sides will cease, when all of the hostages are returned and Hamas is dis­armed and removed from pow­er. That out­come is entire­ly in Hamas’ hands.

In the mean­time, Israelis go on with their lives. They have no oth­er choice. The alert at Ben Guri­on caused air­port oper­a­tions to be sus­pend­ed for only five min­utes. The air­craft refu­el­ers and bag­gage han­dlers returned to the tar­mac. Board­ing was only slight­ly delayed and my flight to Dubai – in an Arab nation at peace with Israel – depart­ed on time. As we rose into the air, trav­el­ling the same path as those mis­siles but in the reverse direc­tion, I delet­ed the Red Alert app from my phone and thought about how lucky we are to live in Aus­tralia. Unlike Israel, Aus­tralia is not and has nev­er been under con­stant attack on all sides and inter­na­tion­al­ly. Unlike Israel, Aus­tralia is at peace.

That is all that Israel’s cit­i­zens want – whether they be Jew­ish, Arab, or any oth­er faith or eth­nic group­ing: peace. Half a world away, that is what we fer­vent­ly wish for them. That the sirens will fall silent and nev­er sound again.