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.