Below are the pow­er­ful words of ECAJ Pres­i­dent Jil­lian Segal, who address­es the crowd of 10,000 Aus­tralian Jew­ish and broad­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who gath­ered to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with Israel.

Our world has changed. The bar­bar­ians have breached the gates.

Last Shab­bat, Octo­ber 7, 2023 – anoth­er date that will live in infamy – Israel was sud­den­ly and delib­er­ate­ly attacked by Hamas ter­ror­ists, by land, sea and air.

The butch­ery and sav­agery that has unfold­ed in Israel beg­gars descrip­tion. Jews were hunt­ed down and mur­dered in their homes and on the streets.  Infants were behead­ed in their beds.  . Women were raped. The dead were des­e­crat­ed. Hostages were degrad­ed in pub­lic. Whole com­mu­ni­ties were dec­i­mat­ed and build­ings burnt to the ground

Not since the Holo­caust have so many Jew­ish lives been tak­en in a sin­gle day.

We are total­ly shat­tered as we stand togeth­er this evening, mourn­ing the 900 or more inno­cent lives lost, and pray­ing for the speedy recov­ery of the injured and the safe release of all of the hostages.

If we had thought that the bar­bar­i­ty of the Holo­caust would not hap­pen again, the events of the week­end have demon­strat­ed to the whole world that when Hamas pro­claims that it intends to oblit­er­ate Israel and its Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion, it means what it says.

Hamas, and its back­ers in Tehran, like ISIS, have once again proved that they are utter­ly lack­ing in any con­cept of the sanc­ti­ty of human life.   There can be no com­pro­mise or accom­mo­da­tion with these psy­chopaths.  They must be crushed, and we must brace our­selves for fur­ther tragedy.

But we are also filled with a new resolve and a hard­ened deter­mi­na­tion. We are for­ti­fied by the out­pour­ing of sym­pa­thy and sup­port for Israel and our Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty from our polit­i­cal lead­ers, oth­er eth­nic and faith com­mu­ni­ties and hun­dreds and hun­dreds of good peo­ple from all across Aus­tralia, unprece­dent­ed since the Six Day War in 1967.  Thank you all from the bot­tom of our hearts.

In par­tic­u­lar at the fed­er­al lev­el could I thank the Prime Min­is­ter, For­eign Min­is­ter and Defence Min­is­ter for their words of com­fort and strong sup­port of Israel in recent days as well as Alle­gra Spender, a local mem­ber to many. At a State lev­el ( and I know David Ossip will have more to say in this regard)  can I also  thank the Pre­mier for his strong words of sup­port. As we all stand with Israel, now and in the future. this is very impor­tant to us.

We call on all fair-mind­ed peo­ple and our polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives to join with us in demand­ing the imme­di­ate, safe return of the hostages.

We resolve to sup­port Israel to the utmost   spir­i­tu­al­ly and mate­ri­al­ly.

We demand that those who burnt the Israeli flag at the Opera House on Mon­day night and spewed dis­grace­ful anti­se­mit­ic slo­gans be iden­ti­fied and dealt with accord­ing to the full force of the law.

We call for deter­mined lead­er­ship on anti­semitism and race hatred from our gov­ern­ments.   Fed­er­al, State and Ter­ri­to­ry gov­ern­ments need to take new, effec­tive mea­sures in schools and on social media to edu­cate the next gen­er­a­tion of Aus­tralians about the evils of anti­semitism and the ruin it ulti­mate­ly brings upon every­body.

All this is on the ECAJ agen­da- and we have a plan we will be com­mu­ni­cat­ing short­ly with all our lead­ers,  but our col­lec­tive focus must be stronger. We must all work togeth­er to pull our own coun­try togeth­er and unite against hatred.  With your sup­port we will not fail.