Commentary by ECAJ co-CEO Alex Ryvchin originally published in the Daily Telegraph on 11 December 2024.

The Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty again woke to scenes of ter­ror and dev­as­ta­tion.

More burn­ing cars and bro­ken glass. Anoth­er act intend­ed to ter­rorise us, dri­ve us from our coun­try and make our fel­low Aus­tralians fear­ful of asso­ci­at­ing with us.

How long will this con­tin­ue and with what hor­rors will it end?

We have been warn­ing the coun­try of this for some time.

Months before the Octo­ber 7 atroc­i­ties, we report­ed that anti-Semi­tism in this coun­try was already reach­ing his­toric highs.

The restric­tions and the iso­la­tion caused by the pan­dem­ic had revived con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about Jews as spread­ers of dis­ease and prof­i­teers.

We had warned of the need to dis­pel the myths and to show the Aus­tralian pub­lic who the Jew­ish peo­ple real­ly are through deep­er engage­ment and edu­ca­tion.

Anti-Semi­tism did not sud­den­ly appear in this soci­ety on Octo­ber 7.

But it has been allowed to become a fact of life, vis­i­ble in the scorched out syn­a­gogue, the graf­fi­ti, the street abuse, the exclu­sion, the boy­cotts and the threats.

The imme­di­ate response of gov­ern­ment was to meet our requests to secure vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ty facil­i­ties.

This is plain­ly nec­es­sary but we do not want to live behind walls and obser­va­tion tow­ers and armed guards.

We don’t want to de-inte­grate from a soci­ety we adore and a coun­try we have lived in since the First Fleet, a coun­try we have helped build.

We have made our appeals to gov­ern­ment but today we appeal to our fel­low Aus­tralians – stand with us. Sup­port us. Don’t let those who hate our great coun­try pre­vail.