The following article was written by ECAJ Co-CEO Alex Ryvchin. It was ori­gin­ally published in The Guardian.

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The origins of genocide lie in permissive bias and discrimination

Alex Ryvchin
The Guardian
August 15, 2018
The words Fraser Anning reserved for the Muslim community were once directed at Jews who had survived the Holocaust.
There is much to find objec­tion­able in Senator Fraser Anning’s first speech to the Aus­trali­an Senate. The baffling, deplor­able invoc­a­tion of Nazi genocide by referring to immig­ra­tion as a “problem” requiring a “final solution”, is par­tic­u­larly striking. But we mustn’t allow this con­spicu­ous statement to prevent us from seeing the real animus and the real purpose of the speech. It is a call for a return to a darker time of policy-making on the basis of national origin, skin colour, and religion.
Anning wistfully reflected on better days: “Fifty years ago Australia was a cohesive, pre­dom­in­antly Anglo-Celtic nation.” But Anning fails to com­pre­hend what it is that makes our country great and what it is that is truly worth pro­tect­ing. Our greatness and our unique­ness come from our ability to integrate and syn­thes­ise different peoples into a coherent, working model of national existence.

This country has never demanded assim­il­a­tion. It has never forced new migrants to check their languages, cultures and tra­di­tions at the door. The duty of new migrants is to integrate, accul­tur­ate and adhere to Aus­trali­an values of democracy, tolerance and fairness.
The words Anning reserved for the Muslim community were once directed at mine. Jews who had survived the Holocaust and lan­guished in Displaced Persons camps in Europe were con­fron­ted by “anti-refo” sen­ti­ments in Australia that mani­fes­ted in res­ol­u­tions, edit­or­i­als and lobbying campaigns intent on keeping the Jews far from Aus­trali­an shores.
The Returned Services League (RSL) passed res­ol­u­tions to this effect, antisemitic graffiti appeared in urban centres in Sydney and Melbourne. Jews were depicted as incapable of integ­rat­ing into Aus­trali­an society, of being at once poor and godless, rich and cultish. The rightwing pub­lic­a­tion, Smith’s Weekly, produced a stream of cartoons and articles of hook-nosed Jews con­trolling and manip­u­lat­ing the banking system and cor­rupt­ing public affairs.
A Jewish relief agency based in the United States reported with alarm that an Aus­trali­an diplomat had said of the prospect of Jewish migration to Australia, “we have never wanted these people in Australia and we still don’t want them.”
These campaigns were driven by fear and hatred and were detached from reality of Jewish success and integ­ra­tion in this country. The con­tri­bu­tions of Jewish-Aus­trali­ans like our greatest ever soldier, John Monash, our first Aus­trali­an-born governor general, Isaac Isaacs, and Rose Shappere, the heroic volunteer nurse during the Boer War, were not suf­fi­cient to make the case for further migration, nor were they capable of causing cold hearts to thaw.
But contrary to the campaigns of fear driven by nativists fearful of losing their place in society, the Jews who were allowed to come, did integrate to the point that the Jewish community is now held up as the model of suc­cess­ful migration. They did so because of ancient and enduring Jewish dir­ect­ives that demanded good citizenry, full par­ti­cip­a­tion and pat­ri­ot­ism.
In the 6^th century BCE, the prophet Jeremiah wrote to the exiled Jewish lead­er­ship in Babylon that they should not despair in living outside their national home, rather they should integrate, con­trib­ute and thrive. “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
The Jews also adopted the principle of “Dina d’malchuta dina” – the law of the land is the law.
But there was a further reason why Jews were able to integrate so suc­cess­fully into this society – common sense and gratitude. The Jews who migrated here post-war largely did so from the ashes of the Holocaust, from the tyranny of Soviet communism, and the injustice of South African apartheid. This gave them an acute awareness of their good fortune to be con­sidered Aus­trali­ans and a com­pul­sion to con­trib­ute to the building of a just and pros­per­ous society so that the iniquit­ies of the old country should not be trans­por­ted here.
The specter of fascism, of unabashed Hitler enthu­si­asts on our networks and first speeches calling for a return to a migration policy that would have excluded many of the Aus­trali­ans who have made the greatest con­tri­bu­tions to our country, is alarming to Aus­trali­an Jews. More than that, it shows us a col­lect­ive amnesia. The origins of genocide lie in per­missive bias and dis­crim­in­a­tion, and the migrant hordes we now so fear are no different to the “refos” and “rootless cos­mo­pol­it­ans” we thought would never become proper Aus­trali­ans.
Alex Ryvchin is the co-CEO of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry