We often view history through single moments. Assas­sin­a­tions, revolu­tions, declar­a­tions of war or peace.

In reality, the moment merely reveals a truth that was long ignored. The assas­sin­a­tion of Martin Luther King Jr laid bare a deeply divided country despite the veneer of a march towards harmony and recon­cili­ation.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine showed us that Cold War insec­ur­it­ies and bitter feuds were never solved. And October 7 showed us the post-Holocaust plat­it­udes about “Never Again”, and the pride in suc­cess­ful Aus­trali­an mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, were hardly worth the air they were uttered into.

On October 7, 6000 Gazans invaded Israel by land, sea and air with the precise aim of killing every man, woman and child they encountered. The methods of killing, including burning alive, torture, decap­it­a­tion were as much about sat­is­fy­ing the savage instincts of the killers as it was about causing chaos.

What October 7 really achieved was to show us what was always there. It revealed that the Israeli belief in managing the conflict with the Palestini­ans through military and tech­no­lo­gic­al prowess was a doomed cop-out that would neither avoid war nor deliver peace.

It showed that tyr­an­nic­al regimes can riddle our society with paranoia, suspicion and bigotry by pumping social media content that repack­ages old libels about child-killing, blood-thirsty Jews. It showed that if you present seemingly ordinary people with a suitable villain they will happily release all their angst, confusion and resent­ment upon it. And it showed us that western gov­ern­ments are so paralysed by polls, factions and plain old incom­pet­ence, that they are incapable of stopping a crisis that unfolds with complete pre­dict­ab­il­ity.

Looking back on the past two years since October 7, Jewish Aus­trali­ans have been forced to deal with everything from the ter­ri­fy­ing to the absurd. Cruel nurses, terror attacks co-ordinated and executed by some com­bin­a­tion of common criminals, Iranian generals and criminal mas­ter­minds. A small business turning Jews away wanting to hire jumping castles for a school fair.

Degen­er­ates cel­eb­rat­ing mass slaughter on our streets. Hate preachers. Hamas-themed kids parties. A tradie threat­en­ing to kill young Jews for dis­play­ing the flag of Israel. A pro-Palestine buffoon riding a horse with irritable bowels up and down another.

Something else was revealed by October 7. A community doesn’t know what it’s made of until it is severely tested. And Australia’s Jews, standing with friends and allies through­out this mar­vel­lous nation, have shown what they are really made of. Even as their live­li­hoods were threatened, their place in society chal­lenged, their freedom to simply identify as Jewish was turned into an act of bravery or defiance, Jewish Aus­trali­ans stood strong.

Now, two years on, despite everything, we remain unflinch­ingly patriotic and proud to be Aus­trali­an, decent in the face of pro­voca­tion, cool in the face of fireballs. We remain unbowed, unbroken, unbeaten.