The CHAIR:  Thank you very much for com­ing, Mr Ryvchin. Would you like to make a short open­ing state­ment?

ALEX RYVCHIN:  Thank you. I’m deeply grate­ful to Mr Bor­sak and the mem­bers of this Com­mit­tee for your work, which goes to the heart of free­dom and fair­ness in this State that we are blessed to call home. I appre­ci­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet before you. I’d like to speak about the impact that anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents have on indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies by shar­ing how my fam­i­ly was affect­ed by the attack on our for­mer home in Dover Heights in the ear­ly hours of Fri­day 17 Jan­u­ary of this year. I became aware of the inci­dent at around 5.00 a.m. that morn­ing. My fam­i­ly and I had returned the pre­vi­ous evening from a hol­i­day in Bris­bane. The day after the inci­dent I was due to fly over­seas. The Fri­day on which the attack occurred was sup­posed to be the soli­tary day of rest at home with my fam­i­ly, ush­er­ing in the Sab­bath before tak­ing off again. My wife shook me from my sleep and hand­ed me her phone. It was footage tak­en by our old neigh­bours across the street—flames ris­ing high into the night sky, scorched cars with the words “Eff the Jews” and “Eff Israel” daubed on them, and the facade of our for­mer fam­i­ly home dis­fig­ured with red paint.

I switched on my phone and it began ring­ing immediately—one after anoth­er, jour­nal­ists offer­ing con­do­lences with one breath, look­ing for the scoop that it was indeed my for­mer home with the next. We thought about our three daugh­ters, who would soon be awake and jump­ing into our bed as they do every morn­ing. My wife arranged for her moth­er to col­lect them to allow us to deal with the chaos. By ear­ly after­noon the sto­ry broke that the house had for five years been our fam­i­ly home. My wife and I then walked to the house to inspect the dam­age, to com­fort our friends and neigh­bours, and to answer the ques­tions of the media assem­bled there. That evening I asked my wife if I should can­cel my trip. How could I leave them? “How could I not go?”, she said to me. As much as she want­ed me home, what could be more fate­ful and appro­pri­ate than rep­re­sent­ing the com­mu­ni­ty at the eight­i­eth anniver­sary of the lib­er­a­tion of Auschwitz, to hon­our and remem­ber, to con­tem­plate man’s capac­i­ty to burn and destroy, and to hear the final tes­ti­monies of the sur­vivors?

So at 6.00 a.m. the fol­low­ing morn­ing I was on the plane, leav­ing my wife to answer the ques­tions of our daugh­ters and to explain to them why some­one had replaced the white­wash I had lov­ing­ly applied with the red paint sig­ni­fy­ing blood, why they had scrawled words curs­ing the Jew­ish peo­ple on the cars out front, tar­get­ed the place where we had built our fam­i­ly and expe­ri­enced the hap­pi­est days of our lives—a sub­ur­ban street where fam­i­lies slept just metres from the inferno—and the tough­est ques­tion of all, which came repeat­ed­ly from our mid­dle daugh­ter, aged nine: “Are we safe now? Are they going to come for us again?” It’s a ques­tion we still don’t ful­ly know how to answer with­out deceiv­ing our­selves and them.

A few weeks lat­er, as I was board­ing the long flight home, I checked in with my wife and my col­leagues. At that moment, news about the Dur­al car­a­van was break­ing. I received the update that a list of Jew­ish tar­gets was found in the car­a­van. There were rumours that an attack was immi­nent. Fear was sweep­ing through the com­mu­ni­ty. My wife asked me anoth­er ques­tion I did­n’t know how to answer: Was it safe, or should she wake the kids and leave the house? This is, of course, how ter­ror is intend­ed to work—to alter our per­cep­tions and deci­sion-mak­ing through fear, and shat­ter the sense of pre­dictabil­i­ty and order, which allows us to live our lives. For the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, we have been tar­get­ed day after day, and it has forced fam­i­lies to ask whether their chil­dren are safe sit­ting in a class­room in a Jew­ish school or are they sit­ting ducks. Would their loved ones receive prop­er care in our hos­pi­tals, or would they encounter more peo­ple who thought and felt like the Bankstown nurs­es? Could they enter our CBD with a Star of David neck­lace or a Jew­ish head cov­er­ing? Was that a hum­ble act of faith or just ask­ing for trou­ble?

In reflect­ing on the attack on my for­mer home, I don’t wish to mis­lead this Com­mit­tee. I’m here giv­ing some­thing of a vic­tim impact state­ment, but I in no way con­sid­er myself a vic­tim. The attack may have made nation­al and inter­na­tion­al head­lines, but it is not near­ly the most seri­ous or life-alter­ing inci­dent. Every day for 20 months I’ve spo­ken to mem­bers of my com­mu­ni­ty who have been abused and threat­ened, and who face the risk of being pushed out of their indus­try, of los­ing their liveli­hood, of being denied the abil­i­ty to do what they love, because they are Jew­ish and hold ordi­nary, main­stream views. Each such inci­dent changes a per­son. It changes their sense of worth, their state of mind and how they engage with those around them. This, in turn, changes how com­mu­ni­ties inter­act and how soci­ety func­tions.

The sum­mer of fire­bomb­ings may have passed, but the dai­ly expe­ri­ences of Jews in New South Wales and around the world has not changed. Indeed, in the short weeks between the hear­ings of this Com­mit­tee, we entered a dan­ger­ous new phase. A young cou­ple engaged to be mar­ried were mur­dered, shot to death from point blank range out­side a Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty event in Wash­ing­ton, DC, host­ed by an organ­i­sa­tion that is a close part­ner of my organ­i­sa­tion. Eight peo­ple were burned dur­ing a peace­ful walk in Boul­der, Col­orado, to raise aware­ness about the plight of Israeli hostages. An 88-year-old woman, a Holo­caust sur­vivor, remains in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion. In both cas­es, the ter­ror­ists yelled “Free Pales­tine” as they attempt­ed to kill inno­cent peo­ple in a West­ern coun­try. A few days ago, a long time organ­is­er and leader of the Free Pales­tine Move­ment in this coun­try, an aca­d­e­m­ic at Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty, said he want­ed to see Zion­ists exe­cut­ed.

The inabil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish between polit­i­cal activists and those who just want to exe­cute Zion­ists has allowed anti­semitism to shift from the mar­gins to main­stream, even edu­cat­ed and fash­ion­able, soci­ety. And it has sig­nalled to oth­er vio­lent ele­ments, includ­ing neo-Nazis and organ­ised crime, that pub­licly attack­ing Jews is a legit­i­mate and effec­tive form of action. Those who deny anti­semitism, say it is pro­voked by things Jew­ish peo­ple say or do or think it is invent­ed as a ploy to shield Israel from crit­i­cism, not only rein­jure those who have suf­fered; they threat­en the sta­bil­i­ty of our soci­ety. Excus­ing attacks on one minor­i­ty serves to nor­malise abnor­mal con­duct that threat­ens soci­ety as a whole. If we don’t solve this prob­lem, anti­semitism will degrade this coun­try and strip away the virtues of fair­ness, ratio­nal­ism and decen­cy that make it the great­est coun­try in the world. I wish you great suc­cess in your impor­tant work. Thank you very much. 

The Hon. CHRIS RATH:  Thank you so much for appear­ing today and for your open­ing state­ment. The two indi­vid­u­als that that were involved in the inci­dent on your for­mer home have now been charged. My under­stand­ing is that they were on remand from pre­vi­ous attacks, whether it be graf­fi­ti or fire-relat­ed inci­dents I think with New­town Syn­a­gogue. Is that cor­rect?

ALEX RYVCHIN:  My under­stand­ing is based very much on what’s in the pub­lic domain. I had con­ver­sa­tions with coun­tert­er­ror­ism in the hours after the attack in con­nec­tion with my own per­son­al safe­ty and the safe­ty of my fam­i­ly. But since that time I’ve had fleet­ing con­ver­sa­tions with the AFP and State police. It’s real­ly a mat­ter of what’s been report­ed. I under­stand that two indi­vid­u­als, as you say, have been arrest­ed, or were already held, and the police are inves­ti­gat­ing the prob­a­bil­i­ty that it was a larg­er con­spir­a­cy involv­ing drug smug­glers and low-lev­el crim­i­nals and so forth. There seems to be a strong organ­ised crime com­po­nent to it, is what I under­stand.

The Hon. CHRIS RATH:  I think this is impor­tant because I’ve heard some com­men­tary recent­ly that this is all from crim­i­nals and it’s not anti­se­mit­ic. But when you see red paint that says things like “Eff the Jews” on a home that they assumed was owned by you, how can it be any­thing oth­er than an anti­se­mit­ic attack? In all the media com­men­tary that’s come out over the last few months in par­tic­u­lar, how do you dif­fer­en­ti­ate between crim­i­nal-inspired inci­dents ver­sus anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents? I sup­pose, the con­nec­tion being that these crim­i­nal acts are only tak­ing place on Jew­ish tar­gets, or assumed to be Jew­ish tar­gets, so they them­selves are anti­se­mit­ic attacks in nature, aren’t they? How can you dif­fer­en­ti­ate it? 

ALEX RYVCHIN:  I agree with that analy­sis. I think there have been seg­ments of soci­ety and the media and the polit­i­cal class that have sought to deny or min­imise anti­semitism. I think they had that agen­da from the begin­ning. When the police announced that the Dur­al inci­dent appeared to be a hoax in the sense that it was­n’t intend­ed to be a live attack to be car­ried through, I think a lot of peo­ple rejoiced at the entire sum­mer of ter­ror that jeop­ar­dised the lives of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and tar­get­ed very spe­cif­ic Jew­ish homes, insti­tu­tions and places of wor­ship, with very clear slo­gans refer­ring to the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, which were clear­ly mate­ri­al­ly anti­se­mit­ic, with­out ques­tion. I think it served the agen­da of some to deny that, to obfus­cate, or to con­fuse or divert the dis­cus­sion. But when you have attacks of that sort—firebombings of Jew­ish-owned busi­ness­es, a place of wor­ship and the for­mer home of a com­mu­ni­ty leader—it’s very clear­ly anti­se­mit­ic. 

The more that was revealed about this organ­ised crime syn­di­cate and the alleged king­pin and his own per­son­al back­ground, views and ide­ol­o­gy, the more the view was rein­forced that it was very clear­ly anti­se­mit­ic. The crit­i­cal thing is the out­come rather than even the ide­ol­o­gy or moti­va­tion. One thing I was asked a lot in the after­math of the police press con­fer­ence was, “Do you feel a relief that this was organ­ised crime rather than more con­ven­tion­al anti­se­mit­ic actors?” I can tell you that relief was the fur­thest thing from my mind and the minds of mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty. When you sud­den­ly have, in addi­tion to more con­ven­tion­al anti­se­mit­ic actors, peo­ple with ready access to guns and explo­sives who were clear­ly will­ing to set them on fire— The Hon. CHRIS RATH:  It’s even more dan­ger­ous.

ALEX RYVCHIN:  That’s right. It’s anoth­er dose of dan­ger and ter­ror that was struck into the com­mu­ni­ty.

The Hon. CHRIS RATH:  In some ways, some of these inci­dents were not anti­se­mit­ic by inten­tion, but they were anti­se­mit­ic by effect or by impli­ca­tion. The end result of what is hap­pen­ing is that Jew­ish busi­ness­es, homes and cars are being tar­get­ed. Even if the inten­tion was crim­i­nal and may not be anti­se­mit­ic inspired, the effect of what is being under­tak­en is that it’s only Jew­ish tar­gets. The com­mu­ni­ty that is bear­ing the effects of that is the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. Would you agree that it’s almost unhelp­ful to down­play the anti­se­mit­ic nature of some of these inci­dents, whether they be graf­fi­ti, fire­bomb­ings or var­i­ous oth­er inci­dents we’ve seen, through­out the sum­mer in par­tic­u­lar? It’s get­ting a lit­tle bit bet­ter now, but I think over the sum­mer was the worst of what we saw.

ALEX RYVCHIN:  I think it’s absolute­ly impos­si­ble to down­play the anti­se­mit­ic ele­ment to all this when you have syn­a­gogues burned and attempt­ed attacks on oth­er places of wor­ship, Jew­ish busi­ness­es and homes. We all know that the list of tar­gets were all unequiv­o­cal­ly Jew­ish tar­gets. It would be insane to try to remove an anti­se­mit­ic com­po­nent from it. The effect was very clear­ly anti­se­mit­ic and very clear­ly to ter­rorise the Jew­ish community—without ques­tion. As to the motives and intent, we can’t ful­ly know that until the mat­ter is brought before the courts. But, again, I feel that there are seg­ments of soci­ety that are bend­ing over back­wards to try to find motives which may not be there, pure­ly because it advances their agen­da. It allows them to min­imise or dis­tract the eye from what’s hap­pen­ing in our soci­ety.

The oth­er point that I’d note is that, while the fire­bomb­ings were the most high pro­file and ter­ri­fy­ing inci­dents, my organ­i­sa­tion has logged, in the year fol­low­ing Octo­ber 7, over 2,000 inci­dents of anti­semitism. As I men­tioned, every one of these inci­dents affect­ed some­one’s state of mind, their qual­i­ty of life and their abil­i­ty to do what they love. It made them feel estranged and sep­a­rat­ed from wider soci­ety. It has an impact on our social har­mo­ny and how com­mu­ni­ties func­tion and inter­act with one anoth­er. While what we call the sum­mer of ter­ror has thank­ful­ly subsided—and hope­ful­ly we’ve seen the end of it—given what’s hap­pen­ing abroad and the inci­dents in the Unit­ed States to which I referred, I cau­tion that the end is not upon us yet. The worst might still be to come. Every day Jew­ish Aus­tralians in this State are suf­fer­ing inci­dents, whether it be in school­yards, uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es or work­places or whether it be through glob­al cam­paigns on Tik­Tok call­ing for the destruc­tion and oblit­er­a­tion of Israel and its peo­ple. This con­tin­ues on a dai­ly basis.

The Hon. STEPHEN LAWRENCE:  Thanks so much for com­ing along to give evidence—it’s appre­ci­at­ed. I remem­ber around the time that the exis­tence of that crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy was revealed, The Dai­ly Tele­graph had a front page that said it was all a vile hoax. That, to me, seems to under­state the mat­ter. Could you talk to—and you already have to an extent—what sig­nif­i­cance you attached to this rev­e­la­tion of the crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy in terms of what had hap­pened to you, and in what ways it did­n’t change what had hap­pened to you?

ALEX RYVCHIN:  When some­thing like that happens—and I described in detail how it unfold­ed and how we expe­ri­enced it as a family—all of these analy­ses and rev­e­la­tions after­wards about a crim­i­nal syn­di­cate or what­ev­er the motives were don’t real­ly alter any­thing, because what hap­pened hap­pened. The inci­dents that have struck the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, whether my fam­i­ly or others—they occurred. Mul­ti­ple media—it was­n’t mere­ly the Telegraph—ran with the lead bul­letin that it was all a hoax. Again, I think some of it was self-serv­ing and oth­ers were per­haps mis­in­ter­pret­ing exact­ly what the police were say­ing. But, again, the effect of that was to quell the con­ver­sa­tion about anti­semitism, because pri­or to that point there was a nec­es­sary pub­lic exam­i­na­tion of what was hap­pen­ing in our soci­ety and the impact it was hav­ing on Jew­ish Aus­tralians and wider social cohe­sion. It was a con­ver­sa­tion that had to be had. I feel like this inac­cu­rate and care­less report­ing about it all being a hoax kind of killed that con­ver­sa­tion.

The oth­er thing that it did was—social media was for a long time awash with con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that all of this was con­coct­ed by the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, that it was an inside job or a Mossad plot—all of these non­sense the­o­ries that tend to attach them­selves to the Jew­ish peo­ple. You can imag­ine the storm that that kicked off on social media and in oth­er recess­es of soci­ety. They felt vin­di­cat­ed. They felt like, indeed, none of this had actu­al­ly hap­pened or it had been inflict­ed on the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty by itself. It was care­less and I think it was coun­ter­pro­duc­tive, but it’s impor­tant that we reset and recal­i­brate the con­ver­sa­tion to talk about what actu­al­ly tran­spired and how we, as a soci­ety, can move to actu­al­ly cur­ing this prob­lem.

The Hon. STEPHEN LAWRENCE:  Hav­ing worked in the crim­i­nal law for two decades, I’m pret­ty scep­ti­cal about the propo­si­tion that a per­son who would cre­ate this crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy to achieve this ulte­ri­or motive, and would so focus it on the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, would­n’t also be anti­se­mit­ic, even if they had an ulte­ri­or motive. It seems to me that the rev­e­la­tion of the con­spir­a­cy, though, is rel­e­vant to what that spree of ter­ri­ble attacks said about com­mu­ni­ty-wide sen­ti­ment. I do remem­ber through­out that time that there was a lot of under­stand­able things said: that this spree of attacks reflect­ed some com­mu­ni­ty-lev­el rise in anti­semitism in and of itself. It seems to me that the true rel­e­vance of that plot is not that the whole thing was not anti­se­mit­ic, but rather that it seems to have been the actions of one per­son. He, of course, used agents, but there’s no sug­ges­tion that they were anti­se­mit­ic. That’s my under­stand­ing. They seemed to have been peo­ple not with an ide­o­log­i­cal motive and peo­ple in the crim­i­nal milieu. I’m won­der­ing if you would agree with that analy­sis.

ALEX RYVCHIN:  I do. Again, it’s based on con­jec­ture and the­o­ries because until we have these peo­ple in cus­tody and brought before the courts and we see the evi­dence, it’s dif­fi­cult to draw any def­i­nite con­clu­sions.

But for a crim­i­nal mas­ter­mind to con­coct a scheme of this com­plex­i­ty involv­ing so many mov­ing parts and indi­vid­u­als, and to iden­ti­fy indi­vid­ual Jew­ish tar­gets, source address­es, poten­tial­ly, of Jew­ish com­mu­nal lead­ers—

The Hon. STEPHEN LAWRENCE:  From Turkey.

ALEX RYVCHIN:  That’s right. To do all of these things and have no ill feel­ing towards the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, I don’t buy it. I think it’s high­ly implau­si­ble. You men­tion the Tele­graph. The Tele­graph broke a sto­ry that iden­ti­fied this indi­vid­ual and [The Aus­tralian] looked through his social media his­to­ry. He’s got a long record of post­ing vicious­ly anti­se­mit­ic state­ments glo­ri­fy­ing Nazism, call­ing for the death of Jews and so forth, so I think the case became more com­plex at that point in time. No-one was sur­prised by those rev­e­la­tions. But, again, I think we’re in the realm of the­o­ry and con­jec­ture here. I think what hap­pened is what’s crit­i­cal here. What the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty expe­ri­enced was no hoax. The flames, the abuse, the harass­ment, the exclusion—it was very real.

The Hon. STEPHEN LAWRENCE:  An issue before the inquiry, which I’m sure you’re aware of, is the con­fla­tion of crit­i­cism of Israel with anti­semitism. It seems to be one of those issues where to work out what anti­semitism is and the extent of it, we per­haps need to also work out what it is not. You’ve been, I think it’s fair to say, a vig­or­ous advo­cate in the pub­lic sphere for the state of affairs as you see it, and you’re prob­a­bly some­one on a par­tic­u­lar end of the spec­trum in terms of how you analyse cer­tain crit­i­cisms of Israel and what you see as anti­se­mit­ic that oth­er peo­ple might see as legit­i­mate crit­i­cism. 

ALEX RYVCHIN:  I’m not sure I—if you could elab­o­rate on what you mean by the spec­trum and—

The Hon. STEPHEN LAWRENCE:  I don’t mean to put words in your mouth. I think the ques­tion I’ll fin­ish with is going to give you the chance to explain this. What do you see as the line between legit­i­mate crit­i­cism of Israel, par­tic­u­lar­ly from a Pales­tin­ian Arab per­spec­tive, and anti­semitism?

ALEX RYVCHIN:  To me, it’s very clear. I don’t think there’s a gen­uine con­fla­tion. Peo­ple can very clear­ly dis­tin­guish between cri­tiques of pol­i­cy and politicians—which is utter­ly fair game in this country—and about Israel, with­in Israel and out­side as well, and a deep con­tempt and hatred for the Jew­ish peo­ple. There’s a very clear dis­tinc­tion between them. If we talk about, for exam­ple, Ita­mar Ben-Gvir or Beza­lel Smotrich—a cou­ple of fire­brand far-right politi­cians in that country—you can crit­i­cise them freely. I have. We crit­i­cised them when they were brought into the oppo­si­tion. No ele­ment of that would be con­sid­ered anti­se­mit­ic or anti-Zion­ist. It is a crit­i­cism of indi­vid­u­als, their rhetoric and their poli­cies.

Some­thing hap­pens when we talk about Israel that is pecu­liar to Israel that seems to hap­pen with no oth­er coun­try. We can talk about Iran, Chi­na, Rus­sia or what­ev­er democ­ra­cy or autoc­ra­cy in the world. The con­ver­sa­tion nev­er then becomes about deny­ing the right of that peo­ple to be a peo­ple or the right of that peo­ple to have a State. We nev­er trans­fer clas­sic anti­se­mit­ic or racist views about a par­tic­u­lar peo­ple to the coun­try, impute motives to those peo­ple and say, “You do what you do because this is how Jews behave and have always behaved.” We can talk about set­tle­ments, the war, how it’s been con­duct­ed and cease­fires. None of that is ille­git­i­mate. I know some peo­ple will use more tren­chant, aggres­sive forms of crit­i­cism, which does­n’t in itself con­sti­tute anti­semitism. It could be wrong, it could be igno­rant or it could be hate­ful, but it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly anti­se­mit­ic. To me, it’s very clear. The greater con­fla­tion occurs not with anti­semitism and anti-Zion­ism but between anti-Zion­ism and crit­i­cism of Israel. You can crit­i­cise Israel, its poli­cies, actions and politi­cians and not talk about the right of the State to exist, which, again, occurs with no oth­er coun­try.

The Hon. STEPHEN LAWRENCE:  It seems to me, though, that there are a num­ber of aspects to the issue that are almost unique. I’ll give you an exam­ple. It’s often said that it would be anti­se­mit­ic to deny the right of Israel to exist. There’s obvi­ous­ly this con­test­ed issue of the right of return. It’s often said that if the right of return was grant­ed, it would be the end of Israel. For some peo­ple, to say that Israel has the right to exist nec­es­sar­i­ly, for them, involves the denial of the right of return, because the right of return, on that analy­sis, is incon­sis­tent with the exis­tence of Israel going for­ward. How do we unpick the view of a Pales­tin­ian expelled in 1948 or 1967 who thinks that Israel is a thor­ough­ly racist endeav­our and would like the right of return and, there­fore, might be tak­en to be ques­tion­ing the right of the Jew­ish State to exist? How do we analyse their state­ments and their opin­ions in light of this line between anti­semitism and crit­i­cism of Israel that some­times, as a thresh­old issue, is said to involve accep­tance of the right to exist?

ALEX RYVCHIN:  You’ve cho­sen a very spe­cif­ic exam­ple to do with the right of return. I’m not sug­gest­ing that any Arab Pales­tin­ian who bears a griev­ance from 1948 and the pop­u­la­tion trans­fers of Jews and Arabs that occurred as a result of that need­less war waged by sev­en Arab States on a nascent Jew­ish State—things hap­pen in war. Pop­u­la­tions shift. Peo­ple suf­fer, with­out ques­tion. I would­n’t deny any­one’s suf­fer­ing. The ques­tion you’re ask­ing is if a Pales­tin­ian says that their great-grand­fa­ther lived in Haifa or Acre pri­or to 1948, they were displaced—and peo­ple were dis­placed for all sorts of rea­sons, includ­ing flee­ing a war zone because they were caught up in the bat­tle lines—

The Hon. STEPHEN LAWRENCE:  And includ­ing eth­nic cleans­ing.

ALEX RYVCHIN:  I would deny that there was eth­nic cleans­ing. There was no pro­gram of eth­nic cleans­ing. There was no pol­i­cy of eth­nic cleans­ing.

The Hon. STEPHEN LAWRENCE:  But you would­n’t dis­pute that it occurred.

ALEX RYVCHIN:  I firm­ly would dis­pute that it occurred. When we talk about eth­nic cleans­ing, we talk about the force­able—

The Hon. STEPHEN LAWRENCE:  Expul­sion.

ALEX RYVCHIN:  —expul­sion of a par­tic­u­lar eth­nic­i­ty or race of peo­ple from a ter­ri­to­ry. That did not occur as a pro­gram. If that did occur, then you would­n’t have 20 per cent of Israel’s pop­u­la­tion being Arab. You would­n’t have had the May­or of Haifa going on broad­cast to the peo­ple and say­ing, “Do not leave. This is your city as well.”

The Hon. STEPHEN LAWRENCE:  You say, “Not as a pro­gram”, but you don’t deny that in par­tic­u­lar instances it had occurred.

ALEX RYVCHIN:  I resent and I reject the use of the term “eth­nic cleans­ing”. I will say that, cer­tain­ly, peo­ple who lived in cer­tain places pri­or to 1948 ceased to live there. As I said, that occurred for a num­ber of rea­sons, includ­ing the nat­ur­al human com­pul­sion to flee a war zone and includ­ing the lead­ers of the Arabs say­ing, “Depart this war zone and then return once we’ve dri­ven the Jews into the sea.” There were a myr­i­ad of rea­sons, and one of those rea­sons was that there were Arab towns and vil­lages caught up in the war and the fight­ing, because Israel was invad­ed from many fronts, but also from with­in.

Cer­tain vil­lages were removed of their pop­u­la­tions because they were caught up in the bat­tle zone, and they were behind the lines of the Israeli fight­ers, so it was nec­es­sary from a mil­i­tary point of view. Hor­ri­ble things hap­pen in war. Peo­ple are dis­placed. I think the les­son from that is don’t start wars, and don’t start wars that you lose. We also saw about 800,000 Jews liv­ing through­out the Arab world forcibly removed, plun­dered and expelled from their coun­tries. To me, that far greater con­sti­tutes eth­nic cleans­ing than a defen­sive, legit­i­mate war and what hap­pened as a con­se­quence of that war.

Dr AMANDA COHN:  Just fol­low­ing up on this line of ques­tion­ing, I’ve been read­ing the ECAJ report on anti­semitism for 2024, which you’ve quot­ed. First of all, I’ll just say that some of the exam­ples in this are real­ly chill­ing, for any­one who’s going to accuse me of try­ing to min­imise anti­semitism. But one of the exam­ples in that report in the sec­tion on graf­fi­ti was an exam­ple of graf­fi­ti that sim­ply said, “Free Gaza”, and that was giv­en as an exam­ple of anti­semitism in your report. Can you explain in what way you and your organ­i­sa­tion view that state­ment as anti­se­mit­ic?

ALEX RYVCHIN:  Sure. I don’t have that spe­cif­ic inci­dent in front of me. I don’t know to what exact­ly it refers. But if you’re ask­ing me the ques­tion about whether graf­fi­ti say­ing, “Free Gaza”, of itself, is anti­se­mit­ic, I would say no. But con­text is crit­i­cal, and every sin­gle inci­dent that’s in that report is there because of con­text. For exam­ple, if one were to daub that on a syn­a­gogue or prox­i­mate to a Jew­ish site in a way that implies that Jews are col­lec­tive­ly respon­si­ble for the sit­u­a­tion in Gaza, that would be anti­se­mit­ic. But if some­one walks down the street at a ral­ly and waves a ban­ner say­ing, “Free Gaza”, I would­n’t con­sid­er that anti­se­mit­ic, and the report cer­tain­ly would­n’t either. 

Dr AMANDA COHN:  I think part of the chal­lenge that I’m fac­ing and that cer­tain­ly the Com­mit­tee is fac­ing in try­ing to estab­lish the prob­lem that we’re try­ing to address—the report says, based on the def­i­n­i­tion of anti­semitism you’ve used or the way that these inci­dents have been com­piled, that there was an increase of 316 per cent in anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents fol­low­ing 30 Sep­tem­ber 2023. It’s a deeply con­cern­ing sta­tis­tic, but what I’m try­ing to under­stand is how many of those inci­dents are in the order of the real­ly dis­tress­ing, clear­ly anti­se­mit­ic phys­i­cal assault exam­ples that are described in this report, ver­sus polit­i­cal mes­sages where it may be con­test­ed even with­in the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty whether they’re anti­se­mit­ic or not. Is it pos­si­ble to pro­vide a fur­ther break­down of that data to help us under­stand the nature of the anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents that you’re count­ing?

ALEX RYVCHIN:  The report does break things down in terms of gen­er­al dis­course inci­dents, whether it’s phys­i­cal assault, whether it’s graf­fi­ti, whether it’s van­dal­ism. It’s bro­ken down by cat­e­go­ry of inci­dents. Some of them are nat­u­ral­ly more extreme than oth­ers. An attack on an indi­vid­ual is going to be more dis­tress­ing than graf­fi­ti, cer­tain­ly, but they’re all inci­dents. They’re all inci­dents of anti­semitism. Now, polit­i­cal slo­gans in and of them­selves are not count­ed in this report as being anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents. Again, if the con­text in which it occurred leads one to con­clude that it was an act of anti­semitism because of the way that it tar­get­ed Jew­ish indi­vid­u­als, if a Jew­ish student—again, I’m just rais­ing exam­ples here, but this occurs fre­quent­ly. If a vis­i­bly Jew­ish stu­dent is walk­ing through a uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus and some­one starts taunt­ing them with “Free Gaza; free Pales­tine”, mere­ly because they are vis­i­bly Jew­ish, that is the harass­ment of a Jew­ish per­son because they are Jew­ish. That’s all that is.

Dr AMANDA COHN:  Yes, under­stood.

ALEX RYVCHIN:  The slo­gan itself—

Dr AMANDA COHN:  You have pro­vid­ed the break­down in the report, and I’ve got it in front of me. You’ve got 33 per cent of the inci­dents being posters, 19 per cent graf­fi­ti, 14 per cent mes­sages. I’m focus­ing on those ones because they are much more dif­fi­cult to under­stand than the 3 per cent assault, which are well described in the report. It’s a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of the inci­dents that you’re report­ing that are in this cat­e­go­ry of posters. Sure­ly it’s dif­fi­cult to work out whether a polit­i­cal poster is being tar­get­ed at some­body because of their eth­nic back­ground. Sure­ly a poster is not tar­get­ed at a per­son, by def­i­n­i­tion.

ALEX RYVCHIN:  No, that’s right. If that’s the case, it does­n’t make it into the report. We have a very strin­gent thresh­old as to what goes in there. If it’s a poster about, let’s say, genocide—which is a very extreme, igno­rant accu­sa­tion, but peo­ple make it—I would­n’t con­sid­er that to be, of itself, anti­se­mit­ic. If that is plas­tered some­where on a pub­lic street, I think it is pret­ty dis­grace­ful and inflam­ma­to­ry and devoid of truth, but I don’t con­sid­er it to be anti­se­mit­ic. Again, if it’s done prox­i­mate delib­er­ate­ly to a Jew­ish site or at a Jew­ish facil­i­ty, then that’s a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion. Again, as with Mr Lawrence’s exam­ple with the right of return, I think we are iden­ti­fy­ing very spe­cif­ic exam­ples and per­haps out­ly­ing exam­ples.

When you talk about mes­sages and slo­gans, the vast major­i­ty of them are unequiv­o­cal­ly, vicious­ly anti­se­mit­ic and very clear­ly tar­get­ing the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing wish­ing death upon mem­bers of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. Some­times they use euphemisms like Zion­ist, but fre­quent­ly they don’t. There are those exam­ples that we would con­sid­er to be on the low­er spec­trum of things and some might be a lit­tle bit debat­able, and we can have that con­ver­sa­tion. But we’re talk­ing about over 2,000 inci­dents. We’re talk­ing about an expe­ri­ence that the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty has lived through for a long peri­od of time. We know what hatred against us looks like. The things that go on that report are anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents; they are not polit­i­cal dis­course.

The CHAIR:  Have your or your fam­i­ly’s rela­tion­ship with and belief in Aus­tralia changed at all?

ALEX RYVCHIN:  That’s a very fine ques­tion. I con­sid­er this, as I said in my remarks, to be the great­est and freest coun­try in the world. I came to this coun­try as a refugee from the Sovi­et Union. Hav­ing seen the alternative—despotism, social­ism, com­mu­nism, autoc­ra­cy, and the denial of human dig­ni­ty and human rights— I cher­ish these things in this coun­try. Of course, in the past 20 months I have seen things which have shocked me and which have sad­dened me deeply. The house that I spoke about was—I don’t want to digress too much. When we first migrat­ed to the coun­try, I would dri­ve up and down that street with my grand­fa­ther, who drove a van tak­ing Holo­caust sur­vivors to a Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre.

He was so tak­en with that road because it looked out onto the ocean. To him that road sym­bol­ised the great­est of Australia—the free­dom and beau­ty of this coun­try. And then to have a house on that road, which I had pur­chased, defiled in that way hurt me on a very deep and per­son­al lev­el. But it has made me more deter­mined to fight for this coun­try and fight for the good­ness of this coun­try, and to ban­ish the hate­ful ele­ments from it, because it is not Aus­tralia. I have encoun­tered racism and anti­semitism through­out my life, in lim­it­ed instances, but this is not a racist coun­try and this is not an anti­se­mit­ic coun­try. We have a duty to dri­ve those hor­rif­ic ele­ments from our sight; oth­er­wise this coun­try will change in its char­ac­ter. But I remain a great lover of and a great patri­ot of this coun­try.

The CHAIR:  You talk about com­ing from what is now Ukraine. My ances­tors were expelled from east­ern Poland by the Sovi­et Union just as World War II was begin­ning. I have rel­a­tives that now live in what is the cur­rent Poland in the east. They cer­tain­ly talk about what was going on in those days. I have a lit­tle bit of sympathy—a lot of sym­pa­thy, actually—for what you are talk­ing about. Do you believe that we could go back to the old ways, before all this got start­ed? Could we ever get to that lev­el again—that per­fec­tion you are talk­ing about?

ALEX RYVCHIN:  I am an eter­nal opti­mist, which might sound para­dox­i­cal with being a Jew­ish per­son and the things that we have expe­ri­enced. But I do think the best of human nature, and cer­tain­ly of this soci­ety. But I do know that what has been allowed to move into the pub­lic sphere and into main­stream dis­course and con­ver­sa­tion will be very hard to push back. There were always ele­ments of this soci­ety that were anti­se­mit­ic, and peo­ple held cer­tain stereo­types and beliefs and prej­u­dices, but we did­n’t have what one would call active anti­semitism.

Peo­ple maybe latent­ly har­boured cer­tain views about Jews, but they weren’t com­pelled to or they did­n’t feel the right or the free­dom to act upon that. That is the real thing that has changed. Peo­ple feel that they can voice this anti­semitism. And then there is what’s hap­pen­ing with social media—the dis­in­for­ma­tion, the recruit­ment, the rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion. It’s the sort of tool that Hen­ry Ford or Mar­tin Luther, and cer­tain­ly the Sovi­ets and the Nazis, could have only dreamed of hav­ing to advance their agen­da. It is going to be extreme­ly chal­leng­ing, and it will require a wider approach than mere­ly gov­ern­ment and mere­ly com­mu­ni­ty. But I believe fun­da­men­tal­ly in the good­ness of this coun­try. I think we need to arrest this prob­lem before our char­ac­ter is for­ev­er changed.

The CHAIR:  Thank you very much for com­ing today.