Alex Ryvchin’s opening address to the Australian Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism in Gold Coast on 3 September 2025.

It is a great hon­our to address this con­fer­ence and I want to begin by pay­ing respect to those Jew­ish and non-Jew­ish Aus­tralians who, for the past two years, and in many cas­es much longer, have stood up for our com­mu­ni­ty, often at great per­son­al cost.

In par­tic­u­lar, I wish to acknowl­edge the Spe­cial Envoy Jil­lian Segal AM, whose strate­gic plan to com­bat anti­semitism rep­re­sents the way for­ward; the pres­i­dent of the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry, Daniel Aghion KC who has led the com­mu­ni­ty with great wis­dom through unprece­dent­ed times; and one of our great­est Aus­tralians, Nova Peris, who has shown what it means to stand with a com­mu­ni­ty in dif­fi­cult times, with strength and dig­ni­ty.

I’d also like to acknowl­edge His Excel­len­cy Amir Mai­mon, Spe­cial Envoy from Israel Michal Cotler-Wunch, David Gon­s­ki AC, state and fed­er­al mem­bers of par­lia­ment, com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, rab­bis and oth­er faith lead­ers.

And I want to thank and acknowl­edge the coun­cil­lors and may­ors, from every state and ter­ri­to­ry, who have come here. Your pres­ence is itself an act of sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty and we thank you.

Over the course of the com­ing days, we will hear from experts about what has been hap­pen­ing to the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, the lessons we can draw from dis­turb­ing events and trends abroad, and the pol­i­cy solu­tions that can be imple­ment­ed by local gov­ern­ment to help push anti­semitism out of the main­stream and back to the dark recess­es of soci­ety from where its harm can be man­aged, if not defeat­ed.

But the sub­ject I wish to dis­cuss tonight is “denial.”

Denial of anti­semitism is the fore­most obsta­cle to defeat­ing it.

For decades after the Holo­caust, denial of those crimes was a weapon deployed to cast the vic­tims of the Holo­caust, the sur­vivors and their advo­cates, as frauds and liars.

The great Pri­mo Levi, a chemist and writer, who sur­vived Auschwitz, spoke of his return to his native Italy after lib­er­a­tion, and his anguish that he would not be believed, that his sto­ry was too bur­den­some or too fan­tas­ti­cal to be tak­en seri­ous­ly.

To deny in the face of the vic­tims, to force them to plead to be believed, is a per­ver­sion, a heinous re-injury of those who had expe­ri­enced the lim­its of suf­fer­ing.

Often, it was done with a very spe­cif­ic pur­pose in mind – to under­mine the study of the Holo­caust so that it could hap­pen again, and erode any empa­thy and under­stand­ing felt towards the Jew­ish peo­ple.

For decades, we won­dered how any­one could deny what was not a sin­gle event, but mil­lions of indi­vid­ual crimes car­ried out by hun­dreds of thou­sands of per­pe­tra­tors, metic­u­lous­ly and con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ed, evi­denced by the thou­sands of mass graves and the killing cen­tres that per­ma­nent­ly dis­fig­ured the Euro­pean con­ti­nent. Evi­denced too by the homes and towns and city sub­urbs where Jew­ish life had bus­tled for thou­sands of years, that had been com­plete­ly emp­tied.

And yet it was denied. How?

We have in our time seen just how this was pos­si­ble.

The crimes of Octo­ber 7, were also not a sin­gle act but a col­lec­tion of scorched vil­lages, the killing field at the Nova Fes­ti­val, the life­less bod­ies scat­tered through­out the south, that lay for all to see at bus stops, in man­gled vehi­cles, bod­ies of fam­i­lies hud­dled and clenched in scorched safe­r­ooms, among the shrubs where the last moments of life were spent in prayer and plea and ter­ror, are all there. Num­bered, record­ed, filmed.

And yet the crimes were denied. Hamas nev­er tar­get­ed civil­ians. Women and chil­dren were not raped. The per­pe­tra­tors denied noth­ing. They took pride in their work, but oth­ers denied for them.

And those who could not plau­si­bly deny crimes so grotesque and abun­dant, called it an inside job, a Mossad false flag. Women should not be believed. The first respon­ders could not be trust­ed.

And if all else fails, guilt could always be shift­ed to the vic­tims. Every Israeli, the child, the invalid, is a sol­dier, past or present. And how dare they build their homes or dance near the Gaza bor­der? How dare they live in their home­land at all?

And the crimes against Jew­ish Aus­tralians have been denied in the exact same way.

How often do we hear that Jews exag­ger­ate or fal­si­fy anti­semitism? That we “cry” anti­semitism, a crude for­mu­la­tion intend­ed to silence and intim­i­date us. And that we do so for some dark and insid­i­ous pur­pose. For mon­ey, for sym­pa­thy, to cun­ning­ly shield the gov­ern­ment of Israel from crit­i­cism.

And if the burn­ing syn­a­gogues, the burn­ing cars, the pub­lic abuse of school­child­ren, the harass­ment of uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and artists, are too bla­tant to deny, the Jews brought it upon them­selves.

Israel is to blame for the vol­un­tary actions of those liv­ing here in Aus­tralia who com­mit vio­lent or racist acts. Or it is a false flag. The Jews burned their own prop­er­ties. There is noth­ing these peo­ple won’t do.

Just a few days ago, a Syd­ney car­di­ol­o­gist spoke from the floor at an event that was held to smear this very con­fer­ence. He didn’t believe that Iran had car­ried out attacks on our

soil. He said he had nat­u­ral­ly assumed that it was Mossad that had fire­bombed Jew­ish tar­gets in Syd­ney and Mel­bourne, and clear­ly “the lob­by” had got­ten to ASIO too.

This was a most artic­u­late pre­sen­ta­tion of how even a high­ly edu­cat­ed and accom­plished per­son, can com­plete­ly aban­don their sense and rea­son when con­front­ed with facts that clash with their prej­u­dice.

So deter­mined are the ene­mies of the Jew­ish peo­ple that they would wage a relent­less cam­paign to smear and dis­cred­it a def­i­n­i­tion of anti­semitism to ensure the fight against anti­semitism nev­er even gets out of the blocks.

This has all meant that amid events that caused ter­ror in an Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty, tar­nished our inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion, threat­ened our very democ­ra­cy and our mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, seen our com­mu­ni­ty and our coun­try tar­get­ed by a for­eign regime, by hard­ened crim­i­nals, by neo-Nazis, reli­gious extrem­ists and even by col­leagues and class­mates, the response has been par­a­lyzed.

Instead of imple­ment­ing the poli­cies that my orga­ni­za­tion, that the Spe­cial Envoy, have rec­om­mend­ed, com­mon­sense mea­sures to bet­ter edu­cate about the nature of anti­semitism, to address the for­eign inter­fer­ence through bot farms and dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, to ensure that pub­licly fund­ed bod­ies receive the sup­port to help them recog­nise anti­semitism and require them to treat Jew­ish Aus­tralians equal­ly, instead of imple­ment­ing these mea­sures, denial of anti­semitism means we’re still talk­ing about the sta­tis­tics, we’re still talk­ing about def­i­n­i­tions, we’re still ask­ing to be believed.

This is a scan­dal. And the fact that this gath­er­ing, should be made con­tro­ver­sial, should be sub­ject to secu­ri­ty assess­ments, and online peti­tions against it, is a scan­dal.

But this is pre­cise­ly what anti­semitism seeks. As Holo­caust denial tried to break sol­i­dar­i­ty and reduce “nev­er again” to a punch­line, so too anti­semitism denial seeks to shroud us in con­tro­ver­sy, such that politi­cians, employ­ers, uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tors, have to think long and hard of the polit­i­cal cost of act­ing.

Or, they can only act against this burn­ing form of racism if they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly acknowl­edge unre­lat­ed and far less preva­lent forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion and hatred.

All the while, day by day, this coun­try changes. It becomes more sus­pi­cious, less wel­com­ing, more trib­al, more extreme. Rig­or­ous pub­lic exam­i­na­tion of crit­i­cal pol­i­cy issues is replaced by street march­es where the most vicious ele­ments of our soci­ety can spread their influ­ence and recruit.

Anti­semitism is not mere­ly the ene­my of the Jews. The Jews are not hat­ed for what they are. They are hat­ed for what they are seen to rep­re­sent. Moder­ni­ty, human progress, ratio­nal­ism. Those things with which the Jews, by virtue of their belief in an eth­i­cal monothe­ism, in the sanc­ti­ty of human life, in the dig­ni­ty of the indi­vid­ual, pio­neered and con­tin­ue to stand for.

And so we ask you to stand with us. Be strong and of good courage. Resist the pres­sure. Not for our own sake. But for the sake of this great nation of ours. This Aus­tralia.