As an Australian Jew who publicly supports Palestinian freedom, I’m targeted by my own community – and neo-Nazis | Sarah Schwartz

Jews should be able to criticise the actions of Israel without risking exclusion from communal lifeAs a teenager, I walked through concentration camps in Poland, where the Nazis industrialised the murder of European Jewry. That history has shaped not only my Jewish identity, but a commitment to political struggle. It taught me that memory carries not only grief, but obligations: to resist racism, dehumanisation and the silence that permits the erasure of a people.Today, I’m giving evidence to the royal commission on antisemitism and social cohesion, established after the slaughter of 15 people at a Hanukah celebration at Bondi beach. Their murders demand an honest reckoning. The question is whether we can confront antisemitism without weaponising Jewish grief or turning Holocaust memory into a political instrument to silence the very forms of solidarity and dissent it should compel. Continue reading...

As an Australian Jew who publicly supports Palestinian freedom, I’m targeted by my own community – and neo-Nazis | Sarah Schwartz

Jews should be able to criticise the actions of Israel without risking exclusion from communal life

As a teenager, I walked through concentration camps in Poland, where the Nazis industrialised the murder of European Jewry. That history has shaped not only my Jewish identity, but a commitment to political struggle. It taught me that memory carries not only grief, but obligations: to resist racism, dehumanisation and the silence that permits the erasure of a people.

Today, I’m giving evidence to the royal commission on antisemitism and social cohesion, established after the slaughter of 15 people at a Hanukah celebration at Bondi beach. Their murders demand an honest reckoning. The question is whether we can confront antisemitism without weaponising Jewish grief or turning Holocaust memory into a political instrument to silence the very forms of solidarity and dissent it should compel.

Continue reading...