Features
In Australia, as in Canada, Jews Are on Their Own
By HENRY SREBRNIK Australia and Canada share many similarities, and so do their Jewish communities. Most Jews live in two large cities, in Australia’s case, Melbourne and Sydney. And they have been well off and integrated into society. Yet in both countries, there has been an unprecedented rise in antisemitism.
I would submit that a majority of Australians and Canadians have now lost sympathy for Israel. It doesn’t matter if what they hear about Israel being engaged in genocide in Gaza is true or not, nor even if they don’t believe all or most of it. The bottom line is that they see Israel as engaging in war crimes. (As for Americans, a poll conducted by Quinnipiac University between Aug. 21 and 25 found that half of voters – and 77 per cent of the Democrats among them — believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.)
On July 29, a national poll in Australia delivered a deeply unsettling message. The survey revealed that just 24 per cent of Australians hold a positive view of Jews, while 28 per cent express negative views, and the rest are indifferent or unsure. I’m guessing Canadian numbers wouldn’t be all that different.
And this comes after two years of unrelenting escalation, during which antisemitic incidents in Australia and Canada have surged by over 300 per cent. Synagogues have been vandalized, and Jewish businesses attacked. Marches have featured chants glorifying terror and calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state.
On August 3, tens of thousands of Australians marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge under the banner “March for Humanity — Save Gaza.” Among them were former foreign minister Bob Carr, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and Sydney’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore. Australians took to the streets again three weeks later to advocate for Palestinians. A man at the very front of that first procession held aloft a portrait of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Such symbolism has become even more disturbing in light of recent revelations. On August 26, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, along with Mike Burgess, Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), confirmed that Iran directed the arson attacks against Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, a Jewish-owned business in Sydney, last October, and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne two months later. Yet even this disclosure will change little.
In fact, Australia denied entry to Israeli parliamentarian Simcha Rothman ahead of a planned solidarity visit with the country’s Jewish community. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke justified the move by claiming Rothman was coming “to spread a message of hate and division.” Rothman, chair of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, had been scheduled to meet with victims of antisemitism, visit Jewish institutions and address Jewish schools and synagogues.
Readers know that Canada is no better. Within days of the October 7, 2023 pogrom, pro-Hamas protesters were emboldened by inaction on the part of authorities and police forces. What followed has been months of harassment, intimidation and open antisemitism, at levels not seen here in more than 80 years.
Liberal MP Anthony Housefather last month issued a call to action amid growing antisemitism across Canada, co-signed by 31 of his Liberal colleagues. Citing Statistic Canada data on police-reported hate crimes, he pointed out that while Jews make up only one per cent of Canada’s population, they are the victims of 70 per cent of reported religious-based acts of hate.
All but six of the signatories were MPs from Ontario or Quebec. But why did the other 137 members of the Liberal caucus not sign on? “Why is fighting antisemitism seemingly determined by constituency demographics,” University of Ottawa Law Professor Michael Geist asked in a comment posted on X.
As Geist also noted in “There is a Growing List of Unsafe Places for the Jewish Community in Canada,” an August 29 article in the Globe and Mail, the rise of antisemitism in this country “has too often been met with inaction and generic statements against all forms of hate, or assurances that this behaviour wasn’t reflective of Canadian values. As politicians remain silent and law enforcement stays on the sidelines, the language becomes more violent in nature amidst allegations of criminality directed at an entire community. The cumulative effect is the gradual erasure of a visible Jewish presence in Canada.”
For the past two years, we’ve watched the unthinkable become normalized, and still, the silence has persisted. We believed that behind the chaos of social media and the radicalism of campus protests, there was a steady, principled middle who would never let hate take hold. But we were wrong. Many condemnations were merely lip service. Institutional policies were rarely enforced. And while we heard reassurances from officials that “this is not who we are,” perhaps it’s exactly who “we” are.
So why did we believe? Because the alternative is that the “silent majority” doesn’t exist and that antisemitism is being tolerated. It means that when politicians like Albanese or Mark Carney announce they will recognize a Palestinian state that has no defined borders, a non-functioning and certainly non-democratic government, while Hamas still holds hostages and preaches genocide, they are not defying their supporters but catering to them. Albanese later told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that his decision was partly motivated by a phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu that made it clear that the Israeli prime minister was “in denial” about the situation in Gaza.
The pleas of Australia’s and Canada’s Jews to reconsider this absurd move fell on deaf ears. It means that we are not surrounded by quiet allies, but by people who don’t care. When attacks on Jewish gatherings or buildings take place, most non-Jews, even if they don’t approve, are unlikely to be very angry or upset about it. We “deserve” it, in their view, by supporting a nation committing crimes and mass murder.
This requires a complete change in our psychological mindset regarding our place in society. From the 1950s until recently, the “default mode” that we assumed to be true was that most people, save some antisemites here and there, were fine with us as members of the larger community, and deserving of respect and protection. They didn’t have to be our “friends” to feel that way.
No longer. We can’t continue to be “shocked” when the leaders of the world, even countries like ours and Australia, no longer have any particular interest in our welfare (as is demonstrated day after day in news stories). And it’s not just because our enemies have greater domestic electoral clout. It’s just easier for most people to distance themselves from us quietly – which is not that hard to do for those, including most politicians, who have never moved much in circles where they’d be close to Jews.
We are on our own, and this will require a psychological adjustment. It doesn’t mean most people are now antisemites or supporters of Hamas or Islamists. But they will not particularly care to support us. We are now associated with a country they see in a very negative light, one many consider even worse than China or – yes! – Putin’s Russia. Only those people with genuine historical or religious knowledge, clearly a minority, will understand our plight. We must get used to this new reality.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
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Features
Musings from Dizengoff Street – by Bruce Brown (updated on a regular basis)
(August 11, 2026) Bravo Boy George. We certainly will dance again! And what better way than with his new reggae tune. Now Boy George is dealing with a hostile backlash against his just stand for Israel. Having to withdraw from London’s East End production of Jesus Christ Superstar where he was going to play – guess it. King Herod. Never a big Culture Club fan, but I am anyway -as a sign of support- going to download his greatest hits to my Spotify library. And hoping to have a chance to buy a concert ticket should Boy George perform in Israel. Kind of reminds me of Bob Dylan’s 1983 song Neighborhood Bully. Also in defense of Israel. I’m going to download that song as well. Although don’t think he was hounded the way Boy George is now. Sign of the times I guess.
+++++
Coming clean. I sometimes find myself chanting, to no one in particular, that snappy little ditty ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’ Now why can’t we come up with something as catchy. With such an impressive gene pool of great Jewish songwriters. George Gershwin. Irving Berlin. Burt Bacharach. Carole King. Neil Diamond. Leanard Choen. Paul Simon. Gene Simmons, Amy Winehouse. Bob Dylan. And yes, even the Buddhist Boy George. And still… gurnish! No wonder we’re losing the global PR battle
(August 8, 2026) Outside Basimta Café in Central Jerusalem. Love the red shirt against a tiny sea of black. Not sure I am shrugging because of the ultra-orthodox uproar over a Jerusalem café operating on Shabbat or the lack of an ultra-orthodox uproar over a Jerusalem café operating on Shabbat. For the last six weeks Israeli headlines shouted about the cafe chaos. With the ultra-religious blocking entrances and storming the café. While shouting ‘Shabbos! Shabbos!’ Upsetting the secular amongst us just wanting to enjoy our Saturday iced matchas. So the wife and I thought we would check it out. And. Yes. Buy something to support the business. Uproar. Not. Blocked entrances. Not. Storming the café. Not. Albeit there were police barriers separating the devout protesters from the coffee drinkers. The protesters being just a few dozen black clad, pious Jews. Mostly teenagers. And yes. Shouting ‘Shabbos! Shabbos!’ Certainly underwhelming in its reported mayhem. Reminds me of the famous saying misattributed to Mark Twain – “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do, you’re misinformed.” But I did enjoy my iced matcha.
(August 6, 2026) Here we go again. Another round of forever negotiations. As someone who negotiates for a living. The way things are going in the straits. If I had to recommend a book on the subject to a new hire. Between The Art of the Deal, A Presidential Edition by Donald J. Trump or The Real Art of the Deal by the Mullahs of Iran with a special forward by the IRGC. Well. I would choose the latter.
(August 3) Bravo Yoav Segalovitz, Liberal Yesh Atid MK and Monsour Abbas, United Arab Ra’am MK and party head. For breaking a glass ceiling where a Jewish lawmaker joins an Arab political party. No less a political earthquake in my little shtetl. Which can significantly impact coalition block arithmetic and posturing and strategy in the upcoming elections. Now Ra’am can be considered a legitimate ‘Zionist’ partner when forming coalition blocks and potentially pushing the ‘center left/right’ party over the 60 seat majority threshold. In our crazy parliamentary democracy defined by a multi-party (about fourteen!!), proportional representation system. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Israel’s proportional representation model of governance is the best parliamentary democracy system except for all other forms of working democracies. Stay tuned for more amateurish political musings as we move towards Israel’s 26th national election – five of them held since 2019.
(August 1) Although both sides say they are open to diplomacy. Neither really trusts the other. And American military action, or its threat, continues. I read headlines in the middle of the night -it’s a nervous habit lately– that the Dynamic Duo of Trump and Netanyahu may again strike in unison. Possibly this weekend. Yikes! Prompting me, at 2:30 AM, to dash around the house stocking my safe room. Bottled water. Canned food. Medicines. Documents. The beat goes on….
If it’s crazy here. It’s insane in Italy. With a recent online ‘Jew Hunt’ in the Milan area. Before being removed, the digital forms urged reportings of Israelis and Italian Jews staying in local hotels. The infamous Global Sumud Movement -yes, the one coordinating ‘peace and humanitarian’ flotillas to Gaza- was somehow connected. Although they deny involvement?! This deranged decree was looking to identify Zionist tourism and Zionist neo-colonization in Italy. I’ll stick with stocking the saferoom.
Then there’s New York Mayor Mamdani, a Global Sumud Movement supporter, threatening to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu if he comes to New York. But since discovered he has no legal right for such a grandstanding, antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-Western, anti-democratic antic. Maybe Mandami should be arrested! Or at least impeached. For being a grandstanding, antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-Western, anti-democratic mayor.
Here’s a post Bruce sent us Friday, July 31:
WARTIME MUSINGS
Should credible threats against FLOTUS and ‘FSOTUS’ (first son..) not be justification to attack first.
As for yesterday’s summit. Netanyahu really can’t win. Explainer. If Trump now attacks without victory its ’cause of Netanyahu. If Trump now attacks with victory its ’cause of Trump. And, in Israel, if Trump doesn’t attack -victory or not- Netanyahu failed in his eighth meeting with Trump. And if Trump does attack -victory or not- half the country will vilify Bibi anyway. Missing a permutation?
Ya. I know. Kinda’ need a definition of victory for that musing to work.
And here in my little shtetle. We go to sleep unsure if there will be a code red in the middle of the night. And if not. We wake up thinking it will be tonight. How do you define stress?
Seemed like an appropriate way to end this musing.
Bruce Brown is a former Winnipegger who made aliyah to Israel over 35 years ago. Bruce first began writing for us – in his own inimitable style, in 2012, during what was known as “Operation Pillar of Defense.” His occasional musings on aspects of life in Israel that were far from what you’d typically read in other reports from Israel were hugely popular – both in the print Jewish Post & News and on this website.
We’re now glad to report that Bruce is back writing for us – this time on a regular basis. We will post Bruce’s reports as they arrive – with the date of each post at the beginning of that post.
Here’s some information about Bruce – and awards he’s received for his writing:
Bruce Brown. Canadian born. Now living in Israel (for a long time). Bruce works in Israel’s hi-tech sector by day and, in spurts, is a somewhat inspired writer by night. He received the American Jewish Press Association’s award for writing excellence in 2019 and 2025. And wrote the 1998 satire, “An Israeli is….” Bruce’s musings are political, social, economic and personal. With lots of biting, contrarian, sardonic and irreverent insight.
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