|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The following is an op-ed authored by Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) Public Affairs Advocate for Australia Sheina Gutnick and originally published in the Australian Financial Review:
Ten months ago, I was a mum from Caulfield living a fairly ordinary life. I had my family, my kids and my work. I had no interest in being a public figure, and I still don’t.
Now I spend much of my time writing and speaking about antisemitism, meeting politicians and journalists, appearing on television, giving evidence at the royal commission and travelling around Australia and overseas talking about what is happening to Jewish people.
It started on December 14, 2025, when my dad, Reuven Morrison, went to the Chabad of Bondi Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach. When the shooting started, he saw people in danger and tried to help them. He confronted the terrorists with his bare hands, threw a brick at them, and was shot 11 times and killed on the beach he loved so much.
I am still learning how to write that sentence and process that I am talking about my beloved dad, and not somebody else’s life or story.
I am an only child. My dad was my rock. His death has left a hole in our family that nothing will ever fill. As much as I want people to know him for who he was and how he lived, I cannot separate what happened to him from the fact that he was murdered at a Hanukkah celebration because he was Jewish.
That is why I now work with the Combat Antisemitism Movement. I cannot change what happened to my dad, my family or my community, but I can do everything I can to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. We cannot wait for another Jewish person to be murdered before we decide antisemitism has gone too far.
October 7 changed everything.
We watched the most horrific massacre of Jews since the Holocaust unfold, and then watched the conversation almost immediately begin to shift. Before Israel had even buried its dead, people were celebrating, excusing and rationalising what had happened.
Since then, living as a Jew in Australia has at times felt like living in the twilight zone.
We have seen antisemitism on our streets, outside synagogues, around schools, on university campuses, in workplaces and even in healthcare. Jewish Australians now think about whether to wear a Star of David, put a mezuzah on their door, let their children wear their Jewish school uniform in public, or whether being visibly Jewish makes them a target.
And so much of this is being fuelled online.
Since October 7, social media has become a place where misinformation, conspiracy theories, abuse and outright antisemitism can spread at an extraordinary rate. People consume a video, slogan or post with no context, repeat it as fact, and very quickly the line between political discussion and hatred of Jews disappears.
And it doesn’t stay online.
What people consume online affects how they speak about Jews, how Jewish colleagues and students are treated and whether Jewish Australians feel comfortable identifying themselves as Jewish.
Aussie Jews knew things were getting bad. I knew things were getting bad. I still never thought it would be my family. I never thought it would be my dad, on his beloved Bondi Beach.
My dad was not a politician or a soldier. He was a Jewish Australian who went to a Hanukkah party and never came home.
It should not be controversial to say that his murder was antisemitic.
Yet even now, antisemitism is treated as something Jewish people need to qualify before it can be taken seriously. We are expected to prove that we are sufficiently reasonable, balanced and critical of Israel before we can say we are frightened by hatred directed at us because we are Jewish.
We would never demand another Australian community explain its views about a foreign government before taking seriously threats directed at them because of who they are.
So why do we do it to Jews?
Antisemitism is not an academic debate. It is not confined to history books or social media. I have seen where hatred can end up. My family and my community live with the consequences every day.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life talking about how terrible the world has become. I want people to remember my dad for who he was. When he saw people in danger, he ran towards them.
I cannot bring my dad back. What I can do is use the attention I never wanted to say what should not need saying in Australia in 2026.
Jewish Australians should not have to become less visibly Jewish to feel safe.
After October 7, we kept warning that antisemitism was becoming normalised. After Bondi, nobody can say we were imagining it.
I don’t want the answer to what happened to my dad to be that Australian Jews learn to hide better.
I want the answer to be that we refuse to accept a country where they have to.
Read more:
Op-Ed: Bondi Was But One Example of Unchecked Hate. And We’re All Paying the Price for It
