This month – just a few weeks after the Bondi Hanukkah massacre that shattered both Australia and the Jewish community, of which I am a part – I was in Berlin. It was a bitterly cold January day, and the tour guide who was introducing me to the city showed me the headline of an old German newspaper cover, from 2012. It brought me to sudden, unexpected tears. The cover story that had run followed a violent antisemitic attack on a rabbi. In response, prominent German men – a politician, journalist and jazz musician – wore a black kippah, a Jewish skullcap, in public solidarity with the Jewish community. The headline blazed: Berlin tragt Kippa — Berlin wears a kippah.
What struck me was not only the gesture, but what it represented. Germany, the birthplace of the Holocaust, has learned at great, tragic cost that the moral price of looking away is far higher than the discomfort of standing up. Far away from my home in Melbourne, I hoped that Australia had learned this lesson too.
On Thursday, Australia observes its inaugural National Day of Mourning, marking the Bondi massacre. It is a moment for grief, reflection and collective reckoning — not only with what happened, but with what it now asks of us. In Berlin, my Jewish German guide and I spoke about life in a post-October 7 world, a day not only marred in horror but which marked the start of rising global antisemitism in many pockets of the world. In Australia, the Jewish community has been reeling ever since then.
What I also learned that day was how deliberately and differently Germany has chosen to respond to antisemitism since the Holocaust. Since the end of World War II, every town and city has publicly funded offices dedicated to confronting this particular brand of hate; most of those roles are filled by non-Jews. The lesson was simple, said my guide: fighting Jew-hatred is not a Jewish responsibility alone.
We stopped at the Rosenstrasse memorial, which commemorates the bravery of several hundred non-Jewish women who protested for days against the arrest of their Jewish husbands and relatives by the Nazis. While originally selected for deportation, the men were eventually freed. I saw the sculptures of the women, but then also a figure placed a few metres away. It was a stone man seated on a bench, arm draped casually, his gaze turned away from the despair and grief of the women in the centre of the square. “This,” said the guide, “is the most important part of the memorial.” It was a stark reminder that history is shaped not only by those who act, but by those who choose not to.
Back home in Australia, that lesson feels uncomfortably current. For more than two years, Jewish Australians have warned that antisemitism and radicalisation are being tolerated, excused or minimised. The signs are unmistakable: vandalised synagogues and schools, harassment of Jewish students, Jewish Australians doxed and targeted, firebombings in Jewish neighbourhoods, and antisemitic hate normalised on social media by public figures, bleeding into everyday public life. What began as chants of hate on the steps of the Sydney Opera House in October 2023 ended in mass murder on the shores of Bondi Beach.
In the wake of Bondi, Australians have responded with decency. Tens of thousands donated blood. Vigils and interfaith services filled public spaces. Many more joined the calls for a royal commission. There has been a palpable sense that this was not someone else’s tragedy, but a national wound. It makes me think that now, finally, we will find a different way to confront antisemitism, too.
Days of mourning are often understood as pauses — moments to step back from argument and noise. But history suggests we should do the opposite. Mourning, if it is to mean anything, sharpens moral vision. It clarifies what can no longer be excused, minimised or deferred. It forces societies to decide whether grief will be followed by responsibility, or by retreat.
Last week, the Adelaide Writers’ Week collapsed after their removal of an author who had a well-documented record of anti-Zionist rhetoric, and who said on national television that she doesn’t see Hamas as a terrorist organisation. When 180 writers pulled out, the Adelaide Festival Board apologised and invited the author back for the following year, making me wonder if they chose to save face over exercising moral clarity. The board attempted briefly to stop looking away — and then decided the discomfort was too great.
The easier option — the tempting one — is always retreat. To reframe hate as “complex” or “free speech”. To prioritise reputation over responsibility. To choose silence and call it neutrality. Germany’s history teaches us where that path leads.
Australia is now being tested. Not as a nation of good people — which we have shown ourselves to be — but as a society willing to accept the discomfort that comes with moral clarity. Let us hope we make the right choice.
Moran Dvir is a board member of National Council of Jewish Women of Australia and co-founder of advocacy group Project A.
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Moran Dvir is a board member of National Council of Jewish Women of Australia and co-founder of advocacy group Project A.
