A Tale of Two Open Letters

When our eldest was just a baby, we made a day trip to the spas at Hepburn Springs in central Victoria. While my wife had a massage, I played with our son by the pool. An obviously Jewish old lady next to us cooed over him and dandled him on her lap. When she picked him up, I noticed the numbers tattooed on her wrists.

It was a chilling reminder, in that relaxing and peaceful place, that the horrors of the Holocaust were still in living memory.

For too many people today, though, it seems that the lessons we were supposed to have learned have all been forgotten. In the last few days, two open letters have been published in Australia. They illustrate the grim, yawning void between fashionable left-wing ideology and the harrowing memories of the grim reality of antisemitism.

A new wave of anti-Semitism in Australia and overseas after the October 7 attack by Hamas in ­Israel has deeply disturbed many of the nation’s remaining Holocaust survivors, prompting more than 100 of them, including [Abram Goldberg], to publish an ­unprecedented statement. Calling on Australians to denounce anti-Semitism and hatred, the 102 signatories warn of the consequences of a repeating history.

As the last witnesses to the ­brutalities of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime, the elderly survivors write: “We are witnesses to the anti-Semitic propaganda that turned our friends, neighbours and the general public against us in Europe. We remember the six million Jewish lives lost because of this hatred.”

On the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night of anti-Jewish pogroms deemed the turning point in Nazi plans to annihilate European Jewry, they urge humanity to reject hatred, bigotry and violence, to recognise and condemn the agenda of Hamas, and to call for the immediate release of all its hundreds of hostages.

The Australian

On the other hand, there’s the hateful ideological delusion of the useful idiots of the left-elite.

More than 300 Australian lawyers have signed a letter to senior government leaders calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the West Bank, urging them to halt defence exports to Israel and secure the immediate return of hostages.

Do these credentialled cretins even understand how stupid their demands are? On what planet do they think that letting Hamas off scot-free for its atrocities will ever see the hundreds of hostages returned alive?

The letter, signed by legal practitioners and academics from across the country, urges Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus to help fulfil Australia’s international legal obligations in relation to the “ever escalating and horrific” conflict in the Middle East.

“The well-accepted limits of international law, human rights law and the law of armed conflict have been exceeded,” the letter reads. “There is mounting evidence that atrocity crimes have been committed. Atrocity crimes are considered to be the most serious crimes against humankind.”

All committed by Hamas. Yet, these absolute, hateful morons want Hamas to be allowed to get away with it all.

Prominent signatories to the letter include Greg Barns SC, Guy Gilbert SC, David Hooke SC, legal scholar Simon Henderson, University of Technology Sydney Professor Thalia Anthony and Griffith University Professor Susan Harris Rimmer.

The Australian

Remember those names. Never forget them. They must live in infamy, every bit as much as hateful fools like Chloe Swarbrick or Islamic hate-preacher Wissam Haddad.

The Jews who lived through the last Holocaust aren’t fooled by the antisemitic creeps who are fanning the flames of another.

“Never have we, the survivors of the Holocaust felt the need to make a collective statement such as this until now,” the statement says. “Never did we think that we would witness a re-enactment of the senseless and virulent hatred of Jews that we faced in Europe.

“The actions of Hamas are so familiar, so barbaric, yet instead of condemning this, the response across the globe is a shameful spike in anti-Semitism.”

And make no mistake: if you’re attacking Israel and silent on Hamas’ butchery, you’re an antisemite.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim took issue with the letter, saying the signatories had “fallen into the trap of moral equivalence”.

“Israel is a democracy whose citizens were subjected to a brutal massacre at the hands of terrorists. Other Israelis, including dozens of children, were carried off as hostages,” he said.

“It seems extraordinary that 300 lawyers should focus disproportionately on the limits of Israel’s undoubted right to defend itself, and call for Australia to take punitive measures only against Israel, but not Hamas or the Iranian regime which sponsors Hamas.”

The Australian

Australia’s Holocaust survivors know it when they see it. After all, they’ve seen it all before.

For 84-year-old Nina Bassat, adding her name to the statement was imperative. “It’s the total absence of moral fibre that’s coming through in this. There’s no logic. It’s just ‘we hate Jews’,” said Mrs Bassat, a child survivor, who unlike some signatories, has not become fearful over the past month, as a result of the swell in anti-Semitism, of being identified publicly […]

As a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Mrs Bassat has long been aware of the existence of local anti-Semitism. But only now has she been shocked by its breadth, compelling her to add her name to the letter. “It hurts me,” she said. “We were given a haven here. We just wanted to get as far away from Europe as we could. And it has been a wonderful country … I did not think in Australia I would ever hear the words ‘kill the Jews’.

The Australian

Nor did I ever think in Australia that I’d see the supposed best and brightest openly siding with Jew-killers. Yet, that’s where we are.

Where we’ll end up, I shudder to think.