In all the hoo-hah over ‘Aboriginal deaths in custody’, one perennially overlooked fact is that, statistically, Aborigines are safer in prison than in their own remote communities. Make of that what you will.
It’s also a little-known and tragic fact of history that, after the initial rise to power of the Hitler regime, the situation purported to have settled down a little. The Nazis toned down their anti-Semitic rhetoric and thousands of German Jews who’d fled the Third Reich thought it was safe to return.
Their descendants aren’t about to make the same mistake.
The Australian government is now advising Australians not to travel to Israel or the West Bank and leave while commercial flights are available.
It marks the first time in the last year of conflict that the travel advice has been escalated to this level. Even in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 terrorist attacks, Smartraveller advised Australians should “reconsider your need to travel to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories”.
“We now advise do not travel to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories due to the volatile security situation, armed conflict, civil unrest and terrorism,” the Smartraveller website reads.
“If you’re in Israel, you should leave while commercial flights remain available, border crossings are open and while it’s safe to do so.”
And safe to go where? At least in Israel the government doesn’t sit idly by while drooling anti-Semites bellow their allegiance to Hamas and Hezbollah in the streets. Israeli universities don’t turn a blind eye while Jewish students are driven from campus by violent thugs.
Sounds a whole lot safer for Jews than Sydney or Melbourne, right now.
Australian Jews in Israel are defying new Albanese government warnings to get out of the country while they still can, saying they feel safer there facing Hezbollah rockets than facing anti-Semitism on the streets at home.
Sydney Rabbi Yossi Friedman, who arrived in Jerusalem just days ago with his wife and five children, dismissed the updated travel advice, declaring: “We feel strong and safe where we are.”
“How safe are many Jews currently feeling in Sydney with the massive increase in anti-Semitism since October 7?” he said.
This is what we’ve come to: Jews would rather trust the Iron Dome to protect them from Hamas and Hezbollah rockets and Iranian drones, than trust Australian police to protect them from Sydney Muslims or Melbourne Greens voters.
Dual Australian-Israeli citizen Tami Rich scoffed at the warning, even as she and her family remained on alert for fresh Hezbollah rocket attacks on their town of Zichron Yaakov, south of Haifa.
“As scary as this is – even now the planes are flying overhead and I’m hearing the booms of the Iron Dome constantly – at the same time I feel protected,” the Sydney-born Holocaust studies lecturer told The Australian.
“But when I look at what is going on in Australia; when I see the hatred spewing out of people’s mouths at protests in Sydney and see the police just standing there, I say to myself ‘the authorities do not protect the Jews in Australia. Australia is tolerating outright hate speech.’”
Australian Jews are getting a stark reminder of exactly why the state of Israel was resurrected in 1948: so there’s one place in the world that would protect them, when all others fall to the poison of anti-Semitism.
Ms Rich, on a study tour at Auschwitz in Poland the day before last year’s terrorist attack on Israel, said she had scrambled to return to her adopted country then and would not flee now.
“What people miss is that for Jews, this has happened to us for thousands of years. It’s in our DNA,” she said.
Another Jewish Australian woman, unnamed, scoffed at the very idea that Foreign Minister Penny Wong, of all people, should be offering Jews advice on staying safe.
“I’m not rushing to the airport because Penny Wong says so,” she said.
“I feel 100 times safer here as a Jew as I would walking around Melbourne’s northern suburbs or the streets of western Sydney […]”
Despite regular rocket warnings, she said Israelis were going about their daily lives. “We went to an open-air concert last night. The feeling of community and resilience is unbelievable. They just celebrate life here.”
I never thought I’d see the day when Jewish Australians felt safer in a country at open war than in Australia.
Shame on the anti-Semites, and shame on the weak, gutless, venal Albanese government.
