Outrage and optimism
After visit to Bondi, attorney general says we must root out antisemitism
The attorney general, on an official visit to Australia, has expressed the government’s outrage at the terrorist attack on Jews celebrating the festival of Hanukkah at Bondi beach in December, in which 15 people were murdered. But Lord Hermer KC also offered some optimistic reflections in an address delivered at the Great Synagogue in Sydney last Friday night.
Hermer was in Australia to meet government counterparts. Shortly after his arrival, he went to Bondi and, as he put it, “stood on the green, and reflected on the horror of what had taken place there”.
In his address to the congregation, Hermer said:
I come on behalf of His Majesty’s government of the United Kingdom and the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer.
I come to express our outrage at the terrorist attack at Bondi beach, to offer our condolences to the families of those killed and those injured to express our profound friendship and solidarity with the Jewish community of Australia as you come to terms with the horror of the attack and face the challenge of tackling modern antisemitism.
Recalling that he had spoken at his own synagogue in north London after the terrorist attack on a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur last year, Hermer said:
I spoke on behalf of the prime minister offering our condolences to the victims and to the British Jewish community and expressing our determination to address the rise of antisemitism.
But I also spoke as a Jew, as a member of the congregation — trying to make sense of the senseless, to articulate what this meant me, my family, my community as Jews in modern Britain — and I spoke as part of a Shabbat community in the natural place to come together as one, to work through the pain, bewilderment and anger together, just as communities did across the world after 7 October.
He continued:
The attacks at Heaton Park and at Bondi beach took place at the other side of the globe within weeks of each other. This reflects the unacceptable reality that there are very few places on this planet in which Jewish life exists without physical risk. It demonstrates the reach of modern antisemitism that strikes on our ability to live openly as Jews, to worship without fear and to belong wherever in the world we live, in the north, south, east or west.
But Jewish history, like the Jewish calendar, is marked by the juxtaposition of not only sadness but joy… So permit me, if short of expressing joy in this moment of solemnity, at least to seek to offer some optimistic reflections about where we find ourselves.
Seen in a historical context, he said, this was still an extraordinary time to be Jewish:
For centuries of Jewish existence, attacks on Jews would have been perpetrated by states, directly, indirectly or at best with atrocities committed whilst states and their institutions turned a blind eye. The contrast in our era is profound — every arm of the state employed to track down and prosecute those involved in terrorist crime, a determination to root out antisemitism and to protect our communities…
Secondly, I think a positive response in both our countries has been a determination that these outrages will not be used to divide communities. We are blessed in both the UK and Australia to live in proud, tolerant and diverse nations. The Jewish values we all grew up with recognise, indeed promote, this value — that love for our fellow human beings will always outshine hatred and division.
To allow our anger to dictate another path would be to hand a victory to terrorists. What greater reflection of how, united, our communities are always stronger is the extraordinary bravery of a Muslim father-of-two, a proud Australian and a hero, Ahmed al-Ahmed.
Looking ahead, the attorney general concluded, “we do so always mindful of the grievous loss sustained by the victims of terror, with a steely determination to root out antisemitism and intolerance in all its manifestations, but with the Jewish spirit of believing that light will always outshine darkness.”
Lord Hermer has truly expressed our UK's support for our Jewish friends in the time of such unspeakable horror both in Manchester in the UK and Bondi in Australia showing that anti-semitism is rampant throughout the world. Our Western Culture has to look seriously at this prejudice and sadly it is ancient since the Jewish Christians dropped their description of Jesus Christ when Rome wiped out the Jews who were claiming their God was superior to the Roman Emperor.
But the Christians believing the God of the Jews had abandoned them in AD70 decided to drop the Jewish description of their Christianity and become just Christian. From this moment on Christians themselves have been prejudiced against the Jews and successive Popes and Kings and Queens of Europe have tolerated Jews but only if they were in Ghettos with most trades banned to them except money lending. The fact that in the 20th Century in our lifetime those ghettos were still in operation in some places in Europe and it is to our Civilisations eternal shame that Nazism took such a hold both in Europe that most countries not even occupied carried out the extermination policies of the Third Reich to say nothing of the support from all the Arab world and in many places in the USA. So I am proud to be a British Friend of Israel, Our Fight and The Campaign against Anti-Semitism because unless we all stand four square behind this outrageous prejudice we shall have betrayed The God of the Jews, The God of the Christians and the God of the Muslims and that won't do because the Jewish God is the God of us all!
If only there was someone either in the government or "government adjacent" who could find a way to apply existing laws in the UK but to apply them in such a way that the rise of antisemitism would be faced head on?