Speech to the Australians Against Antisemitism Rally at Martin Place on 26 October 2025. Published on J-Wire online on 27 October 2025.
How did we get to here? This weird, startling, savage, ‘new normal’ of anti-Jew hatred?
Perth’s Catholic Archbishop Timothy Costello said it well: “Tragically, manifestations of this inexplicable blindness and evil have become visible in our towns and cities.”
I want to take you on a journey to understand why it has got out of hand.
Sometimes academics can be incredibly insightful. Americans James Q. Wilson and George Kelling used a phrase four decades ago about “broken windows” – as a metaphor for disorder in neighbourhoods. Where there is unchecked, unscrubbed-clean graffiti, scattered garbage on pavements, where buildings have unrepaired windows, where the feeling is the place is going to the dogs, you get rising and more serious crime.
They argued: clean up the rubbish, instil civic pride, target minor offenses and you prevent more serious crimes – atmosphere matters. It is a terrific insight.
This reminds me of Australia.
The indifference, the tolerance for shouty rudeness in our streets, the fluttering of Hamas & Hezbollah flags on our university campuses (flags of two illegal terrorist organisations!) breeds an atmosphere of intolerance and violence.
If you have not heard of a Jewish university kid being harassed as “Zionist scum”, heckled, spat on, told they are baby killers, then you do not know what life is like for so many wonderful people, minutes from here.
No wonder many of my Jewish friends ask: “How long have we got?” Is the 80-year holiday from fierce, open antisemitism, drawn to a shuddering halt? That’s 80-years since 1945 and the opening of Hitler’s gates of Hell.
How long have we got before intolerance and hatred eats up all of us? What is wrong with our universities? Their administrators?
We see and hear a ratchetting up of antisemitism. Bad behaviour – our “broken windows” – lead to subsequent and more serious abuse.
Understand this: Increased, virulent, bristling with hatred antisemitism is the result of a chain of events, including complacency and turning away from what needs to be done, which leads to more brazen acts.
People talk of social cohesion. How much longer can our brave and good police let intimidation go scot free?
Many fear for their safety. Synagogues, cultural places, Jewish schools now need increased security. If you walk around Bondi Beach, you cannot be sure what hoon will come by, threatening and disrupting the atmosphere. We all know why: to threaten Jews.
Mary Easson and I were at the Great Synagogue on Elizabeth Street, Sydney, a year ago. At night. The police told everyone not to leave until it was safe. We waited. We eventually went out the back door.
Really? Is this Sydney?! I urge the government to introduce new laws to make it a crime, laws that can be upheld by the NSW Supreme Court, to make intimidation outside a place of worship a crime.
Your presence today is a practical, peaceful protest for love and respect, and against the “culture of fear” present in pockets of our society, which permeates and torments the lives of too many of our Jewish friends.
I wish the whole community is awake to the dangers. But until that changes, the metaphor of a giant stirring after all too long a sleep is imperfect. Most of us are only half-awake, with rheum in our eyes, perhaps still hoping to ignore the alarm.
Which is why you matter, everyone here, Australians united against antisemitism.
I am in solidarity, for respect; I celebrate the potential of all our people, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslims too, Buddhists, men and women of faith, and all our friends of clear conviction. We stand for the best version of ourselves and of our society.
We know what’s right. Social cohesion turns on the good in our hearts and what we do.
If you think you are keeping the peace when you say nothing when a cruel comment is made, you are not. You are walking away from a broken window. You can be as culpable as if you uttered some hideous, awful slur.
Earlier this year Sydney Archbishops Anthony Fisher, Kanishka Raffel and Makarios Griniezakis, from the Catholic, Anglican, and Greek Orthodox faiths declared “enough is enough”. They issued a joint call to reject the “normalisation of hatred” against Jews. It is incredibly hard to get those three denominations – especially in Sydney – to issue a joint statement on anything. Yet they did. They sounded the alarm.
I say to my fellow Christians that “the way, the truth, and the life” leads to kindness, determination, the moral courage to be unpopular.
Hear the ugly words, see the broken windows. Do not walk idly by. Be righteous as if all our lives depend on what we notice, what we do. I pray for courage in our workplaces, our schools, our churches and temples, our communities, to do what’s right.
You hit the ball when it comes.
Thank you for vowing to do exactly that.
Other Photos on the day:
