<\/p>\n
By Louise Adler \u2013 a former director of Adelaide Writers\u2019 Week<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n <\/a> It should go without saying but in case there is any doubt, the atrocity on Bondi beach should appal all of us, whether we are Jewish or not. Those who lost their lives and their loved ones deserve our collective empathy and it is only right and proper that their suffering has been comprehensively acknowledged. <\/span><\/p>\n Unfortunately, the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, far from addressing the complex political and historical context of the Bondi tragedy, is only reinforcing an exclusionary discourse \u2013 a precondition for conflict.<\/span><\/p>\n The Commission is tasked with investigating the nature and prevalence of antisemitism. Over 16,000 submissions have been received in the first block of hearings devoted to the lived experience of antisemitism and most will have been scripted by the lobby\u2019s full-time \u2018project officers\u2019. It is disappointing, but unsurprising, that the Commission has not probed these testimonies. Who wants to suggest a witness might be ideologically motivated or prone to exaggeration or self-dramatisation? If the Commission is to have any credibility beyond acting as a sop to tireless lobbyists, rigorous scrutiny should be applied to the testimonies.<\/span><\/p>\n If we are to accept that a Royal Commission is an appropriate site for the narration of \u2018lived experience\u2019, and that \u2018lived experience\u2019 has some evidentiary value, the questions of whose lived experience is deemed relevant and to what ideological ends demands critical consideration. Instead, the conceptual ambiguity of this category \u2018lived experience\u2019 means that claims that are often tendentious are rendered irrefutable.<\/span><\/p>\n The Commission has given equal weight to actual events and feelings. Feelings and anxieties are established as<\/span> <\/span><\/em>reality. Many witnesses testify, often unwittingly, to this self-fulfilling operation. Take, for example, the testimony of \u201cDina\u201d, a witness reluctant to be identified by name but happy to appear on livestream and give press interviews: \u201cright now, the Australian Jewish community is living a very different reality to what I think the rest of the Australian community is living\u201d. What is the role of the Royal Commission in reconciling Dina\u2019s reality with that of \u201cthe rest of the Australian community\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n A random selection of examples sheds light on the problem. Ms Pinsky says \u201cthe actual data does not support that Palestine is the worst humanitarian crisis today in the world\u201d and that, far from targeting Palestinian children, the IDF is an army made up of Israelis who want \u201cto support their country to defend against terror, which Israel is afflicted with and must defend against\u201d. Elsewhere Ms Pinsky admits, \u201cI\u2019m not very good at history\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n Then there is the witness who is cruelly exposed to news reports of starvation in Gaza <\/span>during her \u201c30 second\u201d lift ride<\/span><\/a> in her office building, and who has to suffer the indignity of seeing the Palestinian flag and hearing artists say \u201cfree Palestine\u201d at cultural events \u2013 all of which <\/span>she describes as \u201cvery tiring\u201d<\/span><\/a>. The obscene contrast, though it barely needs stating, is the \u2018tiring\u2019 reality to which these flags and slogans gesture: the fatigue, for example, of a parent living in a tent for three years in Gaza, who spends their days trying to find the most basic provisions and lies vigilantly awake at night to stop the rats from biting their children.<\/span><\/p>\n Another witness speaking of the Bondi attack says: \u201cthe reality is that they came to kill us. We just weren\u2019t there.\u201d Not being there is a recurrent theme: a child who had to be taken to hospital could have been treated differently for being a Jew but wasn\u2019t (\u201cIt was a different hospital, and she received the correct treatment and everything was fine\u201d). A child on a school excursion who could have been exposed to antisemitic abuse wasn\u2019t (\u201cSo my children didn\u2019t experience anything, but\u2026\u201d). In many testimonies paranoia abounds.<\/span><\/p>\n A prospective patient in a NSW hospital, who describes an intensifying anxiety that she would be mistreated if her Jewish identity was revealed (\u201cI spent probably the worst 24 hours of my life imagining all the ways I could be killed legitimately in a hospital\u201d), insists that despite ultimately receiving \u201cextremely professional\u201d care, her trust in the healthcare system remains broken. One witness who went to the Opera House on October 9 2023 to show her solidarity with Israel describes having to leave shortly after arriving because of an \u201cominous sort of feeling\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n