By Nomi Kaltmann as seen in Times of Israel
22 August 2024
MELBOURNE, Australia — Simonne Whine has only ever visited Israel once, more than 15 years ago. However, after the Hamas atrocities on October 7, she felt compelled to support the Jewish state, so together with her friend Jacqui Majzner, she started a Facebook group called J-United.
“After October 7 there was a real need for people to connect and do something and take action,” said Whine. “On October 15, we set the group up, we added our friends. We kept adding and asking others to add.”
The group had no formal communal backing and no budget, but it did have a surplus of goodwill and thousands of people in Australia — both Jewish and non-Jewish — who wanted to publicly support Israel.
Numbering around 100,000, the Australian Jewish community represents a small margin of a greater population of 25 million. Vibrant and tight-knit, it boasts dozens of cultural organizations, hundreds of synagogues, and a healthy, well-attended Jewish school system. Many of its members immigrate to Israel, and Australian Jewish organizations send a steady stream of delegations and support missions.
While J-United has rallied strong support for Israel within and beyond the Jewish community, a contrasting sentiment is growing among some Australian Jews, spurred by the emergence of the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), a new group that is critical of Zionism. This divergence highlights a deeper conflict within a closely connected community — one that pits the majority Zionist voices, who see their support for Israel as fundamental to Jewish identity, against a smaller, yet vocal, faction that is critical of Zionism and advocates for a broader anti-racist approach.
“The [Holocaust] survivors who came to Australia understood better than anyone the importance of Zionism and the State of Israel to Jewish survival, and this has transcended to the next generation,” said Jeremy Leibler, the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia. “We know from a recent survey conducted by Monash University that the overwhelming majority of Australian Jews are Zionists, and in particular support Israel and the IDF since October 7.”
Whine had help launching J-United from her friends Maaian Galant and Tamar Paluch.
“I was stuck to my phone, constantly updating and seeking more information, wading through the grief, trying to understand how this happened and what it all means,” said Paluch, another Melburnian whose day job is as an occupational therapist.
On October 7, thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, brutally murdering 1,200 people of all ages, most of them civilians, and kidnapping 251 to the Gaza Strip. The onslaught sparked the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which has seen upwards of 40,000 Palestinian casualties according to unconfirmed figures released by the Hamas-run health ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, and 332 IDF soldiers killed in the ground invasion of Gaza and military operations along its border.
For friends in faraway Melbourne, creating and running J-United has been therapeutic.
“People were so blindsided by what had happened on October 7 and I think it took a while for people to understand how profound it was going to be in and for the Diaspora,” said Paluch.
In the weeks following the massacre, Paulch conducted a range of events supporting Israel, driven by mainstream indifference to the largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust.
“Unquestionably one of the most demoralizing aspects of what happened on October 7 has been the silence of people and groups one expected would see the humanitarian story, even if they couldn’t see eye to eye on the politics of it,” Paluch said.
J-United’s first event was a public rally in support of Israel on the outskirts of Melbourne. Due to security concerns, Australian police did not allow the group to rally in the city itself.
The rally was a success, with more than 3,500 in-person attendees, both Jewish and non-Jewish.
Some of its events have included a hostage installation at Melbourne’s Bourke Street Mall, a protest outside the Australian Red Cross, an International Women’s Day rally outside Melbourne Town Hall and a sunset vigil marking six months since the war’s start.
At Bourke Street Mall, one of Australia’s busiest shopping strips, Whine felt the support of Australians who walked past. “Many people stopped me and said, thank you, we are with you,” she said.
Whine is proud of what her group has been able to achieve, but is troubled that it has a need to exist at all.
On Friday, The New York Times said it had taken “appropriate action” against one of its reporters who in February leaked private details from a pro-Israel WhatsApp group in which some 600 Australian Jewish creatives had sought support amid surging antisemitism, causing a storm of doxxing attacks. Members of the group subsequently suffered harassment and threats from anti-Israel activists, with one shopkeeper being forced to move his store after it was vandalized numerous times, and others installing security cameras in their homes out of fear of being attacked.
“I think [Australian Jewish Communal Organizations] are not set up appropriately to deal with a war. I think they have done as best as possible with minimal resources… but they should be better resourced than they are. I believe that if they were better funded our community would be better supported,” Whine said.
A surprising aspect of J-United’s work has been the non-Jewish supporters who have come to support the group.
Vanessa Ireland, a 54-year-old Christian who belongs to a Messianic church, has attended almost every event run by J-United. When asked why she felt compelled to attend, she was frank.
“Since October 7, [my husband] and I wanted to reach out and comfort the Jewish people. For me, attending any Jewish rally is a small way to say I want to support Israel at such a time as this,” Ireland said.
‘A loud minority feeding into antisemitism in a big way’
Despite some enthusiastic grassroots support for Israel since October 7, a new group called the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), which describes itself on its website as “an independent, expert Jewish voice opposing antisemitism & racism,” has garnered significant attention in Australian media. It has published opinion pieces in newspapers, contributed to an Australian Parliamentary inquiry into antisemitism, and lists more than 700 supporters on its website.
The group, which is not Zionist, has irked some within Australia’s Jewish community.
“Without a doubt, anti-Zionist Jews are a loud minority and feeding into the antisemitism in a big way,” said Philip Dalidakis, a Jewish former parliamentary minister in the state of Victoria.
JCA executive officer Max Kaiser said the group was formed due to the “abject failure” of local Jewish leadership — who he called “little more than Israel lobby groups” — to give representation to Jews critical of Israel.
In response to the rising prominence of the group, J-United circulated a petition among Australian Jews that garnered over 7,000 signatures.
“The Jewish Council of Australia has made a number of public statements that do not reflect the views and beliefs of many in our community. As members of this diverse community, it is crucial that we clarify that their statements and the Jewish Council of Australia do not represent us,” read the petition.
Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler with his daughter at a pro-Israel rally. (Courtesy)
But the JCA remains steadfast in its mission.
“It’s clear a portion of the [Australian Jewish] community has become more extreme, right-wing, pro-war, and pro-Israel,” said Kaiser. “Unfortunately, this has meant a real mainstreaming of extreme anti-Palestinian racism in a segment of the Jewish community.”
“But there has also been a growing critical voice of Jews that want peace and a just solution for all,” he said. “More and more Jews see the fight against antisemitism as being part of a more general fight against racism and that there is real value in forming multicultural, interfaith coalitions to do this. This is what the Jewish Council stands for.”
Leibler believes that supporters of the JCA represent a small fraction of Australian Jewry.
“Throughout Jewish history, there has always been a tiny minority of Jews who knowingly separate themselves from the Jewish community and openly advocate positions that are adverse to the well-being of the Jewish people. Australia is no different,” he said.