Some 250 mayors and other local officials and community leaders from across Australia gathered in Gold Coast, Queensland, from Sept. 3 to 5 for the Australian Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism.
Addressing attendees, Australian special envoy for antisemitism Jillian Segal said that Jew-hatred is an “existential threat to democracy.”
Segal said that Jew-hatred “was not ‘creeping in’ to Australian communities but was ‘well and truly with us,’”ABC News (Australia) reported.
“This threatens not just the Jews,” the envoy said, “but it absolutely tears at our social cohesion, and it tears at our democracy and the future for our children and our country.”
Tom Tate, the Gold Coast mayor, led the event, which organizers said is “the first of its kind” in the country, and a “local led-initiative, which is part of a global movement spanning North America, Latin America and Europe.”
Sacha Roytman, CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, which hosted the event, stated that “recent arson attacks on Australian soil show the Jewish community are not safe and when hate emerges, the first line of defence are the people who live and breathe their communities.”
Speakers included deputy Australian prime minister Richard Marles, Australian human rights commissioner Lorraine Finlay and Israeli special envoy to combat Jew-hatred Michal Cotler-Wunsh.
At the event, Zann Maxwell, deputy mayor of Sydney, read aloud a statement from the owner of a Jewish bakery in Darlinghurst that was targeted: “If you’re coming after me, it’r not an Israel problem. It’s a Jewish problem, and we have a word for that: ‘antisemitism.’”
