SYDNEY, Australia—When Sharon Stoliar saw the images of masked terrorists rampaging through southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, she immediately was taken back to her childhood nearly four decades ago in Sri Lanka.
The academic researcher and former midwife, who came to Australia as a girl of five, vividly recalled how her father, a pastor with the Wesleyan Methodist Church, was held at gunpoint by rebels in Sri Lanka.
“It brought up all those memories,” she recounted in an interview with JNS. “People were shocked that I still remembered after all these years. This is something that shapes you and the lens through which you see the world.”
An accidental activist against antisemitism
The memories would only grow stronger as Jewish nurses, midwives and pregnant women in Australia privately messaged her on social media about their own safety fears following the massacre and the wave of antisemitism it triggered around the world, including in her hometown of Sydney.
“I thought this is crazy,” Stoliar recounted. “I thought antisemitism was from World War Two days, and that Hitler is gone. I didn’t even know it existed today.”
Stoliar, who married an Israeli-born Jew she met in Sydney six years ago (and who, like her, had also spent most of his life in Australia) said that she had nothing to do with “Jewish stuff” before Oct. 7.
But the threats and the genocidal chants that were now being chanted by antisemitic mobs in Australia, a world away from the conflict in the Middle East—followed by a wave of violence against Australian Jews that including synagogue firebombings and attacks on Jewish businesses and properties—shook her.
She confessed she was shocked at seeing the 110,000-strong Australian Jewish community scared. “This cannot happen here,” she told herself.
Doxed for sounding the alarm
Springing to action on social media, Stoliar began sharing online what her Jewish colleagues had told her, only to be verbally attacked and doxed herself, while the Australian medical community stood by in stone silence.
She was called an “Islamophobe” and a “raging Zionist” who had been “brainwashed” by her husband. Many former friends cut off ties with her.
While Stoliar’s parents are strong supporters of Israel and gave her backing, her siblings have not, reflecting the divisions within society.
“The abuse was unending,” she said.
Stoliar sounded the alarm to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, only to find herself being investigated by authorities.
Seeking to defuse a situation which had gotten out of control on social media, she gave up her registration as a practicing nurse and midwife, but still the complaints against her persisted.
‘Oct. 7 made me understand how the Holocaust happened’
“Oct. 7 made me understand how the Holocaust happened,” she said. “I always wondered reading the history books how the world would let this happen.”
Undeterred, the mother of three—including her husband’s two Jewish children—who has become an almost accidental social media activist against antisemitism, says her deeply held religious beliefs inoculated her against propaganda and radicalization.
“My job is to make the world safer for my husband’s children and my children and their children, in whatever way I can do,” she said.
