Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel opened an international Holocaust conference in Jerusalem on Sunday by accusing Australia’s government of greenlighting terrorism against Jews by staying silent in the face of hate speech.
Her remark came the day of the terror attack on Jews attending a Chanukah event at Bondi Beach in Sydney, which killed 15 people, including a 10-year-old girl and an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, and wounded dozens, following a wave of antisemitic incidents in Australia.
“This is what happens when, over the last two years, you allow hate speech,” Haskel told international dignitaries attending the plenary of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. “You are basically giving an excuse or backing to some of the most violent lies that are being spread ... [which] inflates the hatred and violence that is being committed against Jews.”
She noted that on the day after the single worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust—on Oct. 7, 2023—and weeks before the first Israeli soldier set foot in Gaza, there were people marching outside the Sydney Opera House calling to “Gas the Jews” and “globalize the intifada,” yet the Australian government remained silent.
“No one was arrested, no one was prosecuted, no one paid a price for that,” she said.
Haskel, who lived in Australia for six years, said that a decade ago, she wouldn’t have believed something like this could happen in what used to be one of the safest places in the world for Jews.
The 41 participating delegations at the Holocaust conference, which is being held under the auspices of Israel’s presidency, stood for a moment a silence in solidarity with Australian Jewry.
In her address, Israel’s second-highest diplomat noted that the proudest moment for her Holocaust-survivor grandparents came when they saw her in her Israel Defense Forces uniform, showing them that the next generation of their family could defend themselves.
“My saddest moment as an Israeli, as a mother, as a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and as a member of Knesset was Oct. 7, 2023, when on my generation’s watch, as a lawmaker and as a direct descendant of Holocaust survivors, it happened again,” she said.
