ABC National Forum brings together ordinary citizens, community leaders, experts and policymakers to discuss topical issues of national significance.<\/p>\n
“No matter what happens, or no matter what the Israeli government does, you cannot hold responsible Jewish Australians for whatever your views are of that action,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s just wrong, and it’s dangerous, and I’ve seen people, even in my own political organisation, draw that comparison.”<\/p>\n
Mr Burns \u2014 who is Jewish \u2014 made the comments during the first ABC National Forum, where he appeared alongside other members of the Australian-Jewish community.<\/p>\n
During the program, which examined the experiences of Jewish-Australians in the lead up to and after the Bondi terror attack, the Macnamara MP also detailed the difficulties of being a Jewish politician at this moment in history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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He described it as a “tearing” of his identity and said there had been times when he had questioned whether he should hide his Star of David necklace.<\/p>\n
“I’m more identifiable these days and it’s one of those dilemmas that, you know, being Jewish is who I am, but also being an Australian is who I am,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The real litmus test for all of this is not how high our school walls can be, or how many guards we can put in … it’s actually how little people have to care about whether or not they’re wearing something that identifies who they are.”<\/p>\n
Principal encourages students to cover uniforms\u00a0<\/p>\n
The inaugural program heard from a range of Jewish community members, including a writer, charity entrepreneur, school principal and survivor of the Bondi attack.<\/p>\n
Jeremy Stowe-Lindner, the principal of a Jewish college in Melbourne, detailed the extreme security measures his school has taken in the two years since the October 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.<\/p>\n
While his school had installed armed guards and fences, he said he also encouraged students to cover their uniforms with coats as they travelled to and from the grounds.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Jeremy Stowe-Lindner says students have been targeted while wearing their uniform. (ABC News: Billy Cooper)<\/p>\n
“We’re now in a situation, certainly over the last two years, that every excursion we go on, we have to do a security risk assessment as to whether or not it’s appropriate for our children to be in school uniform,” he said.<\/p>\n
“And that’s based on our own experience of the changing landscape that we’ve faced as a community over the last two years and what the children will face in different experiences.”<\/p>\n
Mr Stowe-Lindner said there had been incidents where students had been targeted while wearing their uniform.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“My school, unfortunately, in fact, isn’t an exception within the Jewish schooling landscape,” he said.<\/p>\n
Fifteen people were killed and dozens more were injured in December when two gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach.<\/p>\n
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While other panellists described how they never thought an attack like that could happen in Australia, Mr Stowe-Lindner said: “Bondi was not a surprise to me.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
“When we talk about the high fences and guarding, what we need to do for Jewish schools, that Jewish parents, uniquely in Australia, have to pay for to protect their Jewish children … at some point, not just the Jewish community, but the wider community needs to say, and they are saying now, ‘this is not us. We’re better than that’,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A federal royal commission set up in the wake of the Bondi terror attack will probe antisemitism and social cohesion, with an interim report due by the end of April.<\/p>\n
Mr Stowe-Lindner said he hoped the inquiry would lead to lasting change.<\/p>\n
“When I graduated as principal, it certainly never occurred to me that I would be doing guarding contracts for armed guards or negotiating with builders about bomb-proof and bulletproof outward looking buildings, or doing risk assessments whether children safe going to a museum in the centre of Melbourne,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So I think with this royal commission we have some opportunity for real change, where those parts of my job become redundant.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal Labor MP has strongly cautioned against linking the actions of the Israeli government to rising rates…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":643332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[273673,12648,4740,180217,2142,273674,50,80],"class_list":["post-643331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-abc-national-forum","tag-antisemitism","tag-australia","tag-david-speers","tag-federal-government","tag-josh-burns","tag-news","tag-politics"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116199642336247795","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}