Ten days after the Hamas attacks that triggered the start of the Israel-Gaza war, Ayelet Nussbaum’s niece and nephew fled from Haifa in northern Israel.
“We’re very relieved – we were very nervous,” the Australian-Israeli florist from Glebe in New South Wales told Guardian Australia when she met her relatives at Sydney airport. Within about a month of that first repatriation flight, Haifa was deemed safe enough for them to return home. To the south, the bombardment of Gaza picked up pace.
Ten grim months on, those children are again facing upheaval as Nussbaum’s brother and sister-in-law weigh up whether to flee the city, 30km from Lebanon’s border, amid escalating hostilities. In Lebanon more than 1,000 people were killed in the fortnight after September’s pager attacks on Hezbollah, and authorities say more than a million people have been displaced.
In Haifa, schools have closed, the family of five is taking shelter in a bunker and Nussbaum’s elder nephew is days away from being called up to military service, she says.
As she mourns the lack of humanity in Israel’s actions, she also longs for security for the country.
“There should always be empathy,” she says of Israel’s right to protect itself, “but … everything feels like it’s heading towards complete destruction.”
Much changed on 7 October – and its reverberations continue to rock Australia’s Jewish community. That diaspora is variously, and often in combination, supportive of Israel, empathetic towards Palestinians, targeted by hate and exhausted by conflict.
For a brief moment after the “deep and personal horrors” of 7 October – more Jews were killed that day than on any single day since the end of the Holocaust – Israel’s security was paramount, bringing Australia’s Jewish community together, Nussbaum observed. As the war ground on, some of that unity dissolved, she believes.
“There’s deeper and deeper separation between nationalism and [the left],” she says, describing a cementing of extreme views and conversations that have become less open-minded.
“The complexity of it really leads to that split in ideology,” she says. “Even within our little family it’s split. It’s very controversial.”
That splintering goes well beyond the kitchen table.
The initial pain and sorrow fomented determination within the Jewish community, according to Alex Ryvchin, the co-chief of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, which channelled “rage and sorrow into communal unity. We are now more determined than we have ever been to fight for our place in this society.”
And, while the ECAJ deplores conflict and mourns its loss of life, he says, “Israel’s war is just and necessary.”
A year in, Sarah Schwartz, the executive officer of the Jewish Council of Australia, says the conflict has made it clear that the Jewish community does not speak with a single voice. The JCA was formed in February to give voice to progressive Jews, providing an alternative to the mainstream.
“There’s been a real break in the Jewish consensus around Israel,” she says. Whether publicly or privately, “many Jewish people are growing more and more uncomfortable and asking more and more questions about Israel’s conduct, particularly given the absolute devastation that Israel has caused in Gaza.”
There the death toll stands at more than 41,000, many of whom are women and children. Israel has lost nearly 350 young men and women fighting Hamas in Gaza, the ECAJ says.
About 200 of the 820 signatories to the JCA’s core principles are anonymous because of the subsequent doxing and shaming that Schwartz says comes, in part, from within the Jewish community.
“They can’t say that Israel’s acting on behalf of all Jewish people,” she says of groups that have reacted negatively to the formation of the council. “I don’t think that they can really just try to silence us out of existence any more.”
***
Amid the turmoil, rates of antisemitism targeting Australia’s 100,000 Jews have leapt since the attacks of 7 October. In the six months from 1 October 2023 to 31 March 2024, there was a 427% increase in the number of anti-Jewish incidents from the same period the year before, ECAJ figures show. In the immediate aftermath of 7 October, incidents shot up by 738%.
The ECAJ believes the figures – described as “shocking and confronting” by Jillian Segal in her inaugural speech as Australia’s first special envoy to combat antisemitism – represent a fraction of the real number because of underreporting. A lack of data makes the problem hard to tackle, Schwartz says.
The problem is worsened by accusations of lying and deceit on the part of Jews, driven by ancient perceptions and prejudice, Ryvchin says.
“The denial of antisemitism and the gaslighting of our community has to end,” he says. “The experiences of ordinary Australian Jews have been harrowing this past year.”
***
In December Guardian Australia spoke with Elena, a grandmother and retired teacher who lived in Israel during the Yom Kippur war and now calls Sydney’s eastern suburbs home. At the time, she said her “trust in the world had been shattered” by the 7 October attacks.
Today she is exhausted by all she has witnessed from afar. “There’s an overwhelming sadness, bordering on depression,” she says. “I just can’t bounce back.”
In the intervening months, she has seen a tightening of extreme and divisive views among some within her circles.
“Everybody’s just digging in. It’s sad to see people suddenly making observations about all Arabs or all Jews, as if there’s no diversity or different points of view. That’s shocking – and it’s getting more entrenched because people feel threatened.”
In solidarity with Israel, she has attended small vigils and peaceful gatherings, but her hope, once unshakeable, is diminishing. In its place is a new and alien sense of being under siege, she says.
“I don’t think that it will be possible to negotiate [with Hamas and Hezbollah], and I have never, ever felt that before. If we can’t move forward, then what can we do?”
Her answer, for the time being, is to protect the innocence of her grandchildren – and go back to the gentle tenets of her religion.
“At night, I actually say prayers for the hostages,” she says. “Jewish holidays are coming up and I’m composing in my mind how to get to God: please, help these hostages.”
