A few days ago, I was invited to speak at a ‘lunch and learn’ session about antisemitism.

The room was full of people who were genuinely trying to understand what Jewish Australians have been experiencing over the past three years. They weren’t looking for an argument and they certainly weren’t looking to assign blame. They simply wanted to understand what had changed.

Towards the end of the discussion, someone asked a question that has stayed with me ever since.

“When did this happen?”

Without thinking very much about it, I answered the way I suspect most people would.

I spoke about October 7.

It wasn’t until I was driving home that I realised I wasn’t entirely convinced by my own answer.

October 7 changed many things. It changed the confidence with which antisemitism was expressed. It changed the way many Jewish Australians looked at their own country. It changed the willingness of others to say publicly what they may once have kept to themselves.

But I don’t think it was the beginning.

I think it was the point at which the rest of us began to notice.

That thought has stayed with me as I have followed the Royal Commission into antisemitism.

Like many in the Jewish community, I welcomed its establishment. It matters that Jewish students, parents, educators, and community leaders have the opportunity to describe what they have experienced. It matters that those experiences are now part of Australia’s public record.

But as I have watched the hearings unfold, I have found myself........

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