A month of Sundays

Where dreams are now stickers, buried in the dust and dropped in the mud

Trigger warning: there are no graphic images or descriptions, but I am discussing death, murder and rape amongst other things in this piece.

I grew up in an area that can be considered the centre of Jewish life in Melbourne, Australia. Surrounded by extended family, schools, temples, shops, stores all connected to my heritage.

As I got older and curious, all I wanted to do was to get out. To escape our self-labeled ‘ghetto’. To see the wider world. To meet people in that world. And I did. And I have.

However, it’s interesting how everything comes full circle in life because lately all I’ve wanted to do is get back in there. To a place I felt known. To a place I felt understood. To a place I felt safe.

This longing has reached a peak after the past month of Sundays.

Deciding to write this piece I didn’t really know where to start, which Sunday wrecked me above all.

Which Sunday reminded me the most of the stats Jewish people are all too familiar with — the fact that only 28, 000 of the entire European population of 530 million risked their lives and stood up to help a Jew in the Holocaust.

Seeing it’s the closest in my memory bank, I’m going to start with yesterday. With the day we found out that five hostages brutally stolen from a music festival (the biggest music festival massacre EVER), and one from her bed, 331 days ago, were executed at point-blank range. Shot in the back of the head. Six young people, all under 40, who had somehow survived months of torture, assault and captivity in a dark underground terror tunnel, to only be faced with the most horrific of deaths.

One of these was Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American-Israeli citizen. His mother, Rachel, now known as the voice of the hostages, who only last week called out across the fields of Gaza in a bulls-horn to her son, ‘It’s mama here. Stay strong. Stay alive.’

I shook all day, but nothing that I’m experiencing can even be compared to what their loved ones are going through now. To have hope for 330 days. And to then find out they were alive, alive till only days before their unfathomable deaths. Their coward kidnappers executing them before running away, knowing they were close to being rescued. Executing them right in the middle of so-called ceasefire talks.

I write and share this because it’s not just for Jewish people. But because this is the largest hostage situation in modern times. Covering people from 23 countries, including Christians, Muslims, Bedoins, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews. Taken in age group from 9 months to 89 years of age. NOT seen once by the Red Cross. Let me repeat, not seen once by the Red Cross. This is for everyone because this is a worldwide humanitarian issue.

Yet, barely anyone blinks an eye lid at the news. Many places don’t cover it. And when they do they dumb it out, soften the language, change murdered to died. No one other than my Jewish friends comment on a post. If it involves a Palestinian death, there will be outcry to the nth degree. But an Israeli or an American, or a Thai, or Bedouin, taken from Israel, it’s pushed into the too hard basket, or worse, the nothingness basket. This is the simple definition of selective humanitarianism.

I see the usual posts saying, ‘Israel should have taken the hostage deal’. What hostage deal? The only nation in modern times to have to pander to a terrorist organisation. No other country, including our own, would put up with that. But Israel is expected to, why?

Jewish people are buried immediately so I’ve watched a few clips from their funerals already. Wailing parents. Grieving siblings. Destroyed families. Dreams in the forms of bodies being buried in the dust.

And there is still silence.

The Sunday prior to that I sat in a small room and listened to a man visiting from Israel share his story of running the Missing Persons Unit after the 7 October massacre. The way they had to match social media photos with the webcam videos taken by the murderers themselves. He shared recorded conversations with those hiding in the bushes, in cars, in shelters; and the heartbreaking discoveries of the lost and found. He talked about the way he didn’t think his sensitive personality would be able to deal with it, but how love can help you lean in, how a desire to help another can expand your nervous system, how there is room for everyone, everyone.

At the end of the session, I was handed these stickers. The ones in the main photo here. This is how the parents of these young women raped and slaughtered at a music festival are honouring and remembering their daughters.

I’m obsessed with their glowing eyes, lithe bodies, tanned skin, joyous faces. I’m obsessed with the fact that this is the place their aliveness now lives — in a sticker.

The thing that crushes my heart about this the most is that women across the West — who could have easily been these girls as they didn’t just hand-pick Jews, it was anyone in sight, raped, tortured, mutilated, murdered at a dance party — have basically disowned them. Abandoned their stories, their experiences, their truth.

But you see we are these girls. We are the women who fought for our rights to dance and party, to dress and live as we wish. We are them. We are all them. Their dreams being taken away are also ours.

And yet there is still silence.

Finally there is the first Sunday of my yearning for the ghetto. This is the Sunday I felt my dreams of participating in that wider world I longed for disappear into the mud beneath my feet. This is the Sunday when I saw peers, apparent critical thinkers, in my home town, take sides. Take sides of blatant anti-semitism. I sat at a writers festival where the Jewish voice was not invited. And in one session actually replaced. I witnessed one-sided panels and an enabling of agenda-driven talks. Writers Festivals, remind me again, aren’t they the place for the beauty and soul of life? For the full download of that day, I’ve included here a link to an article I wrote about it.

And yet there will still be silence.

There is a saying that people only like dead Jews. Made popular after the Holocaust, when shrines and memorials were made to Holocaust victims. But even dead Jews aren’t liked anymore. Such as the six executed in cold blood just this past week.

I have so many questions from the past 11 months…all of them begin with why. Here are some:

• Why is it ok for university students and protestors worldwide to cry out for an Intifada Revolution (which is essentially death to Jews)?

• Why is it ok for the Australian and American flags to be burnt and for the flags of terrorist organisations to be carried instead?

• Why is it ok for posters of hostages to be ripped down or painted over with all sorts of hate?

• Why is it ok for international hostages to remain in captivity for nearly a year without a visit by a humanitarian organisation?

• Why is everyone taking as gospel the statistics and media released from a known terrorist organisation?

But most of all, I want to know why people don’t believe Jews. Why when we say something it is taken as a lie, a mis-truth, or just quite plainly, dismissed and ignored.

Here’s a question I’m sometimes asked. Why do I only write about one side?

It’s simple. I don’t take sides. I am a side. What is said about Israelis/Jews or not said about them is being said or not said about me.

I don’t wish for one more innocent to die, on any side, anywhere in the world. But if I don’t speak up amidst my fellow people, and counter the louder opposing deafening voices, who will? Who will honour our captives, our slaughtered, our maimed, our broken?

So I write to honour them all. May their memories be a blessing  💔 🙏🏻