The 2025 Australian Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism took place this week on the Gold Coast. A fitting location, ironically. In the 1980s, the development of Surfers Paradise, including the Paradise Centre with its towers of holiday apartments, was in large part driven by the Jewish community. Back then, Yiddish could be heard among the generation of Holocaust survivors along the famous Cavil Avenue. It was a place where Jewish families holidayed, invested, and built something lasting.

Fast forward forty years, and we find ourselves needing a summit to discuss the re-emergence of something we were promised would never return: antisemitism.

Organised by the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) and chaired by Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate, the summit brought together over 250 local government leaders and community advocates from across the country. Their mission? To fight hatred, racism, and social division or, in the words of Woollahra Mayor Sarah Swan, to ‘combat hatred, racism and promote community and social cohesion’.

Waverley Mayor Will Nemesh put it even more plainly: ‘Antisemitism is a problem for all Australians to address.’

He’s right. And the problem is getting worse.

This summit wasn’t about Gaza. It was about Australia. Let’s be clear. This summit was not about whether Benjamin Netanyahu is right or wrong. It was not about Gaza, Hamas, or Israeli policy. But that hasn’t stopped some from trying to delegitimise it. Multiple councillors reportedly received emails discouraging them from attending, under the pretence that the event was somehow ‘politicised’.

This is the standard tactic. Some activists claim they’re only ‘anti-Israel’. They shout ‘Free Palestine’ while holding up hateful signs. They say they’re only opposing Zionism – while yelling ‘Gas the Jews!’ and other distasteful things on the steps of the Sydney Opera House 48 hours after October 7.

We’ve seen it all: synagogues vandalised, Jewish schools and businesses threatened, and Jewish Australians harassed on the street. This isn’t about foreign policy. This is domestic hatred aimed at our fellow citizens.

As my late grandfather said in his Shoah Foundation testimony in 1996:

‘You’re lucky to grow up in Australia free from the hatred I knew in Poland. Always be a proud Jew and never let anyone make you feel like a second-class citizen.’

No one should be made to feel like a second-class citizen in Australia. But right now, many Jews do.

We know what antisemitism looks like. It’s time we start calling it out. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism should be uncontroversial. It has been adopted by governments across the world, including the Australian federal government, yet many local councils still refuse.

It defines antisemitism as:

‘A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.’

It includes examples such as:

• Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing of Jews (e.g. ‘Gas the Jews’, ‘Hitler was right’).
• Using Holocaust imagery to demonise Jews or Israel (e.g. swastikas at protests).
• Denying the Holocaust (chanted regularly by some demonstrators).
• Holding Jews collectively responsible for Israeli policy.
• Denying Jewish peoplehood and right to self-determination (e.g. claiming Israel is a colonial or racist endeavour).
• Applying double standards to Israel not expected of any other democratic nation.

Criticism of Israel is not antisemitic. But when protests target Jews, glorify terrorism, or advocate for the destruction of the only Jewish state – it is.

Let’s be honest: if demonstrators were chanting violent threats against Muslims or the LGBTQ community, the full weight of the law would fall upon them. But when it’s Jews? Our leaders call it a ‘peaceful protest’.

Where are the protests against genuine massacres which continue in Nigeria, Sudan, Congo, Yemen, Syria, and many others? None at all but full of double standards. Nothing in mainstream media but quick to adopt Hamas propaganda as gospel and not repeal it when proven to be false.

One local government attendee addressed the summit and spoke against antisemitism. Yet only weeks ago, they proudly marched across the Harbour Bridge at the pro-Palestine rally whose crowd carried all sorts of grotesque signs.

The claims of the pro-Palestine rally centre around the idea that ‘Israel is killing too many innocents’. This kind of rhetoric – however well-intentioned – fits squarely into the propaganda playbook funded by Qatar and spread by Iran’s proxies.

Israel is fighting a war for survival. The October 7 attacks weren’t just war crimes – they were the attempted erasure of a people. And yet we’re told, again and again, to show restraint.

The problem isn’t Netanyahu. The problem is antisemitism – and the moral relativism that enables it. Political cowardice has a price.

Leadership matters, and ours is failing quickly. Netanyahu was right when he called the Prime Minister ‘weak’. This government has failed to condemn antisemitism. Labor has implemented none of the recommendations from the Sky News Antisemitism Summit held earlier this year, nor those from Jillian Segal, the government’s own special envoy to combat antisemitism.

Segal warned that antisemitism is ‘an existential threat to democracy’. She is absolutely right.

These are not just anti-Israel radicals. They are the same activists who burn the Australian flag and call for the ‘decolonisation’ of this country. Their goal is not peace, it’s chaos. Their politics is not liberation, it’s nihilism. It’s classic Marxism.

As Segal said at the summit, ‘Local government is where Australians live their lives … at the sportsground, the high street, and the school gate. This is where we need to fight hatred.’

And yet, shamefully, many councils had no representatives present. Some of those very councils are where this message is most urgently needed.

Australia is proudly multicultural and democratic. Like it or not, protest is part of our civic tradition. But there is a line between protest and hate, and that line has been crossed over and over again.

Not every protestor is antisemitic. Not every sign is hateful. But enough are to warrant national alarm.

Leaders must stop pretending this is just ‘passion’. We must start calling it what it is, antisemitism, dressed in the language of social justice. Ever heard the phrase: ‘I’m not an antisemite; I just hate Jews’? I have.

Because if we don’t draw that line, clearly and unapologetically, we won’t just lose the safety of the Jewish community. We’ll lose the integrity of our democracy. Now, more than ever, we need leaders to demonstrate true leadership, Start leading!