Royal commission has created the best record of antisemitism since World War II

Professor Steven Prawer walked into his office at the University of Melbourne and found around 20 people waiting for him, most with their faces covered by keffiyehs. He had spent untroubled years running a physics research collaboration with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Other senior staff were involved in the collaboration, but Prawer, who wears a kippah, was the only one visibly Jewish.

He told the people in his office that they were trespassing and asked them to leave. They refused, and as he tried to reach a secure part of the building, two of them followed him and wedged a foot in the door to stop him closing it, chanting, “Prawer, Prawer, you can’t hide, you’re guilty of genocide.”

When he returned to his office later that day, a photograph of him had been vandalised and symbols associated with Hamas had been stuck to his walls.

Accounts like this are now part of the public record of this country, permanently, because a royal commission compelled them.

I made a submission to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. My submission is principally about the malevolent power of the herd and the damage it wrought to a country’s society and democracy. I wrote my submission because I cannot countenance any minority group in this country having to send their children to school under armed guard. I would feel the same whatever group was in that situation.

Over recent weeks, the royal commission has attracted criticism. Some have expressed concern that certain witnesses have not been called to give evidence. Others have argued that some of the loudest antisemites and supporters of proscribed terrorist groups who have done so much damage to our country have not been made to answer publicly for what they have said and done. The disgraceful events at the Sydney Opera House on October 9, 2023, have not been fully examined. Those grievances are real and they must not be dismissed.

But taken on their own, they understate what the commission set out to achieve and what it has already achieved. Its single greatest feat has been to create an extraordinary truth-telling process. Truth-telling processes are incredibly important and cathartic. I have seen this with my own eyes, in the area of sexual abuse of children, through an organisation I chair.

In this commission, more than 20,000 submissions were made before a single public hearing began – the largest response of its kind in Australian history. Commissioner Virginia Bell, the highly respected former High Court judge, opened each hearing with the lived experience of Jewish and other Australians before institutions were questioned. Ordinary Australians, many of them frightened and previously without a platform, were heard with empathy, care and respect.

If the personal accounts established the human cost, the institutional evidence has been just as pointed. The vice-chancellors of ANU and the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne answered for their institutions.