MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Mr BURNS (Macnamara) (15:39): The sands were shifting in the Middle East in the lead-up to October 7. There had already been normalisations of relationships between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, and there was talk of the Israeli government and the Saudi Arabian authorities coming together and forming diplomatic relationships. It's now about 7.30 in the morning in Israel; on October 7, an hour previously, at 6.30, all of that was attacked.
The idea that somehow there could be a stabilisation of the Israeli people and the Israeli place in the Middle East was attacked directly, in the most brutal and awful way. But the test of October 7 is reflecting not just on what happened but also on what needs to be confronted and fought back against. On October 7, the people who were killed were the people who sought peace—people living in the southern parts of Israel, in the kibbutzim like the one I visited, Kfar Aza, which was filled with people with simple homes and communal living, people who sought to live alongside the Palestinian people in harmony and peace, working the land and creating wealth and products from this oasis in the desert.
The young kids who were dancing and listening to music underneath the desert sky were seeking only to enjoy their friends and their time away from national service. They were the people who were killed on October 7—the people who wanted peace, the left-wing people inside Israel. That was the tragedy of it all.
But the reason behind it was that an organisation filled with terror and seeking to dehumanise another group of people sought to tear it apart in the most brutal and awful way. That is exactly why we must hold the humanity in ourselves and see the humanity in one another on this day more than any other. I think one of the hardest things for the Jewish people around the world is that the grief that they experienced as a result of October 7 was never really allowed to manifest and be openly expressed without people seeking to minimise it or not giving the space for it to be presented and made public in the way in which it should be allowed to be.
To have people trying to delegitimise the experiences of the Jewish people really hurt. It also absolutely must be said on this day—and I say so as a proud Jewish person—that the experiences of the Palestinian people have been devastating and that they too must have the space and the respect to grieve openly and to mourn the cost and the lives that have been lost as a result of this terrible conflict, because that is what October 7 was.
It was a time in which people sought to take away each other's humanity. But that is not who we are, and that is not the future that we seek to build. When you look at the Australian whose life was taken, Galit Carbone, a grandmother and a person who lived freely and with peace and love—that is the person who we seek to remember today, but it is also the sort of intent that we want to build and take from this moment.
Right now, across the world, Jewish communities are hurting, but so are Palestinians. On October 7, we must take this opportunity to say that, on the holy days of the Jewish calendar, it is not enough to just say that we want to somehow use this moment to make a political point against some action of the Israeli government. No, in this moment we need to allow people to grieve, to remember the lives that were lost and to say that on this day, on October 7, the future that we seek to build is one where we try to recognise the humanity in one another.
I also want to say that the comments by the leader of a political organisation in this country, saying that, as a result of the actions of the Israeli government, there was somehow a legitimate target and a legitimate reason to attack Jewish people going to synagogue, are exactly the wrong approach to be taking and exactly the wrong lesson to be taking from October 7.
Where we are today right now is a moment where we can choose peace and outline a pathway towards peace, for the Palestinian people to finally be able to go home and for the Israeli people to be reunited with their loved ones who are being held hostage, and that is what we seek to do—not to legitimise violence but to see the humanity in one another and imagine a future where the violence and terrorism that happened on October 7 never happen again.