The etymology of the phrase terror is derived from the Latin phrase ‘terrere’ which implies to frighten.
A fast google search will let you know at present that we outline the phrase terror as creating excessive worry. Worry is the elemental reverse of freedom.
Essentially the most Australian of values ββis the embrace of freedom. Our historical past and tradition is outlined by our relationship to freedom – freedom to talk, freedom to assemble, freedom to stay with the particular person we love, freedom to wish to the god we select, and most significantly, freedom to stay with out worry.
For freedom to exist, we must not ever lose sight of the distinction between good and evil.
Within the days since October 7, Australia’s lengthy historical past of instinctively discerning good over evil has been challenged.
On this world, in any case, lots of our public leaders are trapped in a darkish cloud of ethical equivalence. As a substitute of attempting to appease the wrongs of the current in response to historic ills, they’d be higher off on the aspect of fine quite than evil.
Nothing that occurred earlier than October seventh can justify the pure unadulterated terrorism that befell that day. Nothing.
We are able to by no means settle for the homicide of younger folks at a music pageant, households of their properties, broadcasting such murders by way of movies on social media and taking their family members hostage.
There is no such thing as a ethical equivalence for that. It isn’t anti-Islamic, it’s not anti-Palestine, it’s not pro-Israeli. It is simply pure evil. Whenever you flip away from such evil, you create an atmosphere the place terror begins to succeed over freedom. That’s the problem we now face in Australia proper now.
Pushed by worry, Jewish communities at the moment are altering the way in which they stay, the garments they put on, the place they go, how they pray, how their youngsters be taught.
After our leaders and legislation enforcement facilitated a day of nationwide disgrace that noticed chants of ‘fuel the Jews’ in entrance of our most internationally recognizable landmark, the Sydney Opera Home, you possibly can hardly query the actions Jewish leaders and fogeys are taking to guard their communities and youngsters from hurt.
What good chief or father or mother wouldn’t behave like that?
The good Australian success story that’s our multicultural nation is embedded within the precept which you could stay in Australia, below our legal guidelines, with out worry.
Proper now, many Jewish Australians are involved about visiting a synagogue. Would we settle for that worry amongst Catholics in the event that they feared going to Mass on a Sunday?
Mother and father of youngsters attending Jewish colleges ship them to highschool in plain garments as an alternative of their uniforms. Would we settle for this if youngsters out of your native Anglican faculty could not put on a college blazer on a bus out of worry?
When terrorists flew planes into buildings in America in September 2001, we didn’t search ethical equivalence then by on the lookout for a justification that America one way or the other deserved that act of terror.
When terror hit us head on with the Bali nightclub bombings in 2002 and once more when a gunman walked into the Lindt cafe in 2014 and killed Australians, we did not search for the ethical equivalence and ask if Australians made this occur. Reasonably, we unequivocally condemned these terrorist acts as evil.
It will be important that in every of those occasions we got here collectively as a nation, wrapped our arms across the victims, pushed again in opposition to the worry with examples of tolerance and unity. As a nation we instinctively known as out the evil of terrorism, embraced the nice that’s hope and unity and confirmed the world what it means to be Australian. Perhaps it is time we do it once more and never cover behind the time period antisemitism, which makes it about another person, however makes it about all of us and calls it what it’s: un-Australian.
Stuart Ayres is a former deputy chief of the NSW Liberal Occasion