Why the referendum holds special meaning for Australia’s Jewish community
Collective Jewish memory is the essence of our faith. It is the intimate knowledge that exists deep within each of us and belongs to all of us…writes Dr Aharon Friedland.
Aharon Friedland
As it threads through millennia of persecution, it has become essential to our survival. It defines us as a people and is the moral force that shapes and informs our humanity.
I believe the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament is inextricably bound with our collective Jewish memory. Let me explain.
While Judaism is grounded in a set of laws and principles, from ethics to loving kindness to religious duty, it is memory from which all else originates.
The commandment to remember and to value memory is a recurring theme of our laws, liturgy and teachings. No less than two hundred times in the Torah are we commanded to remember “Zachor.”
Remember the Amalek. Remember the Shabbat. Remember Jerusalem. Remember the Covenant. Remember the Exodus.
These are not instructions simply to recall history. Every command to remember is a command to act.
We remember Amalek so that we combat cruelty wherever it may appear. We remember the work of creation and the holy Shabbat so that we practice the art of rest.
We do not forget Jerusalem so we can continue to strive to return to the land of our ancestors. We are implored never to forget the suffering of our slavery so we can create a society of freedom, self-determination and dignity.
Throughout history, many of our people have sensed the Jewish imperative of memory, guiding their solidarity with First Nations. Together with James Spigelman, Ron Castan, Mark Leibler, organisations, councils, rabbis and congregations, countless Jews have purposefully walked alongside First Nations Australians, never forgetting on whose land we have prospered and thrived.
But we’ve also seen a ‘cult of forgetfulness practiced on a national scale’. These are the words of anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner, describing what he termed the Great Australian Silence.
His words were correct half a century ago and remain true today. For him, the indifference towards Aboriginal history, rights and suffering could not be explained by absent-mindedness.
James Cook knew Indigenous people were living on this continent and was instructed by King George III to “by all proper means cultivate a friendship and alliance with them, shewing them every kind of civility and regard” and to “obtain the consent of the Natives.”
Arthur Phillip was aware of the Aboriginal resistance to his expanding colony in Botany Bay.
Australia’s founding fathers knew of the diverse nations and polities of Aboriginal people before they gathered in 1900 to draft the Constitution – and explicitly exclude them.
Since then, successive governments have received calls for Indigenous representation. But they simply disremembered the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Today, although no one can deny more than 60,000 years of Indigenous civilisation and rich cultural heritage followed by 200 years of destruction, dispossession and persecution, many continue to disremember.
Some of us, however, remember the story of the great Yorta Yorta man William Cooper. In December 1938, shortly after Kristallnacht, Cooper led a march to the German consulate in Melbourne to protest the ‘cruel persecution of the Jewish people.’ He did this when his people were not even citizens in their own country.
That same year the Australian Government refused to accept Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt convened the International Evian Conference in France to respond to the rising number of Jewish refugees from Europe, hoping other nations would accept the burden instead of America.
Consistent with the White Australia Policy, Australia said no to any large-scale foreign migration.
White Australia said no to the Jews. Aboriginal Australians said yes.
While we may remember Cooper for his support for the Jews, he was profoundly committed to the struggle for Aboriginal rights and direct representation in parliament.
While establishing the Australian Aborigines League, he spent years obtaining signatures across the country for a petition to King George VI, pleading for representation:
“Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that your Majesty will intervene in our behalf and through the instrument of your Majesty’s Government in the Commonwealth grant to our people representation in the Federal Parliament.”
The government refused to send it to the King.
Cooper’s question is now being asked of us.
Jews know what it means to be told No.
This referendum is not a political proposal. It is a humble and generous request from First Peoples themselves. We are being asked to recognise their rightful place in our nation’s founding document.
This is a personal question to each one of us, asked by generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People – “will you accept us?”
It is an invitation from First Peoples to walk with them. It is also a gift – of privilege and historic opportunity to respond meaningfully.
Let us not forget Cooper’s question.
I acknowledge the Whadjuk People of the Noongar Nation as the Traditional Custodians of the sacred land on which I gratefully work and live.
Aharon Friedland is an Intern at the Royal Perth Hospital
Amen and good luck! The two comments previous to mine illustrate what we’re up against.
Thank you for your article.
I too am aware of Aboriginal elder William Cooper and his activism. He was around 77 years old when he led that Aboriginal delegation to the German consulate in Melbourne to deliver a letter “on behalf of the Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia” recording that “we protest wholeheartedly at the cruel persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazi government”.
That protest was remarkable because it came from a discriminated against people who were caught up in fighting their own battles for recognition and justice.
Groups that have suffered discrimination and persecution often have greater sympathy and empathy for other groups that have been similarly afflicted. This is understandable because they can more readily put themselves in the shoes of the other and imagine what they must be feeling and experiencing.
William Cooper was heavily involved in seeking rights and better conditions for Aboriginal people. In a letter to the Minister of the Interior in February 1937, he lamented the lack of urgency in acting to improve the conditions of indigenous Australians, making the telling comment that, “white Australia, however kindly disposed, does not, cannot, “think black” ”.
https://williamcooper.monash.edu/archive/cooper-to-thomas-paterson-4/
The notion that white Australia cannot “think black” is a major reason why indigenous Australians want greater input into decisions about matters affecting their lives.
The Voice will only be an advisory body, but at the same time it has the possibility of giving indigenous Australians greater empowerment, influence and responsibility for their future.
This is about the history and treatment of indigenous Australians and how we move forward with recognition, reconciliation and closing the gap. The status quo is not working. Something needs to change.
Dr Aharon Friedland does a disservice to the many white Australians, male and female, of various socio-economic backgrounds and political outlooks, who championed persecuted Jewry during the Nazi era and advocated a Jewish refugee settlement in north-west Australia. A young Anglo-Celtic man perished in 1942 while exploring Tasmania in order to ascertain the possibility of a Jewish refugee settlement there. William Cooper was a great aboriginal leader, but as I wrote in a recent article in Quadrant magazine (online, with no paywall) he (if indeed he was present, which is by no means certain) was not the only Australian to protest to the German consuls in Australia regarding persecuted Jewry. No refugee settlement, in any case, could have succeeded once war had broken out. William Cooper did not advocate increasing Jewish refugee migration to Australia. Dr Friedland’s article is highly misleading.
ALL of the above is Irrelevant to the main issue: Is one “people”-“race” to be treated in the constitution, differently – “more equally” than others? Animal Farm in action. All the other issues may be correct or not, whether a new arrangement – with the same leaders – would work any better than the mess we have, is a sidebar. All Australians must be treated under the law in exactly the same manner. This is what NO is all about.
There are many Jewish Australians who will be voting No – along with, it seems clear, the majority of the Australian population. Don’t they get a chance to put their views? William Cooper said nothing whatever – absolutely nothing whatever – about increasing Jewish immigration to Australia. This is simply mendacious propaganda. Hitler’s antisemitism was condemned by virtually everyone in Australia; Australian declared war on Nazi Germany a day after the UK did, in September 1939. Thousands of Australian soldiers died in Europe fighting against Nazi Germany, as well as in the Pacific Theatre against Japan. Aborigines now receive billions of dollars in benefits which no one else receives. The government has not spelled any details of the Voice and how it will work- whether its members will be elected or appointed, what their powers will be, etc. etc. We are being asked to approve a change to the Constitution, which will be there forever, without knowing anything about what it actually means in practice.It is for this reason, among many others, that it appears very likely to be defeated.