A community celebrating a cultural and religious event, freely and safely in a public park is a hallmark of our great multicultural society. This was not only an attack on our Jewish community – but an attack on Australia and a direct threat to the fabric of our multiculturalism.
Earlier this year, the Ethnic Communities Council of NSW appeared before a NSW Parliamentary Inquiry to defend a submission into anti- semitism made by ECCNSW in collaboration with Jewish members of our organisation, with the unanimous support of our Board of Directors. That submission called for formal recognition of the growing problem of antisemitism in Australia. Recent events reinforce both the seriousness of this threat and the fragility of social cohesion in our multicultural nation.
We also recognise the immediate and absolute condemnation of the incident by our Australian multicultural and multi faith communities including the Arab and Muslim community leadership.
There will be many conversations in the coming days, weeks and months about how we rebuild from this. For today, the message is about love. Compassion to those who died. Support for those injured, and to all affected families.
Today we are all Jewish. We mourn with the families who lost loved ones and we will all rebuild together. We will continue to work with the Jewish community in its response to this heinous act.
The Ethnic Communities Council of NSW, as a statewide peak, along with its national body the Federation of Ethnic Communities Council of Australia (FECCA) will continue to work with all communities, to combat extremism in all its forms.
We will also continue to work with the NSW Government as the statewide peak, in safeguarding the resilience of all communities in response to this tragedy..