As the university student Liat was excused from the witness stand of the royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion, she felt a weight lifted off her chest.
“It was certainly very cathartic for me … having gone through the majority of my university life in a state of fear,” she says.
Liat, who spoke publicly under her first name only due to safety concerns, had just told the commission about the “pervasive fear” that emerged on campus after Hamas’s October 7 attack and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza.
Related: Four months of grief, tension and pain: key moments from the antisemitism royal commission
The 22-year-old student, whose parents were both born in Israel, said she was labelled a “baby killer” and genocide supporter.
Liat was among more than 300 witnesses who testified in the royal commission, which concluded public hearings after four months this week .
It was, from the very beginning, a mammoth task with a tight deadline of less than 12 months. The work began in a moment of raw grief and anger felt by Jewish Australians in the aftermath of the Bondi terror attack, when 15 people were killed during a Hanukah celebration.
But the inquiry has also drawn criticism for the narrow definition it used to describe antisemitism, for only considering the broader context of racism in its final weeks, and for limited inclusion of Jewish Australians who have spoken in support of Palestine and been criticised for it.
But while community leaders have differing opinions on how the commission’s public hearings have fared, there is unity in the desire for solutions to stamp out the pervasiveness of antisemitism in the everyday lives of Jewish Australians.
For Alex Ryvchin, the co-chair of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the public hearings laid bare the anguish and safety fears of community members.
“You’ve had people who don’t ordinarily have a platform, ordinary members of the community, who’ve been called and who have given heart-rending, harrowing accounts of what it’s like every single day for an ordinary Jewish Australian,” he says.
“To me, that’s really the most important thing – for the royal commission and also for the country to hear that,” he says.
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The final week of hearings was dominated by calls from the federal opposition and some Jewish community leaders to extend the inquiry’s timeframe to hear from more witnesses.
The calls were resisted by the commissioner, Virginia Bell SC, who has requested a short extension of the reporting deadline so the release of the final report does not coincide with the first anniversary of the Bondi attack.
The opposition frontbencher Julian Leeser, a Jewish MP, named Anthony Albanese and senior cabinet ministers including the attorney general, Michelle Rowland, among a cohort of people he said should appear before the inquiry to explain “what went wrong from the very top”.
Ryvchin is “sceptical” about what calling senior political figures would have achieved, saying “we hear enough from them”.
He says the commission has “ample” evidence to draw the “correct conclusions about what has caused this crisis, what led to Bondi and what remedies we need to improve as a country”.
“I personally feel that things have gotten even worse since Bondi. The question is: will we see the right conclusions to lead us out of it?
“Will we see those who are truly responsible for it held to account? … That’s what remains to be seen.”
Dr Max Kaiser, a Jewish historian who sits on the advisory committee of the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA) – a progressive advocacy group – says there were gaps in who the commission heard from.
Speaking in a personal capacity, he says the commission heard limited public testimony from Jewish Australians who have participated in pro-Palestine protests, including those charged under Queensland’s hate speech crackdown .
That means the commission failed to hear from those whose activism in support of Palestine has made them the target of abuse from pro-Israel activists, he says.
“They view that expression of solidarity with Palestinians as very much part of their Jewish values and very much about saying never again for anyone,” he says.
“It is very intensive abuse aimed at people’s Jewish identity and calling into question their Jewish identities.”
Sarah Schwartz, the JCA’s executive officer, told the commission she had been called a traitor and “Hitler’s Jew” because of her advocacy for Palestinians, in online harassment from pro-Israel and neo-Nazi groups.
Jewish leaders have also raised concerns about witnesses at the commission being subjected to online abuse after testifying.
In June, the Australian federal police charged a man with allegedly harassing a royal commission witness by sending three emails. The man was found in possession of neo-Nazi material and leaflets for the National Socialist Network – now proscribed as a hate group under Australian laws .
Asked whether the commission got to the heart of antisemitism in modern Australia, Kaiser replies that only in its final two weeks did the commission hear from experts on the importance of viewing antisemitism in the wider context of racism.
“Any commission that was seriously wanting to talk about antisemitism and understand it as a complex social issue and understand it at its root cause needed to start from examining antisemitism as a form of racism and understanding the wider international and Australian context,” he says.
He also criticised the lack of experts who could challenge the commission’s use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism as a guiding framework during the inquiry.
The definition, which has been adopted by the federal government, is accompanied by illustrative examples, which opponents have argued means it can be used to conflate antisemitism with legitimate criticism of Israel.
Ryvchin says the commission’s recommendations will reveal whether it has gotten to the core of how antisemitism operates in Australia.
The public hearings have offered a narrow glimpse into the information about the Bondi terror attack before the commission.
In her closing address this week, Bell acknowledged there may be frustration that much of the evidence about the Bondi attack was heard behind closed doors but stressed the need to not prejudice the ongoing criminal proceedings.
Related: The royal commission revealed the breadth of antisemitism in Australia – but key opportunities were missed | Michael Visontay
The commission’s interim report in April found that Sydney’s Jewish community had told police of a “high” threat of an attack at the Chanukah by the Sea festival at Bondi, but that New South Wales police appeared not to have completed a comprehensive risk assessment for the event.
Nomi Kaltmann, a Jewish Australian lawyer and journalist based in Melbourne, says she hopes the necessary security protocol changes are swiftly implemented after the final report is handed down.
“No community in Australia should endure the grief and anguish that my Jewish community has endured over the past eight months,” she says.
The Sydney-based Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio leads the congregation at Woollahra’s Emanuel Synagogue – about a 10-minute drive from where the Bondi attack occurred. She says the Jewish community is still in a “deep process of grief and mourning”.
“We’re holding on to hope and belief that this royal commission can really make a difference and help us to go back to the Australia that we love,” she says.
“It was certainly very cathartic for me … having gone through the majority of my university life in a state of fear,” she says.
This report is published with credit to theguardian.com. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on theguardian.com →
Source: theguardian.com · Adeshola Ore. Published 29 Aug 2026, 12:00 am.
