Financial Review, 16 July 2026
My father was an antisemite, and I refuse to stay silent
By Jennifer Westacott
From Financial Review
In May 2024, as protests and encampments spread across Australian university campuses, I wrote an opinion piece calling out the antisemitism I was witnessing and arguing that universities must be places of enlightenment, never places of fear. By that afternoon, I had received hundreds of emails and messages from grandparents, parents, community and political leaders, and from very frightened students at universities across the country.
That response told me that many Australians felt the same way but had not felt they had permission to say so. That silence, I believe, is part of what allowed antisemitism to take hold.
I want to be transparent about my personal reasons for speaking out because I think they matter to what this commission needs to understand. My early life was characterised by disadvantage, by moments of family dysfunction, and by sporadic but often severe violence.
My father was an antisemite. I remember, as a young child, seeing an image on television of two people in striped prison clothing, hanging by their necks in a street. I must have been visibly distressed, because my father said to me: “Don’t worry, that only happens to the Jews.” I have never been able to shake off the image of their faces. Nor have I been able to shake the question of my own silence as a child and then as a young adult. My fear and my own lack of understanding meant that even as I grew older, I was afraid to challenge his views.