Setting fire to a synagogue

is not something I could have contemplated happening in this country even twenty years ago. Yesterday I was not surprised, just sickened.

I watched members of the congregation so carefully carrying out the precious Torah scrolls and felt angry. No, I am not Jewish but I do know something about what those scrolls mean to Jews. I believe those scrolls are handwritten by a specially trained person. That alone would make them something very special. They consist of the first five books of the Bible and I understand those books are of especial importance to Jews.

If the building had been a mosque and those scrolls had been the Koran there would have been riots in our streets. I do not doubt that for a moment. There would have been young Muslim men protesting loudly and violently. There would have been condemnation and more condemnation.

Yes, the Prime Minister did speak out and condemn the attack on the synagogue. The Leader of the Opposition did too. There was some media coverage which led to them speaking out. The Premier of Victoria did visit the site. All of them knew something was almost certainly going to happen even though our federal government recently voted with others for a "two state solution" at the United Nations. The problem is that a two state solution is not what everyone wants. Hamas wants to see Israel wiped off the maps and they have supporters, powerful supporters.

The Jewish community took the attack far more quietly than many people expected. Someone here said to me, "I would have thought they would have been yelling and screaming and demanding vengeance." What would that have done? 

I came home from that conversation and took out the handwritten book I own. I looked at it again and found the words I was looking for

"Time past and time present are both perhaps present in time future and time future contained in time past". 

The words come of course from TS Eliot's "Burnt Norton".  I wondered about this again. Can we ever escape this thousands of years old hatred by some of the Jews?  Why this "we are right and you are wrong"?

It is too easy to forget - Christ was a Jew.