What it's been like to date as a Jewish woman, these past few years.

A little over a year ago, I went on a Hinge date with someone whose antisemitic views and hateful rhetoric rattled me so deeply that I blocked him and reported him to the AFP before I even got home.

Call me paranoid if you like, but in that moment, I felt genuinely unsafe.

I was working as a political staffer at the time and he knew this. Part of me worried I'd be doxxed in some dark corner of the internet. Another part feared that he carried enough hate inside him to do real harm to Jewish Australians.

Let me start by saying that unpacking the war in the Middle East is not my idea of good first, second or even third date chat.

At the time, I was working in a foreign affairs portfolio, so keeping abreast of developments in the Middle East occupied a fair chunk of my day-to-day work.

Watch: Antisemitic attacks are on the rise in Australia in 2025. Article continues after video.

As soon as I told him what I did for a career, he immediately launched into a Spanish inquisition on my views on the war in Gaza and why I had never come to a pro-Palestine protest.

He told me confidently that he wasn't "antisemitic" he was, in fact, "anti-Zionist".

Narrator: He was deeply antisemitic. And he was not only antisemitic, he was a full-blown conspiracy theorist. Telling me all sorts of vile falsehoods about Israeli "mental sickness", "world domination" how antisemitism "isn't real".

He said I wouldn't have heard of half of these things he was telling me because I get all my information from the mainstream media, which is "controlled by the Jews". I told him that I actually get private briefings from DFAT and yet, he still didn't shut up.

After twenty minutes, he pivoted to claiming Russia never invaded Ukraine, that Russia would be remembered as "the good guys," and that the EU was committing war crimes. It was like being stuck across the table from a depraved Reddit-4Chan wormhole wearing a collared shirt.

Without question, the worst date I've ever been on.

What shook me most was how ordinary he seemed: a well-educated, well-groomed property developer from the lower North Shore, who worked in Bondi, of all places. Bondi, home to ten synagogues and temples. Bondi, now the site of a devastating antisemitic terror attack.

As Yoni Bashan wrote recently, antisemitism doesn't wear a sign.

"It arrives in the costume of the moment… It makes itself sound reasonable, even righteous."

Today's antisemitism cloaks itself in social justice language, insisting its hostility is ideological, sophisticated, never hateful.

But when the mask slips, the same ancient conspiracies and dehumanising stereotypes appear. The same willingness to blame Jews for the world's problems. The same ideas that have fuelled violence for centuries.

Let me be quite clear. Advocating for human rights overseas is not the problem. Forgetting our obligation to protect the safety of every Australian is. We cannot let foreign conflicts license violence and hateful rhetoric here.

If people, like the man I met on that date, are using the cover of a pro-Palestine movement to peddle their own sick antisemitic agendas, then the movement must ask itself why that is happening and call it out. Because when people claim to be "protesting for human rights," but their chants, their placards, their extremist symbols, or their rhetoric erase Jewish people's right to safety — or worse, justify harm — then those protests stop being about human rights at all.

Human rights are universal, or they are meaningless.

Today, the Bondi community is united in a deep state of grief and shock. We are all still coming to terms with how such devastating violence could come to these beautiful shores. While this attack claimed both Jewish and non-Jewish lives, it was unmistakenly an attack on Australian Jews.

The entire Bondi community was put in danger because Jewish families had gathered to celebrate Chanukah, by the sea. That is something Australia will have to grapple with for a long time.

Bondi is a dark stain on our national history. But so is the firebombing of Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, the arson attacks on Lewis' Continental Kitchen and Curly Lewis Brewery in Bondi, the antisemitic graffiti plastered on Mount Scopus College, the threats against Jewish patients in a Sydney hospital, and the repeated vandalism and attempted arson at synagogues in Allawah, Newtown, and East Melbourne.

Just like the man I met on that date wasn't an outlier, these attacks aren't anomalies.

When an affluent, seemingly progressive man feels comfortable telling a stranger that Jews fabricate their own oppression to secretly control global affairs, the threat is not fringe. Antisemitism has found new platforms, new vocabularies, and new social spaces. It is mainstream.

Hatred rarely begins with violence. It begins with ideas. It begins with people who believe they are simply "asking questions," "telling hard truths," or "taking a stand," while repeating conspiracy theories as old as Europe's darkest chapters.

This relentless and seemingly righteous "anti-Zionist" campaign always fails to reconcile that in delegitimising the very idea of Jewish self-determination, it is drawing from the same antisemitic narratives that have fuelled hatred for generations.

The Jewish community's fear over the last two years has not been an overreaction. We've seen antisemitic graffiti on schools and synagogues, Jewish businesses targeted, bomb threats, doxxing campaigns, and vile online harassment. And I looked this ancient hatred right in the eye over a glass of wine and tapas in Potts Point.

It is incumbent on all of us to look after each other in the wake of this horrific tragedy and to stand up for the kind of Australia we want to live in. The kind of Australia, where gathering with your family and friends on a warm summer evening is the safest, most apolitical thing you can do, regardless of race or religion.

We owe it to our vulnerable communities to listen, and to act, when they tell us they do not feel safe. Because when antisemitism takes root, history shows it never confines itself to one group. It corrodes the entire society.

Feature Image: Canva.