Closer, Not the Same: A Shared Jewish–Israeli Story After October 7

Negba Dolev-Weiss, Hatikvah Board

For years, Diaspora Jews and expat Israelis have lived side by side rather than with one another. I know this firsthand. My family came to Melbourne when I was a preteen. Even then, former Israelis were seen as “other”—yordim who had deserted the motherland.

My mother, gregarious by nature, built a warm community that included both

Diaspora Jews and Israelis. My sister and I went to school here and, after a

difficult adjustment, found our place. Over time, I became something of a

hybrid—more connected to my Diaspora friends than to Israeli relatives or

former classmates. That divide has always struck me as curious. After all, many Jews in Australia and Israel share similar cultural origins. And yet, over

decades, a real gap emerged and the two groups lived in parallel.

There has long been a shared admiration for the State of Israel. But in the

Diaspora, that admiration is often accompanied by a tendency to conflate

Israeli governments with Israeli society. The country’s internal divisions—its

risky policies, disrespectful public discourse, tensions, and competing

visions—are frequently flattened or overlooked. To disagree with the

Government of the day is deemed unacceptable. Expat Israelis, unsurprisingly, tend to see this complexity more clearly and worry about the clear and present

danger to Israel’s survival into the future.

Since October 7, something has shifted. Not uniformly or dramatically—but

perceptibly. The arguments haven’t softened; if anything, they’ve intensified.

But the listening has changed.

I saw this during the “United With Israel” campaign for the hostages. Diaspora

Jews and Australian Israelis gathered week after week, united in grief and

determination. The hostages became “ours”—not abstract victims, but family.

That shared sense of ownership mattered. It was felt here, and it was felt in

Israel, where those protests drew strength from knowing they were not alone.

It would be wrong to call this a silver lining. October 7 resists that kind of

framing. What has changed is not the meaning of the moment, but how we

relate to one another in its aftermath.

For many Diaspora Jews, Israel has become less abstract. Headlines now carry

names, faces, unanswered messages. The distance—geographic and

emotional—has narrowed, even as the weight has grown. At the same time, something has shifted far from Israel’s borders.

In Australia, the change is felt in daily life: attacks in Bondi, threats against

synagogues and schools, visibly heightened security, protests where rhetoric

can tip into menace. University campuses—once assumed to be open

spaces—have, for many Jewish students, become places of fear and unease.

Many Jewish academics and artists have been shunned or targeted.

Not every criticism of Israel is antisemitic. But the line between legitimate

critique and something more indiscriminate has, at times, blurred in ways

many Jews experience as confronting—and isolating. As one third-generation

Australian Jew put it: “I was born and raised here, but I no longer recognise my

Australia.”

Layered onto this is a broader sense of fragility. Events like the Bondi attack

and the arson at the Adass Israel Synagogue—often linked to external

influences but deeply unsettling nonetheless—have challenged assumptions

about social stability. For Jewish Australians, already attuned to questions of

security, that unease resonates sharply.

None of this is entirely new. But its scale, visibility, and confidence feel

different. For many, it has been a jolt—a reminder that the comfort long

associated with Jewish life in countries like Australia has limits.

This does not make Diaspora and Israeli experiences the same. But it has made

them feel more connected.

Israelis have always lived with an immediate, physical sense of threat. Diaspora

Jews are now encountering a far milder—but more tangible—version of

exposure. Not the same reality, but no longer an entirely separate one.

For Israelis, including those who have built lives in Australia, there has been a

parallel realisation: Jewish life outside Israel is neither as insulated nor as

simple as it can appear from afar. Diaspora identity is not a diluted version of

Israeli identity, but a distinct expression of Jewish life—one with its own

pressures, complexities, and resilience.

At the same time, this moment has exposed internal fractures.

Many former Israelis in Australia still feel peripheral in established communal

spaces—too direct, too shaped by a different reality. I have lived most of my

life in Melbourne and consider it home, yet I have often felt seen as overly blunt or intense. Efforts to bring Australian Israelis more fully “into the fold”

have had limited success.

Since October 7, that gap has, in some cases, widened. Carrying the urgency of

Israeli experience into environments that process events more slowly can be

isolating. Navigating a more charged public climate while not always feeling

fully recognised within one’s own community can be more so.

This discomfort should not be dismissed. It points to something important: our

communal structures have not fully caught up with the diversity of Jewish

experience they now contain. They have overlooked the opportunity to

harness that diversity for greater resilience and innovation.

And yet, alongside this tension, something more constructive is emerging.

There are more conversations—imperfect, sometimes difficult, but real.

Israelis and Diaspora Jews are engaging not as abstractions, but as people

trying to understand a shared moment from different vantage points. Diaspora

Jews are listening more closely to Israeli realities, even when they disagree.

Israelis are encountering a Diaspora that feels more present and invested than

they may have assumed. Jewish communal organisations are beginning to

invite Israelis into their fold. Hatikvah has emerged as an organisation trying to

bridge and leverage these new forces.

This is not neat unity. The disagreements remain significant. But the

relationship feels less like a debate across a divide and more like a

conversation within a shared, if complicated, space.

For that to deepen, it will require intention.

Diaspora communities need to make real space for Israeli voices—including

those that are sharper, less filtered, and shaped by different assumptions.

Inclusion cannot mean smoothing those edges away.

And Israelis in the Diaspora may need to recognise that engagement outside

Israel often looks different: slower, more measured, sometimes

frustrating—but not necessarily less committed.

The distance between these worlds has not disappeared. It likely never will.

Nor should it. There is value in the diversity of Jewish experience.

But since October 7, it has become harder to pretend these are separate

stories.

They are not.

What is emerging instead is an awareness—uneven, incomplete, but real—that

the boundaries between Israeli and Diaspora life are more permeable than we

assumed. Events in one sphere reverberate quickly, and personally, in the

other.

That awareness will not resolve disagreement. But it may create something

more durable than agreement: a relationship grounded not in distance or

assumption, but in a clearer understanding of what it now means to share a

collective story.