Last week, I posted Australian Rules Football (AFL) legend Gerard Healy’s impassioned podcast monologue in solidarity with the Australian Jewish community.
Since then, Gerard has not let up. Three days ago, he wrote an op-ed in The Australian criticizing the AFL for abandoning the Jewish community. Here’s an excerpt:
It was a great tribute by the Swans but as the cameras cut to the players to start the match, I wondered if that was it from the AFL?
Surely there will be more, but so far, since Bondi, nothing, the silence has been deafening.
Silence has been a feature of this whole tragedy over 2½ years, beginning with the silence from government, following the protest at Sydney Opera House two days after 1200 Jews were massacred.
The only words coming some months later, from a senior policeman who declared after an investigation, the chants were actually saying “Where are the Jews?”, not the alleged, “Let’s gas the Jews”.
As if that somehow made it OK … for once in this nightmare, that officer clearly should surely have stayed silent.
In the ensuing 2½ years the Jewish community has suffered in silence, terrorised at home, at work, on sports fields and universities, where vice-chancellors on more than $1m a year sat mute as students with Jewish heritage were set upon.
Silence from government after synagogues were bombed, and silence from us all as our fellow Australians lived in a virtual hell.
No matter your views on either the Gaza war or the Iran war, one thing is perfectly clear, our fellow Australians – our neighbours, our work colleagues, the people we sit next to cheering in the grandstand – who have Jewish heritage have absolutely nothing to do with the overseas wars and the carnage. Absolutely nothing.
Yet the Jewish community has been brutally held to account for actions it had nothing to do with, like no other community in this country’s history.
Stoically they have marched on, again in silence, justifiably feeling abandoned by their own country, isolated and living in fear in our suburbs. It’s been shameful and I’ve slowly lost some faith in our country’s soul.
Yet the silence continued for nearly two years until it was shattered on December 14, at Bondi Beach, when gunshots exploded.
Incredibly it’s just under two months since a recalcitrant Prime Minister was bludgeoned into submission by Dawn Fraser, finally calling a royal commission, yet already, the silence has returned, with the exception of the odd violent chant trying to globalise the intifada.
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The modern term is to wrap your arms around them and the suggestion was made, that if you see the opportunity at the footy or at training, give someone that you know from the Jewish community an embrace a handshake a good-natured headlock or even a hug, to let them know that, finally, we have their backs, we love and respect them, and we need you to know it.
Silence is no longer an option.
Try it today, I can guarantee you’ll feel great as well.
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That night following the show, the emails and text messages started flowing and they are still coming, luckily for me. I’ve learnt so much more about the JComm and now have a much deeper understanding of their difficulties.
There were emails from people all around the country, a couple from Israel, but mainly from the Jewish community as you’d expect. They made me emotional on a few occasions, and in tears last Wednesday morning sitting next to my brother Matt.
The stories were incredible, expressing their love for this country, and the sanctuary given to prior generations of their families who had come here to escape tyranny.
Yet in a shocking twist, tyranny had now revisited their own family, in their own homes and their daily lives. They have worked so hard in this country and contributed in the main above the country’s batting average, yet had now been cruelly set upon and abandoned by their own country.
And no one seemingly cares. There’s only been deafening silence. How could it be, they ask? And it’s the question I ask myself: how could it be?
Read the entire thing.
Gerard has since appeared on Sky News Australia’s Kenny Report to reaffirm his message of solidarity with the Jewish community:
.@AFL legend Gerard Healy on @SkyNewsAust with Chris Kenny, reinforcing his solidarity with the Jewish community. I cannot overemphasize how meaningful this support is, especially considering the silence in the AFL community of so many, and – in the case of at least @freodockers… https://t.co/RBDKSa2CzW pic.twitter.com/U2bAy24QUZ
— David Lange (@Israellycool) March 9, 2026
I cannot overemphasize how meaningful this support is, especially considering the silence in the AFL community of so many, and – in the case of at least Fremantle Dockers caption Alex Pearce – blatant support for terror supporters Kneecap, who infamously chanted “Death to the IDF.”
While others in the AFL choose to stay silent – or worse, cheer for those who wish us harm – Gerard Healy has chosen to be a voice in the wilderness.
Gerard reminds us that silence isn’t just an absence of noise. It’s an absence of humanity.
