On October 3 2023, I released a memoir, Book of Life. Four days later, the world changed.
On October 7 we were in the middle of a matinee performance of Songs from the Book of Life, an accompanying show for my memoir, at Arts Centre Melbourne. We were playing our fourth show, had shaken off the nerves and were enjoying ourselves along with our audience who were laughing in all the right places. Apart from a brief exit to add some bells and whistles to my costume, I spent most of the performance on stage; there was no interval. Willy Zygier, my artistic collaborator and husband, got to exit the stage at various moments while I delivered monologues. On one of his backstage jaunts, he saw a message from our youngest daughter, who was living in Tel Aviv. It was obtuse: “Don’t worry, I’m sheltering in the stairwell of my apartment.” Willy wrote back, trying to understand what was going on, then checked X. Information was scant, as it would be for a number of hours.
We remained at the theatre, believing that it was just another of the Hamas rocket barrages that invade Israeli airspace from Gaza at frequent intervals but do little damage because of Israeli anti-missile defences. I remember being relatively confident that the skirmish would be over within a matter of days.
Our show is a three-dimensional theatrical and musical distillation of my life with sets, props, interactive footage and choreography composed of eight scenes. Scene four is a discussion of my Jewishness; a discussion that, by its very nature, has to include a brief analysis of antisemitism. It was something Willy and I had been witnessing for several decades — hate, moving inexorably with the gathering pace of a stampeding herd. This excerpt from our show was very direct. After the matinee performance of October 7, it became an existential howl.
The history of the Jew lurches through chapter and verse of persecution for multitudes of contradictory reasons. We are the wandering Jew, the rootless cosmopolitan, we are the outsider; we are the controllers of finance and industry, of Hollywood and the media, we are the insider; we are insular, infiltrators, untrustworthy, ready to break our vows, we’re arrogant, G-d’s chosen, pushy, weak, loud, stealthy, communist, capitalist, once too oriental, now too white. Antisemitism motivates its adherents to attribute to the Jew whatever their society deems its most detestable qualities. And throughout history Jews pay with blood. Maybe all a Jew can do is pace the stage and pray.
There I was, a Jew, pacing the stage while our 23-year-old daughter was experiencing a rocket barrage. My darling youngest daughter is a party animal and if she had not recently split with her Israeli boyfriend, they might have both been at the Nova Festival.
The revelations about the October 7 massacre that started to emerge were unbearable, but the response from around the world was a deep dive into Dante’s Inferno. The denials of Hamas’ atrocities; the victim blaming; the reframing of savage barbarity into resistance; the cries of gas the Jews, sorry, fuck the Jews, on the steps of the Sydney Opera House while angry men burn Israeli flags and dance in celebration for the latest chapter of ‘Globalise the Intifada’. All this before Israel had lifted so much as a finger in response, before the 1200 bodies were cold or identified, before anyone had figured out who was kidnapped and who was a dismembered pile of human remains.
Overnight, any Jew who supported Israel’s right to exist — i.e., a Zionist — became a figure of hate. It didn’t take long for left-wing radicals to join forces with Islamists and adopt old blood libels for a new millennium. Zionists became interchangeable with Nazis, baby killers, promoters of genocide; the pre-packaged slurs came right out of the Elders of Zion playbook or the medieval Christian playbook. Ancient yet somehow completely on trend.
The betrayal was so thorough. The believe-all-women feminists suddenly needed proof from rape victims they’d been raped; apparently, nails shot into genitals just wasn’t cutting it. The footage, filmed by the perpetrators, was not enough. Conspiracy theories were gleefully circulated that the IDF had, in fact, murdered most of the victims. So, there you have it, not ‘gas the Jews’ but ‘gaslight the Jews’.
My head was spinning. Despite the tsunami of antisemitism, no one was coming to their senses. Where were the adults in the room? They were too busy making calculations on marginal seats and where votes might be won or lost. Moral compass be damned.
All the Jews I knew were despairing, confused. So were we. In November, Willy and I played at Mushroom Record’s widely watched 50th birthday celebration wearing white suits and blue shirts; he wore a yarmulke, I wore my oversized Magen David. We did it to show solidarity, to announce we wouldn’t be intimidated. It was good to be able to do something after weeks of feeling utterly impotent. An outpouring of support came, from Jews in particular who saw it as a fist in the air. But we also attracted threatening commentary along the lines of, “Hey genocide supporters, nice white suits you got there, pity if they got covered in blood.” Those comments were the opening shots, delineating the propaganda war we’d stepped into.
In December I was invited to talk to Patricia Karvelas on Radio National about the equivalence, if there was any, between the controversy of the Sydney Theatre Company actors donning keffiyehs for their encore bows, and Willy and I dressing as we had for the Mushroom event. Within a few minutes, the conversation turned to Gaza with Ms Karvelas questioning me about the high death toll of young people. The next few moments became ground zero for my fall from grace.
The haters decoupled my very few words (seven to be exact) from the context of their intent, waving them as a flag to proclaim my craven disregard for human suffering. The meaning of my words in context is: Hamas’ use of underage boys as fighters and then as part of the childhood casualty count is a horrendous, cynical exploitation of young lives. The mountain of evidence[1] for this ‘strategy’ remains unexamined by those who see Hamas as ‘freedom fighters’.
So, there I was: a new book, my first book, and a full dance card of author talks, in-conversations and writers’ festivals. Officially, I was about to embark on a wonderful adventure, unofficially I had become a slavering, blood-thirsty, child-murdering genocide supporter.
At first the cancellations dribbled in, then they picked up pace.
Charity events, radio shows, podcasts, all cancelled.
I should point out that my book is a memoir of an Australian musician, not a treatise on the Middle East.
Little Bird Bookshop in Brisbane hastily organised an in-conversation to promote my book, and a gathering of furious activists turned up on a quiet suburban street to scream in our faces and pound on the glass. A dozen police attended but did nothing to shut down the protest.
Many writers’ festivals, patronised by people who proclaim themselves to be warriors for the exchange of free ideas, were perfectly happy to shut down views or speakers that a few disrupters could find offensive. There were writers’ festivals that did stand by me, though some of them were forced to employ a phalanx of security. Others walked back their invitations. I don’t know if I blame them or not, but the reasons given for cancellation sounded disingenuous to me. Organisers of one NSW-based literary event I had been booked to open, for example, claimed their event had to be cancelled for health reasons, though strangely it went ahead, just without me. The Byron Bay Writers Festival booked me, then retracted their invitation with an alternate offer to schedule an out-of-festival event. A few months later they cancelled that too. No adequate reason was offered.
Our theatre shows were also targeted. Like with writers’ festivals, some promoters cancelled, while others hired security for our protection. The Hobart Playhouse performance was a new low. Outside, protesters handed out pamphlets detailing my villainy. Inside, activists disrupted our show repeatedly, having to be forcibly removed from the theatre until eventually a patron decided to take matters in her own hands, break her wine glass on the edge of the stage and use it to threaten a protester who was yelling that I was a disgusting monster. The ensuing mayhem was a glimpse into societal breakdown.
Then there is the silence, the events that simply don’t materialise though I was sure they would.
A few months back, I heard Tablet and New York Times columnist (and Jew) Brett Stephens address a Jewish audience. Someone asked how he was managing the high levels of hostility. “I get a bit more Jewy every day”, he said. I completely got it. So had I. So had most of the Jews I know. We had all gotten a bit more Jewy. Wearing visible Magen Davids, lighting Shabbat candles, seeking out each other’s company, reading Jewish authors and Israeli newspapers, attending Jewish cultural events.
Since October 7, the world where no one cared if I was a Jew or not has fundamentally shifted. It’s hard to convey how profound this change has been. Historical posters of Willy’s and my shows have been graffitied and then pulled off the walls in a Melbourne venue we have played many times over the years. The last couple of times we played in Sydney, I was confronted with “D. CONWAY IS A ZIONIST STOOGE” graffiti scrawled over the walls outside the venue. Every time we post on social media, we are hyper-aware of the trolls writing vile, sometimes threatening commentary. Horrifically, this is the new normal.
These days I feel wary whenever I meet someone new, wondering whether my reputation precedes me. I’ve grown cautious as to how I express myself. The trip wires are everywhere.
I don’t know what will happen next. Something has broken and I don’t see a way towards repairing the distrust that has engulfed our lives. Willy and I channel our creative energies into songs that address the current state of the world, we’re having a purple patch. We are still as poetically blatant about our positions as we have been since we released our album Stories of Ghosts in 2013. I introduce those songs by saying: “Stories of Ghosts is a series of dialogues around themes from the Old Testament from an atheist Jewish perspective. It’s our Jewish record, everyone should have one.” When I make this introduction these days, I’m not as confident that someone won’t throw something at me.
On the flip side, I am buoyed by the enormous support we have received from the many people whose moral compass is, I believe, perfectly intact. I continue to pace the stage. If I’m ducking verbal projectiles as I do, so be it.
[1] See, for example:
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, ‘The Origin of Hamas’ Human Shields Strategy in Gaza’
Brad Sherman, ‘You’re Being Misled About the Gaza Death Toll’
Seth J. Frantzman, ‘Hamas Continues Recruiting Child Soldiers: Where is the Condemnation?’
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This is an extract from Ruptured: Jewish women in Australia reflect on life post-October 7, co-edited by Lee Kofman and Tamar Paluch, published by Lamm Jewish Library of Australia.
“Fissured between these pages are necessary voices of pertinacious strength, unwavering courage, solidarity, womanhood, survival and faith… Giving rise to their shared essays, thirty-six women bring forth an ancient lantern of light and resilience through the gift of language. Their stories will pause you, conflict you – dare I suggest, embrace you. “— Yvette Henry Holt
“By turns hopeful, thoughtful, grieving and painful, these essays by Australian Jewish women challenge us to move beyond our own beliefs, perceptions and context to that place where simple binaries open out into the many-coloured, multi-faceted, lived experiences of others.” —Robyn Cadwallader
Deborah Conway AM has been a recording and performing musician for over 40 years; a producer, festival director, actor and author of the memoir Book of Life. She is a recipient of the Don Banks Award given for outstanding contribution to music and has been inducted into Music Victoria’s Hall of Fame.