This image I shared on Facebook talks about blame, the habit of pointing elsewhere so we do not have to look too closely at ourselves. It struck me because at the moment I am immersed in recording local history. Old farms, family stories, council decisions, moments that felt ordinary at the time but now explain how a place became what it is.
History has a quiet power. What is written down gets repeated. What is repeated hardens into truth. What is left out quietly disappears.
Working through local archives has reminded me how selective memory can be. The stories that survive are often those that suited someone at the time, those that deflected responsibility, those that made complex decisions look simple and inevitable. Over generations, those shortcuts become culture.
We are seeing that play out again now.
As my Facebook post says I am uncomfortable with how responsibility keeps being pushed onto Anthony Albanese, or onto Australians more broadly, particularly Australian Jews, as if proximity equals culpability. That misdirects the conversation and lets those making the decisions step out of frame.
If accountability matters, it has to sit with alleged war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, who repeatedly claim to act in the name of all Jews. Many Jewish people around the world have said clearly that this is not true. Ignoring that distinction does real harm.
What also sits beneath this moment is something older and far more corrosive. Millions of prejudiced ideas about Jewish people were written down, taught, repeated, normalised. Those ideas travelled across borders and centuries. They did not arrive by accident. They were documented, handed down, and rarely challenged.
We cannot change millions of people’s prejudices overnight. But we can change how we tell the story now.
We can challenge media narratives that look for someone to blame and promise quick fixes. We can refuse lazy conflations that confuse governments with people, criticism with hatred, complexity with disloyalty. We can insist on context, on history, on evidence.
Most importantly, we can defend the public’s right to make informed choices. That requires more than outrage. It requires resisting the urge to absolve ourselves of responsibility by pointing elsewhere.
As someone recording local history, I am learning this: the stories we choose to document today will shape what feels possible tomorrow. Getting that right matters, not only for our towns, but for the world we hand on.
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