Over the last few years, the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) and our partners have hosted multiple mayoral summits across the globe, in North America, Latin America, and Europe. We have specifically focused on mayors and municipal officials because we believe that fighting antisemitism demands leadership at the local level. As local leaders, mayors are closest to their communities and the streets where antisemitism is increasingly manifested.
Attracting support from across the ideological spectrum, our summits eschew politics in favor of action plans to help fight antisemitism, racism, and other forms of hatred.
All of this has been largely uncontroversial until our upcoming Australian Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism, which is set to take place in the Gold Coast next week. We have hundreds of mayors and other municipal leaders signed up who want to counter rising hate against Jews in Australia.
Perhaps because of this success, the summit itself has been the target of attacks, with critics scurrilously delegitimizing what is essentially an anti-hate event.
It has now become abundantly clear that the campaign urging a boycott of the upcoming summit is not simply political activism – it is, in truth, antisemitism.
Preventing mayors and municipalities from learning how to counter Jew-hatred denies Jewish communities the support they vitally need. In Australia, antisemitism has risen to alarming levels: Reported incidents jumped by more than 300% in the past year, with over 2,000 cases ranging from harassment to violent attacks. Just last December, a synagogue in Melbourne was firebombed, and Jewish institutions in Sydney and across the country continue to be targeted with threats and vandalism.
These are not distant statistics – they represent a menacing reality in which lives are at risk.
Mayors are often the first line of response when their residents are under attack. They are the leaders who engage directly with communal organizations, faith institutions, schools, and other civic bodies. That is why their participation in this summit matters so deeply. When local leaders are discouraged – or worse, pressured – not to attend a conference dedicated to addressing hate, it sends the chilling message that protecting Jewish citizens is somehow “controversial.” It should never be controversial for elected leaders to learn how to keep their citizens safe.
I have spent the past six-and-a-half years running the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), building a global coalition united by a common mission: fighting antisemitism in all its contemporary forms, wherever it emerges. In every country where we work, we insist that Jewish safety is non-negotiable. We never compromise under pressure, and we always expect public leaders to stand with their Jewish communities when they are targeted. The work we do is rooted in domestic realities – collaborating with local communities, empowering municipalities, and providing practical tools to counter bigotry and discrimination.
Yet, time and again, campaigns such as the one we now see in Australia attempt to divert the issue away from antisemitism itself, making it about Israel and Zionism. This is exactly why we say clearly: Anti-Zionism is antisemitism. When efforts to safeguard Jewish communities worldwide are falsely smeared as political acts of Israel advocacy, it reveals the underlying prejudice – that Jews are forever defined by the State of Israel, and therefore undeserving of safety unless they disavow their identity.
My own story is bound up in this reality. I grew up in Belgium, where being openly Jewish became impossible for me. I left my home country two decades ago because of the antisemitism I experienced. I hoped then, and still hope now, that Jews should be able to live safely and prosper anywhere in the world, no matter the size of their community.
But this is only possible when leaders step up to confront hate, rather than yield to those who seek to whitewash or propagate it. If we cannot agree that combating antisemitism is a basic responsibility of democratic societies, then we have already failed.
It is precisely because of this that mayors must come to the summit. Their presence and participation will send a resounding message – that the fight against antisemitism belongs to all of us, and that no community should be left alone in the face of hate.
The writer is the CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), a global coalition engaging more than 950 partner organizations and five million people from a diverse array of religious, political, and cultural backgrounds in the common mission of fighting the world’s oldest hatred.