You Need A Dictionary, Mate!

A Tale of Three Bridges: Sydney, Melbourne, and Chaim’s

Aug 05, 2025

By Nina Sanadze, Artist and Artistic Director of Goldstone Gallery.

Top bloke. Good egg. Deadset legend.
Salt of the earth. Bloody ripper. Fair go.
No wuckas. She’ll be right. Kind as.
Mate’s rates. Help ya mates.
Always lend a hand. Up for a yarn.
Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Fair dinkum.
Be a good sport. Have a go ya mug.
Don’t be a galah. Don’t dob.
Pull up a stump. Keeps their cool.
Laid-back as a koala in a gum tree.
Straight shooter. You beauty.
Dead honest. Bit of a larrikin.
Doesn’t take crap. Give it a burl.
Won’t back down. Always up for it.
Tell ’im he’s dreamin’.
Fair crack of the whip. Loves a laugh. Plays fair.
Backs a mate. Holds the line.
Don’t take yourself too serious.
Everyone gets a fair shake of the sauce bottle.
Mateship.

I wrote those words in my English exercise book,
twenty-nine years ago.
Not just vocabulary,
but a moral code.
A quiet, golden decency.
Like Vegemite for the soul:
Salty. Strange. Honest. Beautiful.

And in my migrant suitcase,
I carried other words.
Not sung in radio jingles,
Not stitched on souvenir tea towels.

Shalom. L’Chaim. Chutzpah. Mishpacha.
Tikkun Olam. Mitzrayim. Sinai. Torah.
Shabbat. Kiddush. Yom Kippur.
Pesach. Seder. Matza. Purim.
Oy vey. Diaspora. Pogrom. Shoah.
Auschwitz. Treblinka. Babi Yar.
Kaddish. Kol Nidre. Never Again.
Tattooed numbers. Yellow stars. Zyklon B.

Blood libel. Beilis Trial. Dreyfus.
Protocols. Cossacks. Inquisition. Forced conversions.
Soviet repression. Hebrew outlawed. Gulags.
Aliyah. Kibbutz Galuyot. Bomb shelters. Intifadas.
Munich. Entebbe. Protective Edge.
Chevra Kadisha. Zaka. Grief.

This was my dictionary.
What’s in yours?

This past Sunday,
I crossed the bridge.
For the first time since they began—
those so-called Marches for Humanity.
Since October 7,
when the blood was still wet on the ground,
when the babies were not yet counted,
and the Opera House burned red
not with light,
but with pain,
with hate.

You handed out lollies.
You danced.
On graves.
On ash.
On names still echoing in empty homes.
You chanted for more.

So I came.
To see it.
To read every sign.
To feel the beat of your drums
against the bones of my dead.
To meet your eyes.

Your rallies on the bridges,
Sydney. Melbourne.
You shouted hunger in Gaza.
Don’t pretend I don’t care.
I’d protest too, if that was your message.
But don’t lie.
You weren’t there for bread.
You were there for blood.

You need a dictionary, mate.
Because you’ve forgotten what words mean.
Because the cameras caught banners
Media refused to translate.
Because they called it peace
while fists were raised,
while flags bore other emblems.

They need a dictionary too.
No slogans, just meaning.
And a calculator.
Because as many marched that day
as there are Jews in this country.

What I saw were flags and images of hate held high:
Al-Qaeda—behind 9/11; jihadist terror.
Ayatollah Khomeini — terror’s puppetmaster.
Hezbollah—Iranian-backed killers.
Taliban—fundamentalist tyrants; oppressors of women.
Swastika—Nazi legacy of genocide.
Communist—100 million killed in terror.

What I heard were chants of war:
“From the river to the sea”—not a two-state solution, but erasure.
“Kill the IDF”—not protest, but a death wish.
Intifada—code for stabbing Jews.
“By any means necessary”—a green light for rape, murder, and terror.
“Zionists are Nazis”—the darkest, cruellest lie flipped on its head.
“Zionism is terrorism”—a venomous refrain replayed until it corrupts the mind.

What I saw was no peace protest.
It was a zombie parade.
A dark reversal of Jewish history.
A theft of our trauma.
A twisted deception.

You come empty-handed.
No voice to call your own,
no stories, no history, no language.
So you take ours instead,
wear our grief like a mask,
mock what we hold sacred,
and laugh as our wounds run deep.

“Never Again is Now”— weaponised against Jews.
“1945 = 2025”— a sick, false equivalence.
“Bring them home now”— once for hostages;
now twisted to free thousands of murderers.

In Melbourne, they followed:
Mohammad Sharab — convicted for armed robbery, kidnapping, threats to kill,
and breaking the hand of an innocent man who worked for a Jewish family.

In Sydney, they followed:
Faruqi. Kostakidis. Assange.
Antisemites named and known. Apologists for hate.
Leakers of dissidents’ names to murderous regimes.

And behind them—Khomeini’s face,
silent proof of who they truly serve.

This is not the Australia I fell in love with.
Not the one I chose.
Not the one I taught my children.

Two years later, still waiting:
For a white flag.
For a peace sign.
For a dove.
For a song.

Where is “Give Peace a Chance”?
Where is “Blowin’ in the Wind”?
Where is “Imagine”?

Where is the peace flag you claimed to march for?
Where are you?
Anyone?

Let me tell you of a real peace bridge,
the one Chaim Perry dreamed of.
An artist. A builder. A peace-maker.
Who lived on the Gaza border,
in Kibbutz Nir Oz.

For twenty years,
his gallery opened wide,
welcoming Palestinian artists.
A gallery they called a Bridge.

His dream?
A sculpture bridge stretching across the border,
connecting lands,
connecting hearts.

On October 7,
aged seventy-eight,
he was kidnapped.
Tortured.
Murdered.
Paraded, mocked by the public,
spat upon.

Chaim’s peace bridge,
his efforts with neighbours,
meant nothing to his captors
who stole his light.

The world cheered his killers
next day at Sydney Opera House,
while you called kind-hearted Chaim
a “Zionist, racist, Nazi.”

You need a dictionary, mate.
And a conscience.
A mirror.
A history book.
And a soul.

My great-grandmother Hana and her children
weren’t killed by Nazi soldiers,
they were stoned by neighbours who wore aprons.
Raped in the streets.
Stripped. Paraded.
Beaten.
Then robbed.

Neighbours, murderers who then lived in their bedrooms,
sipped their tea.

I watched your eyes on that bridge.
And I thought of Hana.
And I asked:

Why would people be any different now?

Nazis were the grandchildren
of Goethe and Händel,
of Kant and Heine.

Raised on Bach and Schiller.
Readers of Rilke. Quoted Hegel.
Listened to Mahler. Played Brahms.

But it didn’t stop them.

Culture was no protection,
from brainwashing, from hate, from rot,
from blood libels, from murderousness.

Music didn’t save us.
Philosophy didn’t make them moral.
Poetry didn’t make them human.

So why would I believe Australians are any better?
Children of convicts and colonisers,
whose national story begins with dispossession,
not redemption.

Fair dinkum?

Be careful what you teach your kids to say.
One day, they’ll chant it on a bridge.

Mad as a cut snake.
Lower than a snake’s belly.
Wouldn’t know their arse from their elbow.
Wouldn’t piss on ’em if they were on fire.
Dry as a dead dingo’s donger.
Chuck a sickie.
Strewth.
Stone the flamin’ crows.
Buggered.
Rough as guts.
Stuffed if I know.
Go off like a frog in a sock.
Off like a bride’s nightie.
Full as a goog.
Can’t be stuffed.
Bloody oath.
Mad as a meat axe.
Hotter than a shearer’s armpit.
Sharp as a mashed potato.
Piece of piss.
Built like a brick shithouse.
Carrying on like a pork chop.
Ugly as a hatful of arseholes.
Off their chops.
Crazier than a rat up a drainpipe.
Ballsed it up.
Thick as two short planks.
Hard as a cat’s head.
No bloody idea.
Gives me the shits.
Pulled a swifty.
Lost the plot.
Bloody disgrace.
Done me head in.
Spit the dummy.
Get stuffed.
Cop that.
Dodgy as.
Nah mate. Not today. Not ever.

The photos below show the Melbourne and Sydney bridge rallies held on Sunday, 3 August.