It doesn’t get any more personal for lawyer Mark Leibler.
The senior partner at law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler, who advises many of the country’s leading business figures, and who has been named as one of the world’s 50 most influential Jews, has family with their life on the line in the latest Israel-Hamas conflict.
“I have five grandsons in Israel. One of my grandsons has been called up to a combat unit,” says Leibler. Two of the others have been pulled into service as intelligence officers, he says.
“To say that I’m worried is a massive understatement. I find it almost impossible to come to grips with what has happened here,” he told The Australian Financial Review, surrounded by photos of himself with Israeli President Isaac Hertzog and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The shocking Hamas attack on Israel and the threat of the worst prolonged violence in the region in a generation also triggers memories of the past, as the death toll mounts, and Israel goes on a war footing.
Leibler’s parents fled from Belgium in 1939, shortly before Adolf Hitler’s aggression triggered World War II and the attempted genocide of Europe’s Jews. Born in Australia, he spent a lifetime building Arnold Bloch Leibler into a Melbourne institution and a leader among the Jewish community.
Read the article by Patrick Durkin, Samantha Hutchinson and Jessica Sier in the Financial Review.