The Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry (ECAJ), Australia’s peak elect­ed nation­al Jew­ish roof body, has released its annu­al Report on Anti­semitism in Aus­tralia.  The report can be viewed and down­loaded here.

The fol­low­ing are the prin­ci­ple find­ings:

• Dur­ing the twelve-month peri­od to 30 Sep­tem­ber 2021, there were 447 anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents logged by the ECAJ, vol­un­teer Com­mu­ni­ty Secu­ri­ty Groups (CSGs), and offi­cial Jew­ish state roof bod­ies.
• This was an increase of 35% over the 331 inci­dents logged in the pre­vi­ous year.
• Over­all, from 2020 to 2021, there were increas­es in the num­ber of report­ed inci­dents in four cat­e­gories:
  • abuse/harassment (up 14% from 128 in 2020 to 147 in 2021),
  • graf­fi­ti (up 152% from 42 to 106),
  • stickers/posters (up 157% from 28 to 72) and
  • van­dal­ism (up by 10%, from 10 to 11).
• The num­ber of report­ed phys­i­cal assaults remained the same at 8. There were min­i­mal decreas­es in inci­dents of postal and tele­phone threats, and a larg­er decrease in email threats.
• The aver­age num­ber of report­ed anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents each year from 2013 to 2020 was 280. As such, the num­ber of report­ed inci­dents in 2021 is above that aver­age by 167 inci­dents.

Julie Nathan, ECAJ Research Direc­tor, and author of the Anti­semitism Report, stat­ed that, “The Israel-Hamas war in May 2021 con­tributed to the increase in anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents. A total of 88 inci­dents was logged for the month of May alone, when the hos­til­i­ties between Israel and Hamas occurred, com­pared to between 22 and 46 inci­dents for each of the oth­er 11 months of the year.”

Ms Nathan said: “Behind the sta­tis­tics lie some hor­rif­ic per­son­al sto­ries of per­sis­tent anti­se­mit­ic bul­ly­ing of Jew­ish stu­dents at schools, the bru­tal phys­i­cal assault of a man on his way to syn­a­gogue, the spray paint­ing of “Free Pales­tine. Fuck Zion­ist. Free Pales­tine” on the sig­nage at the front of a syn­a­gogue in Ade­laide, the fly­ing of a Nazi flag above a syn­a­gogue in Bris­bane, and the drap­ing of two Pales­tin­ian flags and two shred­ded Israeli flags at the front entrance of a syn­a­gogue in Syd­ney.  What is per­haps worse is the dis­grace­ful dis­course online and occa­sion­al­ly in the main­stream media of those who, for what­ev­er rea­son, seek to ratio­nalise or min­imise this egre­gious behav­iour.”

“In addi­tion to the delib­er­ate tar­get­ing of syn­a­gogues, Jew­ish schools, and  Jew­ish-owned busi­ness­es, there was also the delib­er­ate tar­get­ing of pri­vate Jew­ish homes, in the form of anti-Israel graf­fi­ti on front fences of the homes of Jew­ish fam­i­lies.”

“Anoth­er promi­nent theme of the anti­se­mit­ic dis­course expressed dur­ing the year was a focus on blam­ing “the Jews” for the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, notably by COVID-19 denial­ists as well as by many of those opposed to gov­ern­ment health mea­sures, includ­ing vac­ci­na­tion man­dates and lock­downs,” Nathan said.

In addi­tion, Nathan warned of “extrem­ist groups and indi­vid­u­als, whether reli­gious or ide­o­log­i­cal, who con­tin­ued to espouse vio­lence against Jews”. Nathan iden­ti­fied the main offend­ers as the extrem­ist Islamist group, Hizb ut’Tahrir, and the neo-Nazi group, Nation­al Social­ist Net­work.

Nathan called upon polit­i­cal lead­ers, the media, law enforce­ment, aca­d­e­mics, faith lead­ers, and oth­ers in posi­tions of pow­er or influ­ence, to act to counter anti­semitism in all its forms.

“It was heart­en­ing that Aus­tralia recent­ly gave offi­cial endorse­ment to the Inter­na­tion­al Holo­caust Remem­brance Alliance Work­ing Def­i­n­i­tion of Anti­semitism”, she said.“The ECAJ has been using that def­i­n­i­tion since 2016 as a stan­dard for gaug­ing anti­se­mit­ic dis­course.  To be effec­tive, the def­i­n­i­tion will now need to be adopt­ed by the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, the Uni­ver­si­ty sec­tor, civ­il soci­ety, school edu­ca­tion sys­tems and sport­ing organ­i­sa­tions among oth­ers”.

Con­tact:

Peter Wertheim AM | Co-CEO, ECAJ
phone: 02 8353 8500 | m: 0408 160 904
pwertheim@ecaj.org.au | www.ecaj.org.au