The piece has been pub­lished on 28 Feb­ru­ary in The Times of Israel Blog and J‑Wire and by ECAJ Research Direc­tor Julie Nathan.

Each year, the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry (ECAJ), the peak nation­al body rep­re­sent­ing Australia’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, pro­duces a Report on Anti­semitism in Aus­tralia. I have authored these reports since 2013.

The ECAJ records anti-Jew­ish racism (anti­semitism) in two broad cat­e­gories: inci­dents and dis­course. A major sec­tion of the report is ded­i­cat­ed to anti-Jew­ish inci­dents. These include six cat­e­gories com­prised of phys­i­cal assault, van­dal­ism, direct abuse, abu­sive mes­sages, graf­fi­ti, and posters/stickers.

Dur­ing the twelve-month peri­od, from 1 Octo­ber 2022 to 30 Sep­tem­ber 2023, there were 495 anti-Jew­ish inci­dents logged by the ECAJ. This was an increase of 3.5% in the over­all num­ber of report­ed anti-Jew­ish inci­dents com­pared to the pre­vi­ous twelve-month peri­od.

It should be not­ed that the Hamas atroc­i­ties in south­ern Israel occurred on 7 Octo­ber 2023, which is out­side the time frame of this report. There­fore, anti-Jew­ish inci­dents in Aus­tralia relat­ed direct­ly or indi­rect­ly to the atroc­i­ties and ensu­ing war between Israel and Hamas are not dealt with in this report.

Over­all, dur­ing the report­ing peri­od from 2022 to 2023, there were sub­stan­tial increas­es in the num­ber of report­ed inci­dents in three cat­e­gories: assault (up 120% from 5 to 11), van­dal­ism (up 100% from 11 to 22) and ver­bal abuse (up 36% from 138 to 188). There were sig­nif­i­cant decreas­es in two cat­e­gories: mes­sages (down 17% from 76 to 63) and posters (down 30% from 123 to 86). Graf­fi­ti remained the same at 125. Of note, most of the inci­dents of assault were gen­er­al­ly mild, peo­ple throw­ing objects at Jews, slap­ping and push­ing Jews rather than assault caus­ing seri­ous phys­i­cal harm.

Of the three major group­ings of inci­dents:

• 51% of inci­dents were direct non-phys­i­cal attacks on Jews: ver­bal abuse, ges­tures, or direct­ly-addressed mes­sages via email, phone, let­ters.
• 42% of inci­dents were in the form of anti-Jew­ish pro­pa­gan­da: graf­fi­ti, posters, leaflets, stick­ers and the like.
• 7% of inci­dents involved some form of vio­lence, either against Jew­ish indi­vid­u­als or against prop­er­ty.

Source: Julie Nathan

Inci­dents

To under­stand what anti-Jew­ish racism looks and feels like, we need to go beyond the num­bers and sta­tis­tics. The fol­low­ing is a com­pi­la­tion of some of the anti-Jew­ish inci­dents that occurred in the 12 months to 30 Sep­tem­ber 2023 in Aus­tralia.

Inci­dents of phys­i­cal assault occurred, as in the fol­low­ing exam­ples.

• A male, after ver­bal­ly abus­ing two iden­ti­fi­ably Jew­ish indi­vid­u­als with “You fuck­ing peo­ple think you can walk over every­one”, slapped one of the Jews, before punch­ing both of them repeat­ed­ly, Mel­bourne (26 Nov. 2022).
• A vehi­cle with four occu­pants stopped next to three Jews, one of the occu­pants asked “Hey, do you sup­port Israel?”, when one of the Jews respond­ed “Yes”, anoth­er occu­pant then threw an emp­ty drink can at them, strik­ing one of the Jews in the head, the occu­pants then shout­ed “Fuck Israel” at them and left, Mel­bourne (10 Dec. 2022).
• The pas­sen­ger of a pass­ing vehi­cle threw a full water bot­tle towards peo­ple out­side a syn­a­gogue, the bot­tle hit a parked car near­by, Syd­ney (18 March 2023).

Van­dal­ism has often con­sist­ed of etch­ing Nazi swastikas onto build­ings and prop­er­ty. Oth­er forms of van­dal­ism include the fol­low­ing exam­ples.

• Chanukah (Jew­ish fes­ti­val) meno­rah (large can­de­labra) dis­played at the fore­shore was ripped down, along with its sign, and thrown off the pier into the water, Elwood Beach, Mel­bourne (21 Dec. 2022).
• Van­dal­ism of ten head­stones of Jew­ish graves which were spray-paint­ed with Nazi swastikas, using sten­cils and splashed with paint, in the Jew­ish sec­tion of the ceme­tery, Mait­land, region­al NSW (31 Jan. 2023).
• Two mezu­zot (Jew­ish reli­gious objects placed on the door­frame) were forcibly removed from the front door frames of two res­i­dences, on the same lev­el, and lat­er found on the floor of the lift in the retire­ment vil­lage, Syd­ney (20 April 2023).

Abuse, harass­ment and intim­i­da­tion of Jews is the cat­e­go­ry which usu­al­ly has the high­est num­ber of inci­dents each year. There were 188 inci­dents in this cat­e­go­ry record­ed in the 2023 report­ing peri­od, com­pris­ing 38% of all inci­dents. The most com­mon ver­bal expres­sions were: “Fuck­ing Jews”; “Fuck the Jews”; “Fuck off Jew!”; “Filthy Jew”; “Jew­ish dogs”; “Allahu Akbar’’; and “Heil Hitler”. Also com­mon were three hand ges­tures: sim­u­lat­ing the dis­charge of a firearm towards peo­ple, some­times with the excla­ma­tion “Bang!”; the Nazi salute; and rais­ing the mid­dle fin­ger in a fist, as an act of con­tempt.

Ver­bal threats of vio­lence direct­ed towards Jews includ­ed: “Kill Jews”; “I’m going to kill you”; “Are you Jew­ish, mate?… I will kill ya!”; I’m going to blow this place [syn­a­gogue] up”; “I’m gonna burn this place [Jew­ish school] to the ground”; “Let’s go kill those Jews”; “I’m going to do a Hitler to you”; “Hitler should’ve fin­ished you Jews … Jews are filthy”; and “We are going to take off where the Nazis should have gone. We’re going to come get the Jews. We are going to kill all the Jews”.

Words ref­er­enc­ing a death-wish and/or the Holo­caust includ­ed: “Hitler didn’t fin­ish his job!”; “the Jews were doing bad things and deserved the Holo­caust”; “Hitler was right. He should have killed all the Jews”; “Heil Hitler! Dirty Jews!”; “go back to the gas cham­bers”; and “You all belong in the oven, Hitler should have fin­ished the job”.

Oth­er words of abuse, harass­ment and intim­i­da­tion direct­ed at Jews includ­ed: “Fuck­ing kike!”; “Move on you fuck­ing Jew!”; “Jew­boy”; “Chil­dren-killing Jews!”; “You dirty Jews!”; “Fuck­ing Jew­ish cunt!”; “Fuck­ing Jew boy!”; “Jews are cunts”; “Fuck­ing Jew cunt”; “Fuck you Jew­ish fag­got”; “satan­ic Jew”; and “Kanye (West) was right about the Jews”.

Mes­sages of hate occurred via emails, let­ter­box, and tele­phone. There were 63 inci­dents of hate mes­sages record­ed in the 2023 report­ing peri­od, com­pris­ing 13% of all inci­dents. Emails can pro­vide more detailed infor­ma­tion on how oth­ers view Jews. Hate emails are not gen­er­al cir­cu­lars but rather are sent to Jew­ish indi­vid­u­als, Jew­ish organ­i­sa­tions and Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty media. Ref­er­ences to Nazism in emails were com­mon.

Text with­in emails includ­ed: “100,000 too many kikes”; “eat­shit you fuck­ing cunt”; “Move back to Israel where you and your rodent kind belong”; “The world will be free from all zion­ists, by the will of Allah”; “Fuck israel, and fuck all inbred scum­bag kikes and their racist anti white agen­da. Eat shit and die fag­got nig­gers”; and “You jews will pay, in the name of allah i will com­mit arson and assault on dirty jews and on places of work and jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion … Mark my words allah is the great­est you dogs”.

Email text which ref­er­enced the Holo­caust includ­ed: “You Yid­dish nig­gers deserve noth­ing more than to be in chains or ditch­es. You will be dri­ven into the sea and the world will see peace. I will per­son­al­ly shove a zyclon b tablet down every heeb I come across. Heil Hitler” sent to a syn­a­gogue; “you damn, worth­less jew. You are oth­er jews are milk­ing this so called holo­caust for ever and ever, just mak­ing more $$$ out of it. Your 6 mil­lion jews pro­pa­gan­da is just bal­loon num­ber you sneaky jews came up with … You fuck­ers have no shame. You are dirty, eat­ing shit are cun­ny, sneaky so no won­der the rest of the world hates your guts … Fuck you and Israel too. Too bad that Adolf run out of time. I hope you all burn in hell !!!…”; and “Adolf should have fin­ished the job you fuck­ing scum. Filth. Sub­hu­man Trash. Lying Cunts. Get into the show­er you Dog Cunts. Nobody on the Plan­et has Any Time for Judan Trash.”

Postal mail, deliv­ered to, or placed in the let­ter­box­es of, homes, organ­i­sa­tions and busi­ness­es of Jews was anoth­er means to express hatred and to intim­i­date Jews. Two exam­ples includ­ed mail with the mes­sages of: “It is a pity that Hitler did not fin­ish with you Jew­ish rats” sent to eight syn­a­gogues; and “Youre a dead man, u fuck­ing Jew dog. … I will hunt u down and make sure you suf­fer you scum Jew and make sure every time you start that Audi car of yours, it doesn’t blow up and burns you alive just like your rel­a­tives burnt under Hitler you scum. … I will coime after you till I I see yopu 6 feet under you fuck­ing Jew pedophile … you fuck­ing dirty Jew just like all your Jew acom­plices … watch your back just like all Jews do in the world you dirty scum Jew ani­mal. I know where you live too you scum Jew like all your type … I am a proud Mus­lim and I hate Jews like your­self and will hunt you down”.

Tele­phone calls are anoth­er means to con­vey threats against Jews, usu­al­ly to Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tions and facil­i­ties. Phone calls includ­ed: threats to “gas the syn­a­gogue like Hitler gassed the Jews”; and “I will fuck­ing kill you! You are going to fuck­ing die! I will get the Jews! … Jews don’t deserve to live. They are god­less. …” to a syn­a­gogue. Oth­er phone calls includ­ed: “You fuck­ing kike!”; “Get the fuck out of our coun­try you stu­pid Jew filth”; “It’s a pity that Hitler did­n’t fin­ish all Jews”; and “You filthy fuck­ing Jew scum why did­n’t you fuck­ing get out of the coun­try when you’re meant to cunt, start­ing up your filthy lit­tle [venue] cunt, you filthy fuck­ing cap­i­tal­ist pigs. Go and suck the blood out of your fuck­ing young when you cut the fore­skin off it to fuck­ing puri­fy your fuck­ing blood and your genet­ics you filthy fuck­ing piece of shit race of humans. I hope your fuck­ing [venue] burns and fuck­ing blows up cunt. Just like you should have rot­ted in hell when you fuck­ing deserved to fuck­ing 2000 years ago for putting our sav­ior on our fuck­ing cross you piece of shit”.

Graf­fi­ti often occurs at or near Jew­ish com­mu­nal facil­i­ties or in areas where a large pro­por­tion of res­i­dents are Jews. Oth­er graf­fi­ti is in pub­lic places where very few Jews live. There were 125 inci­dents of graf­fi­ti record­ed in the 2023 report­ing peri­od, com­pris­ing 25% of all inci­dents. A large num­ber of graf­fi­ti inci­dents con­sist­ed of Nazi swastikas, often along­side overt­ly anti-Jew­ish text, as well as mul­ti­ple graf­fi­ti of “Fuck Jews” and mul­ti­ple graf­fi­ti of “Kill the Jews”, and sev­er­al “Gas the Jews”.

Oth­er inci­dents of graf­fi­ti includ­ed the words: “I HATE JEW DOGS”; “Jew loverz burn in the hell­fire”; “The Goy­im know. Oy vey!!!”; “Kill the Jews Fag”; “1488 kill Jews”; “6MNE” (“6 Mil­lion Not Enough” – in ref­er­ence to the Holo­caust); “FUCK THE JEW WORLD ORDER ITS ALL EVIL AGENDA”; “FUCK THE JEW … WITH POISON VACCINES”; “VAX THE JEWS”; “JEWS DID COVID”; “JEWS DID WW1 + WW11”; “JEWS DID IT”; “COVID IS JEW”; and “SATANIC Jews”.

Posters/stickers is the sixth, and final, cat­e­go­ry of inci­dents. This cat­e­go­ry is com­posed of pro­pa­gan­da mate­r­i­al and includes: ban­ners, cloth­ing, flags, fly­ers, leaflets, plac­ards, posters, and stick­ers. There were 86 inci­dents in this cat­e­go­ry record­ed in the 2023 report­ing peri­od, com­pris­ing 17% of all inci­dents.

A ban­ner com­posed of a Nazi swasti­ka, ham­mer and sick­le, Star of David and the words “You want to ban this: [Nazi swasti­ka] but not this [ham­mer and sick­le] Oh, because it offends (((them))) [Star of David]. … Hitler was right” was hung from a high­way over­pass. A poster was com­posed of the same word­ing.

Two males wore cloth­ing, red t‑shirts, with the text “6 mil­lion? That’s a bit much mate” (in ref­er­ence to the Holo­caust, deny­ing or min­imis­ing the geno­cide) and per­formed the Nazi salute, out­side the State Library, Mel­bourne (4 June 2023).

Leaflets titled “Call­ing all White Aus­tralians”, pro­duced in three ver­sions, by the Euro­pean Aus­tralian Move­ment (EAM), and its twin the Nation­al Social­ist Net­work (NSN), both neo-Nazi groups, were let­ter­boxed through­out dozens of sub­urbs in cities across Aus­tralia over a 12-month peri­od. A fourth leaflet, by NSN, was also let­ter­boxed. It is like­ly that tens of thou­sands of such leaflets were let­ter­boxed dur­ing the peri­od in review.

Text in the leaflets includ­ed: “We must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren … Be pre­pared to train … Blood and Hon­our” by EAM; “There is no polit­i­cal solu­tion to this Jew­ish tyran­ny! The mas­ters of mankind want you poi­soned, ster­ilised, iso­lat­ed, and liv­ing in a box eat­ing bug! We have a dif­fer­ent vision for the future… First Ger­many, this time the world. Blood and Hon­our! Resist the Great Reset” by EAM; and “We know there is no polit­i­cal solu­tion to this Satan­ic Zion­ist-occu­pied polit­i­cal sys­tem. White Rev­o­lu­tion is the Only Solu­tion!” by NSN.

Oth­er leaflets includ­ed: “Every Sin­gle Aspect of Abor­tion is Jew­ish”; “Every sin­gle aspect of the media is Jew­ish”; and “Cen­sor­ship in Aus­tralia” with names and pho­tos of 12 promi­nent Aus­tralian Jews, each with a Jew­ish Star of David next to their pho­tos.

Stick­ers includ­ed text of: “Reject the Jew”; “The Holo­caust is a Jew Lie”; “The Jew Con­trols The Media – Don’t Believe Their Lies”; “The Jew Has Been Expelled From 109 Coun­tries – Make It 110”; “The Jew Prof­its From The Vac­cine”; “Kanye (Ye) West Is Right About Jews”; “Kanye [West] Is Right About The Jews”; “Fck Jws”; “Fuck The Jews. Get Edu­cate”; and “Jew­ish Scums mur­dered 73 mil­lion Euro­peans and are striv­ing to rid the world of Euro­peans.”

Vehi­cles were also used to pro­mote hatred of Jews and sup­port for Nazism. A dig­i­tal sign of “JEWS DID 9 11” was on a traf­fic con­trol vehi­cle being dri­ven on a main road. There were two vehi­cle reg­is­tra­tion plates, both in Syd­ney: “FUHR3R” (“Fuhrer” – the title of Adolf Hitler), on a BMW, and “88.SIEG” (88 is neo-Nazi code for ‘Heil Hitler’ (88=HH) and ‘sieg’ is Ger­man for ‘vic­to­ry’, noto­ri­ous­ly used by Nazis in the ‘Sieg Heil’ salute) on a Ford Ranger.

Con­clu­sion

The high num­ber of anti-Jew­ish inci­dents is of great con­cern. How­ev­er, the num­bers only tell one part of the sto­ry. While many express con­tempt and dis­dain for Jews, many oth­ers express mur­der­ous and geno­ci­dal views. They express regret that Hitler did not mur­der all Jews and express the wish that Jews should and will be mur­dered en masse in the near future. The inten­si­ty of the vio­lent and mur­der­ous expres­sions in anti-Jew­ish inci­dents can act as a pre­cur­sor to more seri­ous attacks on Jews lead­ing to phys­i­cal assault and mur­der.

To counter anti­semitism, Aus­tralian polit­i­cal and civ­il lead­ers and oth­er peo­ple of influ­ence need to be aware of the high lev­el of anti-Jew­ish inci­dents occur­ring across Aus­tralia, to under­stand what anti-Jew­ish racism is and how it man­i­fests, and to take effec­tive action to con­demn and out­law not just vil­i­fi­ca­tion but any advo­ca­cy of vio­lence based on race, eth­nic­i­ty, reli­gion, gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, and oth­er attrib­ut­es.

The 2023 Report is avail­able at ECAJ Report on Anti­semitism in Aus­tralia 2023

Julie Nathan is the Research Direc­tor at the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry (ECAJ) and has authored the annu­al ECAJ Report on Anti­semitism in Aus­tralia since 2013.