The Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry (ECAJ), the peak body rep­re­sent­ing the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty nation­al­ly, has expressed “out­rage and dis­gust” at a series of state­ments report­ed­ly made by self-described Islam­ic preach­ers in Syd­ney includ­ing Wis­sam Had­dad, “Broth­er Ismail”, “Broth­er Mohammed” and Sheik Ahmed Zoud.

“On any view, these state­ments are gross­ly anti­se­mit­ic”, said ECAJ Pres­i­dent Daniel Aghion. “One can only imag­ine the entire­ly jus­ti­fi­able out­cry if any such rank vil­i­fi­ca­tion were expressed from a Syn­a­gogue pul­pit about Mus­lims. Yet this repeat­ed hate-mon­ger­ing against Jews over the last three months has elicit­ed only a shame­ful silence from the Aus­tralian Nation­al Imams Coun­cil, many oth­er faith com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, and from oth­er parts of civ­il soci­ety. They should know bet­ter.”

“The hate preach­ing must stop now,” Mr Aghion said. “There are mul­ti­ple eth­nic and faith com­mu­ni­ties in Aus­tralia and the last thing we need is for our peace­ful and cohe­sive soci­ety to be ruined by the impor­ta­tion into Aus­tralia of the hatreds and vio­lence of over­seas con­flicts. Gov­ern­ments bear the pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty of main­tain­ing peace and secu­ri­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty by tak­ing deci­sive action to stop any­one seek­ing to set Aus­tralian against Aus­tralian”.

Mr Aghion also said that the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty had been “deeply dis­ap­point­ed and dis­tressed” that no action had been tak­en in response to seri­ous inci­dents of hate speech since Octo­ber 7. “If exist­ing laws are not fit for the pur­pose of deal­ing with this hate-filled bile, and the stok­ing of vio­lence, then the law should be reformed as a mat­ter of urgency. Tak­ing legal action dis­cour­ages this com­plete­ly unac­cept­able behav­iour, and sup­ports Australia’s future as a peace­ful and cohe­sive soci­ety.”

Mr Aghion stat­ed that the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty will itself take legal action. “Whilst we still have hope that the rel­e­vant author­i­ties will act on these mat­ters, our organ­i­sa­tion will pur­sue the legal reme­dies that are avail­able to us against those who have preached hate and pro­mot­ed vio­lence. We must pro­tect our own com­mu­ni­ty. In doing so, we will be pro­tect­ing all Aus­tralians from racist behav­iour.”