Please find below the ECA­J’s media release regard­ing our 2020 Report on Anti­semitism in Aus­tralia, authored by ECAJ Research Direc­tor Julie Nathan. The report itself can be viewed and down­loaded here.

Dur­ing the twelve-month peri­od, from 1 Octo­ber 2019 to 30 Sep­tem­ber 2020, there were 331 anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents logged by the ECAJ, vol­un­teer Com­mu­ni­ty Secu­ri­ty Groups (CSGs), and offi­cial Jew­ish state roof bod­ies. The total fig­ure con­sists of 188 attacks and 143 threats.

This rep­re­sents a decrease of 10% in the over­all num­ber of report­ed anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents in Aus­tralia com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year, although the num­ber of report­ed inci­dents in 2020 remains sub­stan­tial­ly above the aver­age record­ed since 2013.

“The decrease in the over­all num­ber of inci­dents should not dis­guise the marked increase in the num­ber of the most seri­ous cat­e­gories of inci­dents”, said Julie Nathan, the ECAJ’s Research Direc­tor on Anti­semitism, who authored the report. “There was a dou­bling in the num­ber of report­ed inci­dents of phys­i­cal assault; a 12% increase in direct ver­bal abuse, harass­ment and intim­i­da­tion; a 229% increase in the num­ber of report­ed direct threats by postal mail; and slight increas­es in the num­ber of threats via tele­phone and posters and stick­ers.”

“The increase in the num­ber of more seri­ous inci­dents is espe­cial­ly con­cern­ing in light of the fact that syn­a­gogues and oth­er Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty facil­i­ties were closed for vary­ing peri­ods from March onwards due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and there were thus few­er oppor­tu­ni­ties for anti­semites to abuse, harass and intim­i­date Jews in the vicin­i­ty of those facil­i­ties as they have done in the past”, Ms Nathan said.

“In pre­vi­ous years, these kinds of inci­dents have often occurred dur­ing the Jew­ish Sab­bath and fes­ti­vals when many Jews walk to and from syn­a­gogue.  The fact that sub­stan­tial increas­es occurred in the num­ber of assaults and inci­dents of direct ver­bal abuse, harass­ment and intim­i­da­tion at a time of sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in the vis­i­bil­i­ty of Jews on the streets may indi­cate a rise in the under­ly­ing lev­el of anti-Jew­ish sen­ti­ment.

There was also a pro­lif­er­a­tion dur­ing the year of anti­se­mit­ic dis­course, most­ly online, blam­ing “the Jews” for the pan­dem­ic, a new iter­a­tion of a clas­si­cal form of anti­semitism that is based on unfound­ed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

“White suprema­cists con­tin­ued to express sup­port online for vio­lence, armed action, rev­o­lu­tion, ter­ror­ism and race war”, Ms Nathan said. “The rein­vig­o­rat­ed Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment in the US, after the death of George Floyd in May 2020, gal­vanised and excit­ed many Aus­tralian right-wing extrem­ists, as they focused on acts of vio­lence by some seg­ments of BLM which they viewed as “accel­er­at­ing” a com­ing race war, that they so fer­vent­ly hope for.”

The ECAJ report notes that although Aus­tralia over­all remains a sta­ble, vibrant and tol­er­ant democ­ra­cy, where Jews face no offi­cial dis­crim­i­na­tion, and are free to observe their faith and tra­di­tions, unof­fi­cial anti­semitism is becom­ing more seri­ous, and there have been wor­ry­ing signs that it is creep­ing into main­stream insti­tu­tions.

“Sev­er­al inci­dents of anti­se­mit­ic bul­ly­ing of Jew­ish stu­dents in schools which had gone unre­port­ed in pre­vi­ous years were pub­licly exposed dur­ing the year in review”, Ms Nathan said. “In the wake of pub­lic­i­ty con­cern­ing the bul­ly­ing of two Jew­ish boys, aged 5 and 12, in Mel­bourne pub­lic schools dur­ing 2019, oth­er Jew­ish stu­dents came for­ward with their own expe­ri­ences of bul­ly­ing and assault in yet anoth­er pub­lic school in Mel­bourne. These alle­ga­tions became the focus of a fur­ther offi­cial inquiry in Vic­to­ria.”

“We need not only strong anti-incite­ment laws but also sys­tem­at­ic edu­ca­tion pro­grams at schools and uni­ver­si­ties and respon­si­ble mes­sag­ing from com­mu­ni­ty and polit­i­cal lead­ers”, Ms Nathan con­clud­ed.  “It’s not just a gov­ern­ment respon­si­bil­i­ty. Every­one stands to lose if racism con­tin­ues to wors­en. The respon­si­bil­i­ty falls on all of us”.

Con­tact:

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

TO DOWNLOAD THIS MEDIA RELEASE AS A PDF, CLICK HERE.

TO DOWNLOAD THE 2020 ECAJ REPORT ON ANTISEMITISM IN AUSTRALIA, CLICK HERE.