This opin­ion piece by ECAJ Research Direc­tor Julie Nathan was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on J‑Wire and the Times of Israel.

There is a long-stand­ing per­cep­tion that anti-Jew­ish racism stems pre­dom­i­nant­ly from the far right and from those of Euro­pean eth­nic­i­ty.

There is a his­tor­i­cal basis for this and a con­tin­u­ing con­ve­nience to main­tain this nar­ra­tive by those who seek to divert atten­tion away from oth­er sources of anti-Jew­ish racism. How­ev­er, to effec­tive­ly counter anti-Jew­ish racism, we need to acknowl­edge where the threats and attacks are com­ing from, regard­less of the source. This has become par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant and urgent since Octo­ber 7.

In Aus­tralia, a 2016 study of the eth­nic­i­ty of per­pe­tra­tors of phys­i­cal assault and ver­bal abuse against Jews (note, only 47% of such inci­dents iden­ti­fied the eth­nic­i­ty of the per­pe­tra­tors), found that at that time peo­ple of eth­nic-Euro­pean and Mid­dle East­ern back­grounds were pre­dom­i­nant­ly respon­si­ble in near equal pro­por­tions, at 47% and 43% respec­tive­ly, for phys­i­cal assault and ver­bal abuse against Jews in Aus­tralia.

A 2017 study of anti-Jew­ish inci­dents in Aus­tralia found that the extreme far right (ie neo-Nazis/white suprema­cists) were dis­pro­por­tion­al­ly respon­si­ble for 22% (com­prised pre­dom­i­nant­ly of posters and stick­ers) of all anti-Jew­ish inci­dents. Note, this was dur­ing the peak of activ­i­ty by the neo-Nazi group, Antipodean Resis­tance.

In addi­tion, over the years, there has been plen­ty of evi­dence show­ing that the hard left has har­boured anti-Jew­ish sen­ti­ment but has cloaked much of it in anti-Israel or anti-Zion­ist rhetoric, which was often expressed under the mantra of anti-racism, human rights, and equal­i­ty.

Since the 7 Octo­ber 2023 attack by Hamas and oth­er Gazan Pales­tini­ans (mil­i­tary and civil­ian) in south­ern Israel, in which some 1200 peo­ple were mur­dered (burned, raped, dis­mem­bered, tor­tured and muti­lat­ed before being killed), and the sub­se­quent Israel-Hamas war, the sit­u­a­tion has dra­mat­i­cal­ly changed in Aus­tralia and across the world.

The anti-Jew­ish racism and inci­dents are not gen­er­al­ly com­ing from the neo-Nazis and oth­er far-right groups, although these sources remain a seri­ous threat to Jews. Neo-Nazis still view Jews as an exis­ten­tial threat to ‘Aryan’ suprema­cy and still aim to exter­mi­nate Jews around the world, but they lack any wide­spread sup­port and lack any polit­i­cal or insti­tu­tion­al pow­er to pro­mote their ide­ol­o­gy and agen­da.

Those who do have the polit­i­cal or insti­tu­tion­al pow­er to pro­mote their ide­ol­o­gy and agen­da are those on the hard left. Their ideas have weaved their way into the main­stream of West­ern soci­ety. The anti-Jew­ish racism is com­ing from activists with­in main­stream insti­tu­tions, such as uni­ver­si­ties, the arts and enter­tain­ment indus­try, so-called ‘influ­encers’, and the like, and even ele­ments with par­lia­ments.

In gen­er­al, right-wing anti­semitism is overt but mar­gin­alised; left-wing anti­semitism is insid­i­ous but main­streamed.

Within institutions

With­in main­stream insti­tu­tions, there are anti-Israel activists who are advo­cat­ing and pro­mot­ing extrem­ist agen­das – agen­das which cre­ate an atmos­phere hos­tile to Jews. This is occur­ring with­in pub­lic schools by teach­ers, with­in uni­ver­si­ties, with­in the arts and cul­tur­al sec­tor, by health pro­fes­sion­als includ­ing doc­tors and nurs­es, in pub­lic trans­port in trains and taxis, in busi­ness­es by employ­ees – pub­licly voic­ing, either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, their sup­port for the destruc­tion of the Jew­ish state of Israel and/or demon­is­ing Jews who defend Israel’s exis­tence.

The atmos­phere of fanat­i­cal hatred against any­one who sup­ports the exis­tence of the Jew­ish State of Israel is per­va­sive and intim­i­dat­ing. Anti-Jew­ish racists are no longer watch­ing their words. It is now accept­able to say racist things against Jews, to demonise Jews, to accuse them col­lec­tive­ly of sup­port­ing apartheid, eth­nic cleans­ing and geno­cide. The effect will be to con­demn Jews to pari­ah sta­tus, to be con­sid­ered fair game, to be tar­get­ed for vio­lence. This is how the mass slaugh­ter of civil­ians often begins.

Octo­ber 7 was one thing. But some­thing else hap­pened – through­out the world, there were cel­e­bra­tions and glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the killing of Jews expressed by many Arabs, Mus­lims and their left-wing allies, so-called ‘pro­gres­sives’. The inci­dents of anti-Jew­ish racism and hate crime rose dra­mat­i­cal­ly around the world. This was usu­al­ly done under the guise of anti-Zion­ism or ‘pro-Pales­tine’ activism, and began straight after the mas­sacre, even before Israel took any mil­i­tary action against Hamas.

The protest out­side the Syd­ney Opera House on 9 Octo­ber 2023, where chants of “Fuck the Jews!”, “Gas the Jews!” and “Where’s the Jews?” were heard, was planned and pub­licly adver­tised by Pales­tine Action Group Syd­ney on 7 Octo­ber at 8.04pm while the Hamas mur­der of Jews was still going on.

There has been a pat­tern of behav­iour over many years that when there is con­flict or war in the Mid­dle East, whether involv­ing Israel or not, the fes­ter­ing sore of anti-Jew­ish racism is opened up and there is a spike in inci­dents tar­get­ing Jews across the world. This time, after Octo­ber 7, as though the Jew-haters were not sati­at­ed by the spilling of enough Jew­ish blood, or per­haps due to a sen­ti­ment that Octo­ber 7 was a green light, the num­ber of inci­dents, the open hatred, explod­ed like a vol­cano.

On the streets

An ear­ly indi­ca­tion of how things would pan out occurred on the streets of Lakem­ba in west­ern Syd­ney on 8 Octo­ber 2023, one day after the mas­sacre in Israel. Sheikh Ibrahim Daoud, addressed a large protest ral­ly organ­ised by Hizb ut-Tahrir, glo­ri­fy­ing the mur­der of Jews in Israel, and shout­ed to the crowd: “I’m smil­ing and I’m hap­py. I’m elat­ed. It’s a day of courage, it’s a day of resis­tance, it’s a day of pride, it’s a day of vic­to­ry. This is the day we’ve been wait­ing for.”

Oth­ers too pub­licly glo­ri­fied the mas­sacre and were exhil­a­rat­ed by it. Octo­ber 7 was seen by many as a great vic­to­ry, as the start of a renewed Islam­ic war against Israel, and indeed against Jews around the world. Since then, oth­ers have echoed the call to kill Jews, while oth­ers declare the glob­al Islam­ic vic­to­ry against the kuf­far, the non-Mus­lims, to be on its way.

A man at an anti-Israel protest in Hyde Park, Syd­ney, shout­ed out “Allahu Akbar. Get the fuck­ing Jews wiped out! … I’m a Mus­lim…” (15 Oct. 2023). A police offi­cer told him he had a right to say what he did but that it was an offence to swear in pub­lic. The man was lat­er charged with using offen­sive lan­guage (‘fuck­ing’) in a pub­lic place, but not for advo­cat­ing vio­lence.

At anoth­er anti-Israel protest, in Mel­bourne, a man yelled out ”Death to every Israeli!”, then two oth­er pro­test­ers went up to him and clapped his hand in approval (15 Oct. 2023).

Sev­er­al Mus­lim cler­ics and imams in Syd­ney used the mas­sacre to preach hatred of Jews or to praise Hamas and jihad. Some exam­ples include: “Oh Allah … beat the Zion­ist Jews. … Oh Allah, we hope you count them and kill them one by one.” (24 Nov. 2023); “The most impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Jews is that they are blood­thirsty. … Oh Mus­lims, ser­vants of Allah, betray­al and treach­ery are among the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Jews.” (22 Dec. 2023); and “Now these kuf­far, these wor­ship­pers of Iblis (Satan), yes, the descen­dants of pigs and mon­keys” (29 Dec. 2023). In the Quran (2.63–65[1], 5.59–60[2], 7.163–166[3]), Jews are described as hav­ing been turned into pigs and apes, and this is regur­gi­tat­ed by extrem­ist Mus­lims who refer to Jews as the descen­dants of pigs and apes

The Pres­i­dent of the Islam­ic Coun­cil of Vic­to­ria (ICV), Adel Salman, at an anti-Israel ral­ly in Mel­bourne (15 Oct. 2023) stat­ed: “we must dif­fer­en­ti­ate between legit­i­mate resis­tance actions, and every­thing that has hap­pened is a legit­i­mate response to occu­pa­tion and siege.” In an ABC radio inter­view (28 Feb. 2024), Adel Salman said “What we don’t denounce, very clear­ly, is legit­i­mate acts of resis­tance  and for the Pales­tini­ans to rise up on Octo­ber 7 and say ‘we are no longer going to tol­er­ate this siege, this occu­pa­tion,’ that is legit­i­mate.”

The Pres­i­dent of Aus­tralia Pales­tine Advo­ca­cy Net­work (APAN), Nass­er Mash­ni, who has crim­i­nal con­vic­tions for kid­nap­ping, vio­lence and threat­en­ing behav­iour, has refused to con­demn Hamas and the Octo­ber 7 mas­sacre. He opposed the Aus­tralian government’s list­ing of Hamas as a ter­ror­ist group. He open­ly sup­ports the oblit­er­a­tion of Israel and holds con­spir­a­to­r­i­al views about Zion­ism. Even before Octo­ber 7, Mash­ni referred to Jews as ”filthy zios”.

On his radio show on 3CR in July 2023, Mash­ni said: “The pow­er struc­tures that exist in the world all focus upon Zion­ism. … Israel is the domi­no. Israel falls over … The lib­er­a­tion of Earth starts with the first domi­no, and that’s the over­com­ing and the decoloni­sa­tion of Pales­tine and the end­ing of Zion­ism.”

In an inter­view on Turk­ish media on 31 July 2024, Mash­ni stat­ed “Israel is a rogue geno­ci­dal state hell­bent on tak­ing the world to the world war 3. That it doesn’t belong, the geno­ci­dal apartheid Israel does not belong amongst the nation of nations, doesn’t belong in the UN. Apartheid Israel has to cease to exist.”

Mash­ni has led the chant “From the riv­er to the sea, Pales­tine will be free” dur­ing his speech­es at many anti-Israel protests in Mel­bourne in 2023 and 2024.

The founder of the “Sit-Intifa­da”, on the steps of the Vic­to­ri­an Par­lia­ment in Mel­bourne, pub­licly told a Jew­ish woman: “7 of Octo­ber is the bloody begin­ning of it. You’re going to have plen­ty of 7th of Octo­bers com­ing. Plen­ty of it. And the next 7th of Octo­ber is gonna be to kick your ass out” (6 May 2024). At a protest the next day, he stat­ed: “I’ll say it again, the Octo­ber 7 hap­pened because the occu­pa­tion, because oppres­sion, it’s a legit­i­mate resis­tance. And a lot more to come [cheers from the crowd], a lot more to come until we lib­er­ate Pales­tine, next time we come from Jor­dan, from Egypt, from Lebanon, from Syr­ia, all togeth­er, anoth­er Octo­ber the 7. Resis­tance is our right.”

An anti-Israel protest leader in Mel­bourne, Moham­mad Sharab, has pub­licly stat­ed: “Long live the Resis­tance. Long live fuck­ing Hamas. Fuck­ing Zion­ists. … All Zion­ists are ter­ror­ists. … Zion­ism is absolute­ly ter­ror­ism. … then 7 Octo­ber came … wak­ing all of us up … some form of respect and grat­i­tude and a big thank you that needs to be paid to the Resis­tance. Long live the Resis­tance. Long live fuck­ing Hamas” (3 July 2024).

Anti-Israel pro­test­ers, in chants or plac­ards, have been call­ing for “Intifa­da Intifa­da” (the bomb­ing of bus­es, cafes and oth­er pub­lic places, as occurred in the Pales­tin­ian intifa­da of 2000–2005);  “From the Riv­er to the Sea, Pales­tine will be free” (the elim­i­na­tion of the state of Israel and all Jews from the south­ern Lev­ant region); “Resis­tance is Jus­ti­fied, resis­tance by any means” (thus jus­ti­fy­ing the mas­sacre of civil­ians); and “Khay­bar Khay­bar ya yahud, jaish Muham­mad soufa ya’oud” (”Khay­bar Khay­bar oh Jews, the army of Muham­mad will return” which refers to a mas­sacre of Jews by Mus­lims at Khay­bar in 628 CE, and used as a war-cry to threat­en and attack Jews). None of those involved have faced reper­cus­sions. The street protests are a major man­i­fes­ta­tion of this open Jew-hatred and calls for vio­lence.

A new era

We have entered a new era where vio­lence against a seg­ment of the soci­ety is encour­aged and exhort­ed with impuni­ty. Sev­er­al Mus­lim cler­ics in Syd­ney and protest lead­ers are preach­ing to kill Jews, and call­ing for vio­lence against Jews, and yet no law has been deemed to be breached, despite a pletho­ra of race-hate and anti-incite­ment laws. Street pro­test­ers call for the anni­hi­la­tion of Israel and for the mur­der of Jews. Threats of vio­lence, phys­i­cal intim­i­da­tion and assaults of Jews have become all too com­mon.

Places of learn­ing, schools and uni­ver­si­ties, and places of the arts and cul­ture, places of work, and oth­er pub­lic places have become places for the dis­sem­i­na­tion of anti-Jew­ish and anti-Israel hate pro­pa­gan­da. Our soci­ety is becom­ing like a worm-infest­ed apple.

This explo­sion of anti-Jew­ish hate and inci­dents seems to have tak­en gov­ern­ments, police and oth­ers by sur­prise, as they seem to be at a loss on how to respond to the out­pour­ing of hate against Jews and Israel that was occur­ring on the streets in their cities. Police appear unable or unwill­ing to make the nec­es­sary arrests, apart from a few. NSW Police have admit­ted that they will not lay charges against Mus­lim cler­ics who have advo­cat­ed vio­lence against Jews or called for the killing of Jews – some­how, they say, it does not breach any race-hate laws.

Gov­ern­ment politi­cians appear timid and in fear of upset­ting sec­tions of their elec­torates. Polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions seem to have trumped moral imper­a­tives. Some politi­cians have even become mouth­pieces for Hamas, repeat­ing Hamas lies, and push­ing agen­das designed to destroy Israel and under­mine Jew­ish life in Aus­tralia. Gov­ern­ments and police need to step up and not allow hate to flour­ish on our streets, in our uni­ver­si­ties, in our mosques, or any­where else.

Today, in Aus­tralia and in the world, we are fac­ing a moral deci­sion. The mad hatred and lust for vio­lence against Jews is like­ly to esca­late. It will also engulf oth­ers, as it always does, espe­cial­ly those who do not fit into or will not sub­mit to the total­i­tar­i­an agen­da of Islamo-fas­cists and left-wing fas­cists.

We are at a fork in the road. We either stand for democ­ra­cy, plu­ral­ism, human rights, and the rule of law – val­ues enshrined in West­ern civil­i­sa­tion – or we allow those who hate those val­ues to turn the world into a place where dic­ta­tors and their total­i­tar­i­an and suprema­cist ide­olo­gies rule and wreak hav­oc. Deci­sion time is now.

Notes

1: Quran 2.63–65: “We took your Covenant and We raised above you of Mount Sinai … And well you knew those amongst you who trans­gressed in the mat­ter of the Sab­bath. We said to them: “Be you apes, despised and reject­ed.”” (Yusuf Ali) https://quranyusufali.com/2/

2: Quran 5.59–60: “O, Peo­ple of the Book … Shall I point out to you some­thing much worse than this, (as judged) by the treat­ment it received from Allah? Those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He trans­formed into apes and swine, those who wor­shipped evil; – these are (many times) worse in rank, and far more astray from the even path!” (Yusuf Ali) https://quranyusufali.com/5/

3: Quran 7.163–166: “Behold! they trans­gressed in the mat­ter of the Sab­bath. … When in their inso­lence they trans­gressed (all) pro­hi­bi­tion We said to them: “Be ye apes despised and reject­ed.”” (Yusuf Ali) https://quranyusufali.com/7/