Over 2000 anti-Jewish incidents in 12 months

Over 2000 anti-Jewish incidents in 12 months

ECAJ special report of anti-Jewish incidents in Australia from 1 October 2023 to 30 September 2024.

Down­load the full report: ECAJ Report on Anti-Jew­ish Inci­dents in Aus­tralia 2024 (PDF 2.8MB)

About the report

This spe­cial report was com­piled by ECAJ Research Direc­tor Julie Nathan who has com­piled the ECAJ’s annu­al Report on Anti­semitism in Aus­tralia since 2013.

ECA­J’s annu­al Report on Anti­semitism in Aus­tralia records anti-Jew­ish racism in two broad cat­e­gories: inci­dents and dis­course. In gen­er­al, inci­dents are what is done to Jews, and dis­course is what is said about Jews. This spe­cial report cov­ers anti-Jew­ish inci­dents only.

ECAJ Research Direc­tor Julie Nathan com­ment­ed on the spe­cial report’s find­ings:

The armed attack against Israel that was planned and ini­ti­at­ed by Hamas and its sup­port­ers on 7 Octo­ber 2023 fea­tured acts of extreme bar­bar­i­ty against Israeli civil­ians who were mur­dered, tor­tured, raped, muti­lat­ed and abduct­ed. For anti-Israel activists in Aus­tralia and else­where, the slaugh­ter act­ed as a sig­nal that it was now open sea­son against local Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties too, who over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port Israel’s right to exist and defend itself.

In the 12 months that fol­lowed there was a 316% increase in the over­all num­ber of report­ed anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents in Aus­tralia com­pared to the same peri­od in the pre­vi­ous year. Whilst the num­ber of report­ed anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents has fluc­tu­at­ed from year to year pre­vi­ous­ly, there has nev­er been any­thing like an annu­al increase of this mag­ni­tude.

If any­thing, the raw num­bers under­state the seri­ous­ness of the surge in anti­semitism that has occurred. There have been many new forms and expres­sions of anti-Jew­ish racism that would once have been con­sid­ered alien to Aus­tralia, but which have become com­mon­place.

There were anti-Israel protests out­side syn­a­gogues and Jew­ish schools, con­voys of vehi­cles dri­ving though sub­urbs with a high pro­por­tion of Jew­ish res­i­dents, anti-Israel activists tar­get­ing small busi­ness­es owned by Jew­ish fam­i­lies, res­i­den­tial homes being tar­get­ed with hate graf­fi­ti and stick­ers, and a huge increase in phys­i­cal assaults against Jews and ver­bal abuse on the streets.

With a few hon­ourable excep­tions, the response from polit­i­cal and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, uni­ver­si­ty exec­u­tives and civ­il soci­ety has been tepid at best. The result has been a ratch­et­ing up of anti­semitism from hate­ful words to steadi­ly more seri­ous hate­ful actions.

If it was thought that anti-Jew­ish racism was a thing of the past and defeat­ed, the last 12 months has shown that it has been cyn­i­cal­ly reac­ti­vat­ed and stoked for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es. The phys­i­cal, ver­bal and oth­er forms of attacks on Jew­ish indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ty venues will con­tin­ue to wors­en unless gov­ern­ments, police and oth­ers show some spine by tak­ing res­olute action to halt the ris­ing tide of acts of hatred against the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and bring­ing those respon­si­ble to account.

Download the full report

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