The piece has been pub­lished on 16 Octo­ber in The Times of Israel Blog and J‑Wire and by ECAJ Research Direc­tor Julie Nathan.

On 7 Octo­ber 2023, Hamas, the geno­ci­dal Islamist gov­ern­ment of Gaza, sent armed oper­a­tives into south­ern Israel. They mur­dered 1300 Israeli civil­ians – shoot­ing par­ents and chil­dren in their beds, behead­ing babies, and burn­ing homes to force out Jews hid­ing in safe rooms. Peo­ple in whole vil­lages were mur­dered. Women and girls were raped. Over 150 peo­ple, includ­ing babies, chil­dren, young women, and old grand­moth­ers, were tak­en hostage and tak­en into Gaza.

World reac­tion was swift. There were con­dem­na­tions of the mas­sacre by West­ern polit­i­cal lead­ers and Jew­ish organ­i­sa­tions. But else­where, in the Arab and Mus­lim worlds, and amongst many Mus­lims and left-wing extrem­ists with­in the West, there was joy expressed at the mas­sacre of so many Jews.

More Jews were killed on Octo­ber 7 than on any sin­gle day since the end of the Holo­caust in 1945. It harked back to pre­vi­ous times, to pogroms, the mass killing of Jews by armed mobs, often state-spon­sored, in places or by lead­ers whose names we still remem­ber – from Fez (1033), Grana­da (1066), Rhineland (1096), York (1190), Chmiel­nic­ki (1648–1656), Kishinev (1903), Hebron (1929), to Bagh­dad (1941) – to name a few.

In the week since the Octo­ber 7 pogrom, a Sat­ur­day, the Jew­ish Sab­bath, anti-Jew­ish inci­dents have erupt­ed all over the world. In Aus­tralia, some exam­ples of inci­dents show the unadul­ter­at­ed hatred of Jews from sev­er­al quar­ters.

On Sun­day 8th, a ral­ly organ­ised by Islamist Hizb ut-Tahrir, was held in Lakem­ba, west­ern Syd­ney. Sheikh Ibrahim Dadoun railed exul­tant­ly 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! … What hap­pened yes­ter­day is the first time our broth­ers and sis­ters broke through the largest prison on earth. … It didn’t hap­pen by itself … my broth­ers and sis­ters, Pales­tine will be free!” Dadoun’s speech was inter­spersed with chants from the crowd of “Allahu Akbar.” In a neigh­bour­ing sub­urb, peo­ple in a vehi­cle fly­ing Pales­tin­ian flags let off flares in cel­e­bra­tion of the deaths of hun­dreds of Jews. Sheikh Dadoun, a local imam, was the Direc­tor of Pub­lic Rela­tions at the Aus­tralian Nation­al Imams Coun­cil (ANIC) for three years until June 2023.

On Mon­day 9th, a ral­ly organ­ised by Pales­tine Action Group (PAG) was held at Syd­ney Town Hall. There were chants of “Intifa­da, Intifa­da” and “From the Riv­er to the Sea, Pales­tine will be Free” – codes for the destruc­tion of Israel, the only Jew­ish state in the world – dur­ing the protest at Town Hall and dur­ing the march to the Opera House. The state gov­ern­ment had announced that the sails of the Opera House would be lit up in blue and white, the colours of the Israeli flag, to remem­ber the 1000-plus Israeli civil­ians mur­dered by Hamas in south­ern Israel.

At the fore­court of the Opera House, the anti-Israel mob con­tin­ued their chant­i­ng. They burnt an Israeli flag, and their chants mor­phed into “Fuck Israel”, “Fuck the Jews” and “Gas the Jews”, each phrase chant­ed over and over. Flares were also thrown up onto the steps of the Opera House, towards the police. No arrests were made for any of this. The only arrest was of a Jew­ish man car­ry­ing a rolled-up Israeli flag near Town Hall. Of note, this ral­ly was announced on the evening of 7 Octo­ber, after the mas­sacre of Israelis was known, and before Israel launched any attacks on Gaza. In addi­tion, NSW Police, appar­ent­ly at the direc­tion of the Police Min­is­ter, had warned mem­bers of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty who wished to attend the light­ing up of the sails of the Opera House to stay away, and to leave the CBD for their own safe­ty. The Pre­mier sub­se­quent­ly apol­o­gised for this.

On Tues­day 10th, in Mel­bourne, a rab­bi and his 8‑year-old son were sub­ject­ed to death threats on the street by four males in a car who yelled “Fuck… Jew… pigs… die…” at them. In anoth­er inci­dent, sev­er­al peo­ple in a car stopped and asked a man on the street if he knew where any Jews were. The man asked what they would do if they found any Jews. They respond­ed, “They’ll know what we’re going to do once we’re done with them.” Anoth­er pas­sen­ger in the car then glee­ful­ly admit­ted, “We’re hunt­ing for Jews.” The peo­ple in the car were locat­ed by police and ques­tioned.

On Wednes­day 11th, a con­struc­tion work­er in Belle­vue Hill, a Syd­ney sub­urb with a large Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion, upon see­ing an Israeli flag draped on the back of a car, threat­ened to kill the four Jew­ish teenagers at the car: “If I see you moth­er­fuck­ers with that fuck­ing [Israeli] flag, I’ll fuck­ing kill you all”. The man was lat­er arrest­ed by police and charged.

On Thurs­day 12th, a death threat against the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty was sent via Insta­gram mes­sage to ECAJ, the peak nation­al body for the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, locat­ed in Syd­ney. The mes­sage was “We are com­ing for you soon, from west­ern Syd­ney” accom­pa­nied by an image of a man in orange cloth­ing about to be behead­ed by ISIS. West­ern Syd­ney is known for its large Arab and Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties.

On Fri­day 13th, three males gave a Hitler salute out­side the Syd­ney Jew­ish Muse­um in Syd­ney. They were charged by police. Mean­while, in Mel­bourne, two pieces of graf­fi­ti, both com­posed of “Kill JEWS”, were writ­ten on the pave­ment in south Mel­bourne.

On Sat­ur­day 14th, 20–30 mem­bers of the neo-Nazi Nation­al Social­ist Net­work (NSN), all dressed in black with bal­a­clavas, held up a ban­ner of “Expose Jew­ish Pow­er” with their name on it, plus two NSN flags, at the front of the Flinders Street train sta­tion in Mel­bourne. They then marched into the sta­tion, doing Hitler salutes, and entered a train where they sang white nation­al­ist songs, hand­ed out leaflets and NSN ‘busi­ness cards’, and queried pas­sen­gers whether they were Jew­ish or not. Sev­er­al police offi­cers got on the train with them and fol­lowed them until they exit­ed the train many sta­tions lat­er. No NSN mem­bers were arrest­ed or charged as they had not breached any laws, accord­ing to police.

Antho­ny Albanese, the Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter, and Peter Dut­ton, the Lib­er­al Oppo­si­tion Leader, have both come out strong­ly con­demn­ing the mas­sacre in Israel by Hamas, and the attacks on Jews in Aus­tralia. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the Greens have been unable to con­demn the mas­sacre of Jews nor the anti-Jew­ish inci­dents occur­ring in Aus­tralia but instead have expressed con­cern sole­ly for the Arabs of Gaza.

The inci­dents not­ed above are just some of the anti-Jew­ish racism appear­ing on Aus­tralian streets in the week fol­low­ing the pogrom in Israel, with the Jew-haters hav­ing felt embold­ened and inspired by the actions of Hamas on 7 Octo­ber. This sit­u­a­tion is like­ly to con­tin­ue for some time to come. Fed­er­al and state police agen­cies have their work cut out for them to pro­tect the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty from threats, harm and vio­lence.

The three main sources of con­tem­po­rary Jew-hatred – the extreme polit­i­cal right (neo-Nazis), extreme polit­i­cal left (‘social­ists’ and their ilk), and extrem­ist Mus­lims (Islamists/jihadists) – con­verge on one cru­cial issue – their com­mon hatred of Jews, and in this case, their sup­port of Hamas, a geno­ci­dal Islamist move­ment. When such extrem­ists can open­ly express their hatred and racism with impuni­ty, then it is time to pull out all legal means against them. As the tru­ism goes: it may start with the Jews, but it won’t end with the Jews.