The response to the murderous attacks in Paris and Copen­ha­gen in January and February was encour­aging. There was wide­spread con­dem­na­tion from across all levels and sectors of Western societies. Pres­id­ents and Prime Ministers, Chris­ti­ans, Muslims, Jews and others marched in the streets of Paris against the terrorist murders.

Import­antly, there was wide­spread recog­ni­tion that violent antisemitism in Europe is getting worse and having a destruct­ive effect on society as a whole. However, there were some sections of the main­stream media and society which took a decidedly different tack, including in Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) published an article by Liz Alderman extolling the ter­ror­ists for not killing women. The article was titled “’I’m not going to kill you because you’re a woman’: Charlie Hebdo shooters spared female journ­al­ists”.

And yet, Elsa Cayat, a woman, was in fact murdered at Charlie Hebdo. She was also the only Jewish woman at Charlie Hebdo that day, and the only female death. Why was the murder of Elsa Cayat ignored? Was it to downplay Jewish deaths? Or worse still – did Cayat’s death not count because she was Jewish? Why did extolling the ter­ror­ists take pre­ced­ence over acknow­ledging her death?

After the Copen­ha­gen murders, again the SMH (and The Age) again shifted their focus away from the brutal crimin­al­ity of the ter­ror­ists. An article by Gwynne Dyer attacked Israeli PM Netanyahu’s call for European Jews to move to Israel to escape violent and murderous antisemitism. Dyer pro­claimed that nine dead Jews (killed in terrorist attacks in Belgium, France and Denmark over the past year) were not enough to cause an exodus. He did not specify how many Jews he thinks should die before they have a right to be fearful and leave.

If Dyer was seeking the truth about antisemitism, instead of using the murders as an oppor­tun­ity to polemi­cise against Netanyahu, he would have con­sidered the 2012 murder of four Jews in Toulouse, including three young children. He would have found that European Jews are con­sist­ently subjected to high levels of antisemitic har­ass­ment, abuse and violence. He would have acknow­ledged that 50% of racist attacks in France are against Jews, yet Jews are only 1% of the pop­u­la­tion. But Dyer appeared to have no interest in antisemitism, except as a rhet­or­ic­al tool with which to bludgeon Netanyahu.

On the ABC, presenter Michael Edwards’ report on the Paris terrorist attacks stated: “Amedy Coulibaly, who held up the Jewish deli, claimed to be acting on behalf of Islamic State.” Edwards makes it appear as though it were a robbery gone wrong rather than a targeted attack at a Jewish shop. He glosses over the fact that the intent was to capture and murder Jews, not rob the till.

A few days later on another ABC report, Nariman House, the Jewish centre in Mumbai, was omitted from a list naming the targets of the Mumbai terrorist attack in 2008. At Nariman House, the rabbi, his pregnant wife and four other Jews were mutilated and murdered because they were Jews. In these two instances, the ABC presenters clearly minimised or omitted any mention of Jews who were murdered.

Julian Burnside, a prominent barrister and human rights advocate, also made state­ments min­im­ising the murder of Jews. On ABC radio, as reported in The Aus­trali­an, Burnside stated that “one of the cas­u­al­ties was a Muslim policeman” while “another in a related episode in the kosher grocery (was) a Jewish man”. Burnside omitted to even acknow­ledge the deaths of several other Jews.

Burnside declared in a tweet: “Charlie Hebdo was terror attack, but Paris march decis­ively rejected Islam­a­pho­bia (sic).” In fact, the Paris street march condemned and rejected antisemitism, not Islamo­pho­bia.

Elsewhere, Burnside has con­sist­ently claimed that “Islamo­pho­bia is the new anti-Semitism”. In fact, antisemitism persists with undi­min­ished vigour and has mutated into new and more insidious forms. Jews are subject to a much higher rate of attack than are Muslims; for example, in the USA, a Jew is six times more likely to be attacked than a Muslim, and in Britain, four times more likely. Burnside’s erroneous claims do justice to neither antisemitism nor to Islamo­pho­bia.

Rod Benson of the NSW Council of Churches published an article entitled “Anti-Semitism takes on a new direction in France”. Despite the title, the article is not about antisemitism at all. Instead, it is about dis­cour­aging Islamo­pho­bia. So why the reference to antisemitism in the title?

When main­stream society, including media, a church organ­isa­tion, and a human rights advocate, ignore and obfuscate the murder of Jews, they are subtly down­play­ing antisemitic murder.

To counter antisemitism, the first step is to acknow­ledge its existence. One must then acknow­ledge that antisemitism is evil, that it affects everyone not just Jews, and that it must be fought.

While ever some in positions of power and influence relegate antisemitism to a lesser status, for whatever reason, through min­im­isa­tion or omission, the virus of antisemitism will continue to spread and threaten to engulf whole societies. What happened in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s seems to have been all but forgotten.