Antisemitic incidents in Australia up nearly 10% over year, study says
Antisemitic incidents have increased by almost 10% in Australia over the past 12 months, including a 39% increase in threats, according to an annual study released on Sunday.
The report, by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) found large decreases in assaults and vandalism, and a small decrease in harassment, but a 9.5% increase in reported incidents overall, primarily related to posters and graffiti.
In total the report counted 230 incidents, including 76 involving abuse, harassment or intimidation. There were 55 reports of graffiti and 59 involving leaflets, posters, stickers or other threats.
Three physical assaults against Jews were reported.
Among the examples provided was in March when a Jewish school student on a Sydney public bus was asked, “Where are your striped pyjamas?” by another passenger, who then spat at and physically attacked him.
Verbal abuse included a man shouting “Jews belong in the ovens” and another telling a group of Jews at a synagogue, “Hitler didn’t get enough of you.”
The report said the most prominent change in the past year was in the rise of far-right groups in Australia, in particular the newly formed neo-Nazi group Antipodean Resistance.
The white supremacy group – which declares “we are the Hitler you’ve been waiting for” and likens itself to the Hitler Youth organisations – primarily spreads its antiJewish, anti-LGBTIQ and pro-Nazi messages with public stickers and posters. It also operates radicalisation training camps.
Antipodean Resistance posters targeting minority groups including the Jewish community were spread around Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane university campuses, among other places, including one which said, “Legalise the execution of Jews,” the ECAJ report said.
The fringe group is one of many which have risen to visual prominence in recent years, particularly on social media. Blogger and observer of far-right groups Andy Fleming wrote in September that groups such as Reclaim Australia and the United Patriots Front were part of a “patriotic movement” which had helped groups such as Antipodean Resistance gain a foothold.
The groups had “provided precisely the warm and nurturing environment in which an explicitly neo-Nazi grouplet like Antipodean Resistance has been able to gestate”, he said.
The ECAJ report suggested farright groups were primarily focused on manipulating fear and hatred of groups seen as “the other”, and some subscribed to conspiracy theories about Jewish world dominance. It said leftwing antisemitism usually presented as “anti-Zionist or antiIsrael”.
“The political far right remains divided between those individuals and groups who consider Jews to be the greatest problem and threat and those who consider Muslims, due to overseas terrorist attacks, to be the greatest problem and threat,” it said.
The race discrimination commissioner at the Australian Commission for Human Rights, Tim Soutphommasane, told the New York Times most incidents go unreported so any rise in reports was concerning.
Soutphommasane said far-right groups had usually operated underground, but “in more recent times, they’ve shown greater confidence and a greater willingness to operate in public sight”.
In recent years far-right groups have been more hardline against Muslims, the ECAJ said, but maintained their antisemitic agendas, including blaming Jews for Muslim immigration.
It described the far right in Australia as limited in its effectiveness owing to its “splintered” nature along ideological and personality lines, but growing electoral support for rightwing parties, including One Nation, meant it had become a potentially serious threat to social cohesion and the physical security of minority groups.
A 2015-16 survey by the University of Western Sydney found 51% of respondents harboured some anti-Middle Eastern sentiments, and 40% anti-Jewish sentiment.
The survey, by the University of Western Sydney, found one in five Australians had experienced racism in the previous 12 months. About 80% thought multiculturalism was a good thing and also recognised the existence of racism in Australia.
Data for the ECAJ’s report were collected through reports made to and authenticated by state Jewish community bodies, community security groups, or the ECAJ, and excluded incidents where the victim was not identifiably Jewish or if there was no reference to Jews by the perpetrator.
It said the level of underreporting was unknown but a 2013 British survey found between 43% and 72% had experienced antisemitism but not reported it.
The report also took aim at mainstream media organisations, including the ABC, which it said was not doing enough to curb antisemitic comments on its social media pages, and the Daily Telegraph and Crikey, which it said had questioned whether Australian Jews had a right to sit in parliament in coverage of the citizenship crisis.