Australia: Antisemitism up, Jewish group says

Australia’s peak Jewish body has denounced perpetrators of attacks on Jews as “bullies and cowards” as a report showed such attacks have increased substantially in recent years.

Jeremy Jones, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), said “life’s losers” had reacted by becoming racists and had been directed by international groups to hate Jews.

Mr Jones said modern technology such as the internet was being used to “spread the most ancient of hatreds”.

“In a sense Australia was protected from the worst excesses of racism from other countries but now people in Australia can be part of international groups that operate through the internet,” Mr Jones said.

Attacks on Jews between October 2003 and September 2004 were 50 per cent above the average for the past 14 years, according to the ECAJ’s annual report on anti-Semitism in Australia.

The worst incidents cited included the words “kill the Jews” burnt into the lawn of Tasmania’s parliament house and “six million more please, plus fries” daubed outside a synagogue.

It also featured the first-ever report of an anti-Jewish threat by SMS message.

There were 455 reported attacks in the period, it said - the third year running the number was above 450.

Other serious incidents mentioned in the report were smashing of windows at synagogues, eggs thrown at Jewish people on their way to religious ceremonies and a firecracker thrown at the door of a rabbi.

The report said the average rate of graffiti attacks was 30 per cent higher than the average of all years since the report was first compiled in 1989.

However, the figures also showed that only a small number of Australians were anti-Jewish and despite the generally increased figures, the attacks were generally less fierce.

“We have to be careful because what we can’t actually measure is the level of violence in each incident,” Mr Jones said.

“Back in 1991 there were a number of synagogues set on fire, (causing) very serious property damage.

“This time there might have been more in terms of property damage but less damage in each incident so we need to put it in a bit of perspective.

“Every day there are millions of interactions between Jews and non-Jewish Australians, so every year there are hundreds if not thousands of millions of these interactions.

Previous entry: Finding Jesus in a traditionally Jewish celebration
Next entry: Dutch church union hints at other consolidation efforts worldwide

More articles about Anti-Semitism