The creeping normalisation of antisemitism in Australia

There was something about the attack on the East Melbourne synagogue last month, and the response to it, led by discussion on social media, that struck a nerve. An anonymous post on a Jewish Facebook group asked whether anyone else was starting to think about emigrating. The environment in Melbourne had changed for the Jewish community, and it warns of a broader threat to the wider Australian society and the values that bind us. The attack was not the cause, but like the breakers caught in the beam of a lighthouse, for a moment many in the Jewish community could see the threat more clearly.

What did we see? A new report from the Online Hate Prevention Institute (OHPI) shares 71 examples of online responses to news of the attack on the East Melbourne Synagogue and the other antisemitic events that weekend. The report also includes 43 additional examples, some collected right after the Adass attack and now shared by OHPI for the first time, and others collected in response to the announcement of the Plan to Combat Antisemitism by the Jillian Segal, Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism. The examples are numbered, and I share some in this article.

When the Adass synagogue was firebombed in December, and again when East Melbourne Synagogue was let alight, there were voices that welcomed the attack. One response to the latest attack reads: “The Austrian painter didn’t finish his job, not properly enough, that’s the biggest problem.” (page 31 of the Institute’s report) I’m sure readers don’t need me to explain this reference to Hitler and his self-appointed “job” of systematically murdering every Jew in Europe.

Other responses dismissed the attacks as “false flags”, staged by Jewish interests, designed to generate underserved sympathy for the Jewish community. When the Federal member for Wentworth, Allegra Spender, said she was appalled at the attack on the East Melbourne Synagogue and Miznon restaurant and called them a “disgusting and dangerous intimidation of the Jewish community”, someone responded: “we’re suspecting another false flag event… in Melbourne we’ve experienced a lot of them recently (p35).”