‘It’s off the charts’: How antisemitism surged after October 7

Throughout the past week in federal parliament, Liberal MP Julian Leeser has done something unusual: worn his kippah.

Leeser is proudly Jewish but usually wears his skullcap only for religious ceremonies and on ceremonial occasions, not to question time. He decided to keep it on this week as an act of defiance, as a message to Jewish Australians that they should not be cowed into hiding their identity amid a national surge in antisemitism.

“I wanted to wear it because I don’t believe people should be afraid to express their religious traditions and identities,” the member for the northern Sydney electorate of Berowra says in an interview in his office in Parliament House.

Julian Leeser: “We’re seeing things that I haven’t seen before in my lifetime.”Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“As a Jewish leader in this country, I wanted to stand up and be counted by being physically recognisable.”

Leeser, who became the first Jewish Liberal MP from NSW to be elected to the House of Representatives in 2016, says antisemitism in Australia has gone “off the charts” following Hamas’ October 7 massacre in Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.

“We’re seeing things that I haven’t seen before in my lifetime – Jewish children afraid to wear their uniforms to school, people afraid to wear their Magen David [Star of David], afraid to wear their kippah,” he says. “There is a level of fear that I’ve never seen before in the community.”

Nick Dyrenfurth, the executive director of the Labor-aligned John Curtin Research Centre, says the Jewish community in Balaclava, the south-east Melbourne suburb where he lives, is on edge like never before.

“Jewish shops have been plastered with ‘Holocaust in Gaza’ graffiti, Jewish children’s soccer teams are having to hire security,” says Dyrenfurth, a Labor historian who is Jewish. “Antisemitism is on steroids at the moment and the fear is palpable.”

The issue became a flashpoint in parliament this week when Opposition Leader Peter Dutton accused the Albanese government of not doing enough to protect Jewish Australians from discrimination and harassment.

Demanding that Albanese call a national cabinet meeting to develop a strategy to combat antisemitism, Dutton said: “I fear that there will be a significant act within our country that will cause harm to people in the Jewish community, or in the community more broadly, at a time when temperatures are rising …”

On Wednesday afternoon, Dutton sought to suspend parliament to pass a motion accusing Albanese of failing to do enough to tackle antisemitism, linking the issue to the release of convicted criminals from indefinite detention following a High Court decision last week.

Albanese responded furiously, blasting Dutton for the “weaponisation of antisemitism” and saying it was “frankly beyond contempt” to link it to the immigration detention issue.

Noting his long history of opposing the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, Albanese said he would continue to “unequivocally” condemn antisemitism while also speaking out against Islamophobia.

“Jewish Australians are fearful at the moment,” Albanese said. “The sort of activity that is occurring is scaring them and I stand with them. No one should threaten people because of their religion or their race in this country.

“But it is also the case that Arab Australians and Islamic Australians and women wearing hijabs in the streets of Sydney and Melbourne are being threatened, and I stand against that, as well.”

Reports of Islamophobic incidents across the world have also spiked in recent weeks. Credit: Getty

The Islamophobia Register Australia said it had received 204 reports of incidents since October 7, up significantly on an average of 2.5 incidents a week before the attacks.

According to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, reports of antisemitism have increased by almost 500 per cent since October 7, reaching the highest level on record with 49 reports filed in the first week of November.

“We have never seen anything of this magnitude before,” says Dvir Abramovich, an expert in Jewish culture at the University of Melbourne.

The Central Shule, a synagogue in Melbourne’s Caulfield South, was forced to shut down last Friday after clashes broke out nearby between Jewish and pro-Palestinian protesters.

The group that organised the protest, Free Palestine Melbourne, later apologised to the Jewish community for holding a rally so close to a place of worship.

“We should not have gathered in this location,” the group said. “It was never our intention to disrupt or intimidate Jewish worshippers.”

A day later in Sydney, a woman and child were filmed shouting “f--- the Jews” after a pro-Palestine motorbike convoy travelled from Lidcombe, in the city’s west, to Coogee in the east.

“It is clear that the route has been chosen for one purpose – to intimidate and scare the Jewish community,” NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president David Ossip said.

On Sunday, police officers were called to investigate when Shaffa, a popular Israeli restaurant in Sydney’s Surry Hills, was plastered with graffiti saying “child murder” and a sign saying “You cannot build a Holy Land on the mass graves of children”.

This week, a western Sydney jumping castle business refused its services to an independent Jewish high school.

“There’s no way I’m taking a Zionist booking,” said the service in an email. “I don’t want your blood money. Free Palestine.”

On Thursday, photos were posted on social media of a letter box in Melbourne’s Clayton South plastered with graffiti saying “Kill Jews” and “Jews live here”.

The vast majority of Australians do not appear to be inherently hostile towards Jewish people. A survey by the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute, which was released this week but conducted before October 7, found 9 per cent of Australians said they felt negatively towards Jews – far less than the 27 per cent who said this for Muslims and the 16 per cent who said they felt negatively towards Christians.

But antisemitism can flare up when Israel is in the headlines because of the close association between Jewish identity and the Israeli state. The line between where acceptable criticism of Israel ends and antisemitism begins is hotly contested, including in the Jewish community.

Leeser, for example, goes further than some others by arguing that it is antisemitic to call Israel an apartheid state, as United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese did during a visit to Australia this week.

“Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of the Commonwealth, has said that Jews used to be hated for their religion, then they were hated for their race and now they are hated for their state,” Leeser says. “Antisemitism is the hatred that never dies – it just mutates over different generations.”

The phrase anti-Zionist, he says, is often used as a convenient cover for antisemitism given the vast majority of Jews support the existence of Israel.

Dyrenfurth says Jews face a unique level of harassment and intimidation because of the actions of the Israeli government, even though they cannot control these actions and may not support them.

“The Iranian and Chinese diasporas in Australia are not held responsible for the actions of those regimes in the same way that Jews are,” he says.

Although antisemitism exists on the political right and left, Dyrenfurth says Jews like himself who move in progressive circles feel increasingly isolated and marginalised.

Steph Cunio, a Jewish union and climate campaigner from Sydney who supports a ceasefire in Gaza, has been alarmed by the refusal to condemn Hamas or sympathise with Israeli hostages by some within progressive social movements since October 7.

Avril Alba, an associate professor of Holocaust studies and Jewish civilisation at the University of Sydney, says: “It is important to ask when legitimate criticism of Israel veers into antisemitism. You can stand up for Palestinian rights, you can criticise the Israel Defence Forces, but to not acknowledge the acts of terror on October 7 is crossing a line.”

There are many arguments about what is antisemitism.Credit: Dean Sewell

She says her membership of the National Tertiary Education Union is “hanging by a thread” after recent debates in the union’s University of Sydney branch over resolutions that refused to condemn Hamas.

Leeser says he is particularly concerned about Jewish students feeling frightened to identify themselves because of hostility to Israel among left-wing students and academics.

On Friday, he released a statement with Labor minister Anne Aly, who is Muslim, calling for Australians to treat each other compassionately and not blame each other for the conflict in Gaza.

“No Australian should be made to feel responsible for events in the Middle East … We all have a responsibility to treat each other with compassion and empathy during this difficult time,” Aly said.

“People should not be able to put up Hitler posters in Jewish communal areas and there’d be no consequence of that,” Leeser says. “They shouldn’t be able to have signs that say ‘Kill the Jews’ and there be no consequences.

“Antisemitism is not a problem for Jews to fix, antisemitism is an issue for societies to fix.”

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