Jewish leaders say people ‘living in fear’ as antisemetic attacks rise across Queensland

Jewish leaders say there has been a sharp rise in antisemitism in Queensland, with many members of the community afraid to worship and children being taunted while at school.

Members of Queensland’s Jewish community are living in fear, afraid to worship or even be publicly identified as Jewish as antisemitic attacks rise sharply across the state.

Queensland Jewish community leader Jason Steinberg has evidence of antisemitic attacks in Queensland schools going back beyond the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, with antisemitic flyers placed in letter boxes in inner city Brisbane well before October.

But Mr Steinberg says the reports from schools and the wider community have increased sharply in the last three weeks.

“Every day now I am getting reports from parents of kids who are being taunted at school because they are Jewish,’’ Mr Steinberg said.

Queensland Jewish community leader Jason Steinberg. Picture: Brad Fleet

Mr Steinberg, President of the Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies and director of the recently opened Queensland Holocaust Museum, said the local Jewish community were despairing about the attack which was impacting the international Jewish community in the same manner the Holocaust did 80 years ago.

“We see people in the streets shouting, ‘gas the Jews,’’ we see people celebrating rape and murder, we see thousands marching through the streets attacking Israel, and that is racist.

“The fear is very real in our community.

“Some people do not want to be identified publicly as Jews; some are afraid to go to worship.’’

Mr Steinberg said the Jewish community was heartened by both the international and domestic political response to the attacks which have been supportive of Israel.

The Queensland Government and the Queensland Police Service were also supportive and responsive to the fears of the community.

He said the community was united in its concern for more than 200 hostages still held by Hamas, with a symbolic Friday night “Shabbat’’ dinner laid out outside Brisbane’s City Hall on a table to illustrate the pain felt by the families and loved ones of the missing people.

Suzi Smeed, a Noosa resident who survived the Hungarian Holocaust as a small child and wrote the book “Courage to Care,’’ has also told a Friends of Israel gathering that the October 7 attacks were the most horrific even to befall Israel since the Holocaust.

But she said Israel would endure as the one true democratic country in the Middle East and one which had contributed “so much to the betterment of mankind.’’