Vile hatred must be condemned because most are doing the right thing

Idiots ignoring lockdown rules exist in every community group, so vile anti-Semitic attacks on party revellers should be condemned.

Don’t judge the engagement party revellers for their faith, judge them as arrogant idiots who did the wrong thing.

There is no place for the type of vile anti-Semitic abuse being thrown around on social media in light of the engagement party.

The fallout from the event is continuing. On Tuesday it was announced seven positive cases were now linked to the party, two doctors present have been referred to health regulators and more than $350,000 fines will be issued.

But the cost is mounting in other ways, such as the increase in racial hatred for the Jewish community, which has led to death threats being issued to those involved.

This sort of reaction is divisive, hateful and wrong.

A woman from Royal Melbourne Hospital has already lost her job for posting about the Holocaust.

It’s good to see immediate action following such a vile comment.

The hospital noted that the comment does not reflect its views and that there was no place for religious hatred.

Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

“I am not upset with people getting together, I’m upset they posted it,” one wrote before referencing Auschwitz.

Those who attended the engagement have been told they’ll be fined.

There are now seven Covid cases linked to the gathering.

Others referred to Hitler, the mass murder of Jews during the war and them being “deported back to Palestine: and having “their ringlets off”.

No one in the Jewish community has defended the people who held the party. Like the rest of us, they are speechless at the brazen disregard for lockdown rules.

Many are also sad, angry and frightened by the escalating level of abuse they are receiving.

Dvir Abramovich, chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission said comments were “seizing on fear and existing anti-Semitic sentiments”.

“This engagement party has become a vehicle for malicious stereotyping and generalising, demonisation and calls for violence, which are frightening in their intensity,” he said.

The existence of latent anti-Semitism in Melbourne would come as no shock to both Jewish and non-Jewish people, but it must be denounced and condemned.

As one Jewish man put it to me, “the reprehensible error of a group celebrating an engagement has given birth to a firestorm of anti-Semitism. As a child of survivors I need to now find ways to explain to my children and grandchildren that non Jews don’t really hate us”.

As I’ve written previously, it does appear there is a subset of people in the Jewish community who feel above the lockdown laws, but this is true of many other groups, as well. Jewish leaders, along with Muslim leaders, are doing their best to reach all members of their faith to implore them to follow the rules. The vast majority of Jews, along with everyone else, are doing the right thing, and this should not be forgotten.