New report shows shocking rise in anti-Semitic attacks, with Victoria by far the worst

Anti-Jewish incidents have quadrupled in a year – and Victorians are the biggest offenders, a new report shows.

Pro-Palestine marches are now a regular fixture in Australian cities. Picture: Matt Loxton

Julie Nathan felt a jolt of shock when she awoke to news of the arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue, but then a wearying reality set in. This researcher has been tracking anti-Semitic incidents in Australia for more than a decade. She has recorded a surge in attacks in the past year and noted Victoria’s crowning as Australia’s worst state for anti-Jewish activity.

So no, she sighs, it wasn’t really a surprise.

As the keeper of the dark data on brazen physical and verbal assaults on Jewish people, the tide of threats and intimidation, Nathan could see where things were heading: it was there in the figures she published a week ago.

“What has happened in the past year is unprecedented,’’ she says of the 2062 anti-Semitic incidents reported between October 2023 and September this year, a dramatic increase on the previous year’s total of 495.

“The overall picture is that things are really bad for the Jewish community in this country. The (arson attack) was a culmination of the last 14 months and the anti-Semitism we have been seeing,’’ says Nathan, research director at the nation’s peak Jewish body, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry research director Julie Nathan.

Her most recent report found a surge in hateful activity in Victoria that accounted for almost half of the nation’s incidents, with 905 cases, up from 217 in the previous reporting period.

This is where a Jewish man walking across the road from a synagogue in Melbourne was hit in the head with a rock in November last year. It’s where a 77-year-old Jewish woman was spat on and kicked outside the Victorian parliament building in February; where a gang of youths yelling “f..king Jews” punched one man in the face in Caulfield in September.

Melbourne’s Jews have had eggs thrown at them as they walked home from Shabbat dinner, had shoes and drink cans hurled at them, been confronted with “kill Jews”, “gas all f..king Jews” and Hitler graffiti on their morning walks or outside their children’s schools.

It’s where a rabbi walking home with his eight-year-old son was abused and threatened on a Melbourne street; where youths openly boast of “hunting Jews”; where synagogues are threatened or damaged – and now burnt.

In June, when vandals smashed windows, lit fires and painted graffiti on Jewish Labor MP Josh Burns’s inner Melbourne office, the warning signs were there that things were escalating.

“This is an escalation of the attacks that we’ve seen. We’ve been talking about this, we’ve got to dial this down,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told ABC Radio Melbourne at the time, as he and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan faced growing pressure to do more to counter the growing curse of anti-Semitism.

Do more, please do more, the Jewish community begged.

Post and boast: Anti-Israeli vandals boasted online about vandalising Jewish MP Josh Burns' office. Picture: Facebook

In Victoria in the past year, according to Nathan’s figures, 42 Jewish people were physically assaulted; there were 15 acts of vandalism, 272 cases of verbal abuse and 169 of graffiti.

The next-worst state, NSW, recorded 795 total incidents, including 42 physical assaults.

“In previous years New South Wales normally had more incidents than Victoria but that has changed in the last two reports. Part of that reason could be the reporting system but I think Melbourne seems to be much more politically active in anti-Israel, anti-Jewish acts,’’ Nathan says.

Liberal MP Keith Wolahan on Friday called for Allan and Albanese to better address the rise of anti-Semitism. “This is a line in the sand, we’ve got synagogues burning in Melbourne, I’ve heard Jewish Australians question if this is their home anymore,’’ he told Sky News.

Nathan has been collecting data since 2013. She’s watched small peaks and modest troughs but can’t believe what she’s witnessed since October 7, 2023.

“There’s been this continual pounding of the Jewish community and a lack of proper response by the government, the federal government. People are alarmed, worried, fearful … I think many Jews are still expecting or hoping that their political leaders and the police will do more about anti-Semitism and that civic leaders and others in society will speak up.”

Nathan collects her data from community security groups, Jewish state bodies and the ECAJ. Incidents are included only if there is a clear and specific anti-Jewish element. Often, Nathan follows the trail, contacting complainants, gathering photos and other evidence, and collating more information.

She believes her figures don’t represent the true horrors inflicted on her community because some incidents are never reported.

Those that are reported are shocking and widespread. In Sydney a 44-year-old Jewish man in a public park was set upon by three men who called him a “Jew dog’’ as they punched and kicked him. In Perth a boy was slapped in the face and called a “dirty Jew”. In Hobart a synagogue was vandalised with red paint; in Newcastle “Kill the Jews” was painted on the fence of a rabbi’s home; in Adelaide offensive posters appeared in the CBD.

Nathan’s reporting only covers until September this year. Since then protesters stormed the office of a University of Melbourne Jewish professor, calling him a war criminal. Last month, a car was set alight and nine others sprayed with offensive graffiti in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra, home to a large Jewish population.

Nathan says she has noticed many new forms and expressions of anti-Semitism not experienced before in Australia. The Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 emboldened many to act on their hatred of Jews, she says.

As the keeper of information on Australia’s anti-Semitism record, Nathan says she has to have special security arrangements in place. “It’s just the way it is,’’ she says with a hint of resignation. “There’s heightened security for all Jews.”