Jews living in fear as violent attacks explode

As a mob went hunting for Jews at an airport in Russia on Sunday, a collective shudder ran through Australia’s already alarmed Jewish community.

A mob scrambles across the airport tarmac at Makhachkala in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan in search of passengers on a flight from Tel Aviv after several anti-Semitic protests across the region at the weekend. Picture: Telegram

As a mob went hunting for Jews at an airport in Russia on Sunday, a collective shudder ran through Australia’s already alarmed Jewish community.

Acts of violent anti-Semitism have exploded in Australia since the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel: death threats, physical assaults, Nazi salutes, verbal abuse. Lots of abuse.

In the week before the attack just one incident of violent anti-Semitism was reported in Australia. In the week after there were 38 incidents; in the second week 27; by the end of this week, another 32.

“It will be double that by the time all the incidents are reported from other states”, says Julie Nathan, research director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, based in Sydney.

It’s Ms Nathan’s job to monitor and document anti-Semitic incidents around the country. She has been doing this for 10 years now and says there are often spikes but she has never seen anything like the outpouring of hate over the past three weeks.

“This time, the Jewish community is still reeling from the massacre in southern Israel because that was unprecedented,” she said.

“We never thought we’d see this again. They’re still trying to identify bodies from that, and then to see the rise in anti-Semitism here, it’s shocking.

“There is fear in the community, very high levels of concern because of things like we’ve just seen in Dagestan,” she says.

On Sunday, a mob looking for Jews and chanting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) broke through doors at an airport in Russia’s Caucasus republic of Dagestan, after rumours spread that a flight was arriving from Israel. A crowd inside the airport terminal tried to break down doors while others waved signs reading “Child killers have no place in Dagestan”.

In Australia, the anti-Semitic chants at a pro-Palestine rally at the Opera House in the first days after the Hamas attack were just a taste of what was to come.

“There’s a great deal of concern amongst the Jewish community because we’re seeing what’s happening in London, New York, Russia and elsewhere in the world and seeing some of that start to transpire here,” Ms Nathan said.

Some of the anti-Semitic tropes in Australia are familiar enough: the graffiti, the online slurs. But Ms Nathan sees a trend emerging of much more in-your-face, personal hostility, with Arab men seeking out confrontation in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, home to large Jewish communities.

In a recent incident at a Sydney beach, men were yelling out “we will rape your daughters” to a Jewish family.

“We’ve seen a rise in people going into the eastern suburbs and playing really loud Arabic music, driving around – I had two reports of that today; that’s been happening in London but seems to be something new here.

“They’ll drive around to where the synagogues are and abuse Jews they see in the street or pretend to be shooting at them, do a hand gesture of a gun shooting, as well as graffiti – ‘kill Jews’.”

Ms Nathan attributes some of the rise in hate to a convergence of the far left and the far right with extremist Muslims – “the idea that Israel is to blame and we’ll take it out on the local Jews here”.

Protests increasingly are including chants for Palestine to be “free from the river to the sea” – a call for a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which would mean destroying the Jewish state.

Pro-Palestine protesters claim it is merely an anti-Israeli sentiment but many Jews see it as a ­direct attack on their existence.

More recently, protest rallies have seen chants of “Khaybar Khaybar”, a reference to seventh-century battles between Mohammed and Jews near Medina in present day Saudi Arabia. The end of the chant translates as: “Oh Jews, the army of Mohammed will return.”

Attendance numbers are down at the Jewish Museum in Sydney since three men were arrested outside for performing Nazi salutes. The three were charged with behaving in an offensive manner near a public place or school and knowingly displaying by public act a Nazi symbol without excuse. They are due to appear in court on Tuesday.

NSW Premier Chris Minns has called for police to apply the full force of the law to any anti-Semitic conduct. “I want to make it clear, there will be no tolerance for racial vilification in NSW or incitement to violence,” he said. “It’s not going to happen. Police are vigilant, there is no tolerance for it.”

Jewish community leader Alex Ryvchin, the co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said Australia’s Jewish community should not stop going about their daily lives.

“We need to be alert but there is no reason we shouldn’t continue to live our lives as proud Australians and Jews,” he said.

Additional reporting: Tess McCracken