Last month, two men with covered faces, dressed in black, came to a house in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. They sprayed the garage with red paint, set the cars parked in the street on fire, and added anti-Semitic graffiti. Their chosen target was the former home of Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the representative body of the country’s Jewish community. They apparently thought that Ryvchin still lived there.
"My wife and I woke up early that morning, because we received the security camera recordings from our old neighbor who lives opposite," Ryvchin relates. "On the cameras, we saw a car pull up and two men pouring gasoline on the road leading up to the house and setting two cars alight. On one of the cars they wrote ‘Fuck Israel’ on one side and ‘Jews’ on the other side. For us it was a shock, but it’s one more event in a series of very similar attacks."
As Ryvchin says, this was certainly not the first anti-Semitic incident in Australia lately. Just over a month ago, for example, a children’s daycare center next to a synagogue in Sydney was set on fire, and in December a Molotov cocktail was hurled at a synagogue in Melbourne. According to data gathered by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the country jumped to 2,062 in the twelve months to September 2024, from just 495 in the previous year. Community leaders tell of continual reports of harassment, abuse of authority against Jews, and shocking physical attacks. The other week, the premises of a Jewish-owned business in Melbourne were sprayed with the words "Gas the Jews".
As if that were not enough, a couple of weeks ago the world received a particularly viral demonstration of the anti-Semitism in Australia. Israeli content producer Max Veifer happened upon two nurses from a Sydney hospital on TikTok the other week. The two, Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh, refugees from Afghanistan, made clear at the beginning of the conversation that they were not exactly fans of Israel, but things rapidly deteriorated. Lebdeh said of Israeli patients, "I won't treat them, I will kill them," and added later, "I want you to remember my face, so you can understand that you will die the most disgusting death," while Nadir chimed in with, ""You have no idea how many Israeli dog (sic) came to this hospital and I send them to Jahannam (hell)."
The Australian authorities reacted quickly to the incident. The nurses were suspended from the hospital and an investigation was opened. But the situation has caused great anxiety among Australia’s Jewish population of almost 120,000. "We are chasing every rabbit down every hole, and that takes time," New South Wales deputy police commissioner David Hudson told "The Wall Street Journal." State and federal police have set up a special hate crime investigation unit. Last year, Australia outlawed Nazi salutes and the public display of Nazi insignia, and the other week the federal parliament passed government-sponsored legislation introducing mandatory prison sentences for hate crimes.
Even so, many in the Jewish community still think that the Labor government, headed by Anthony Albanese, is not doing enough. Whether or not that is a fair assessment, police helicopters currently patrol Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs nightly, and synagogues and Jewish businesses are protected.
How has a country perceived by Israelis as a place of refuge where no-one cares about their ethnicity become a place where they are hated? Local sources say that antis-Semitism began to rear its head in Australia straight after October 7. A few days after the war broke out, a grotesque demonstration took place outside the Sydney Opera House, with participants recorded shouting "Death to the Jews" and "Jews to the gas chambers." The world was horrified, the Australian government condemned the incident, but nothing substantial was done.
"In the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, people gathered in the streets to let off fireworks and celebrate," Ryvchin recalls. "There was an Islamic preacher who celebrated publicly in the streets and said that October 7 was a day of joy, or pride. The authorities took no action against him. After that, we saw harassment of Jewish students and academics at the universities. Banners and flags of Hezbollah and Hamas, and pictures of Sinwar and Nasrallah, began to appear at demonstrations. It began there, and today I hear from members of the community about incidents of direct harassment and death threats. We never thought, as a community, that we would experience such things. No-one expected the situation to deteriorate like this."
Sagi Simhon (44), who runs a logistics business, moved from Israel to Australia 21 years ago. As far as he is concerned, the anti-Semitism there is nothing new. He has felt that mood since the Second Lebanon War. "A Pakistani taxi driver, who didn’t detect my Israeli accent, shared with me his opinions about how the Jews control the world, and how the September 11 terrorist attacks were a global Jewish plot. Over the years, from time to time, I have been exposed to anti-Jewish prejudices; here and there I have heard remarks about how the Jews control the money."
Nevertheless, until the current war, the situation was perfectly tolerable. "On October 8, we started to notice the budding of the evil around Australia. Gradually, we saw a burgeoning of acts of violence, and also the growing extremism in discourse directed against Jews under the guise of anti-Israel or anti-Zionist views. We saw violent demonstrations in Melbourne, and most of all how the poison was spread in all kinds of ways. For example, we saw attempts in local authorities to pass anti-Israel resolutions that were entirely symbolic, with nothing practical behind them."
How do you explain all this?
"On the whole, we live in a very safe country, where the crime rate is relatively low. But it seems to me that the progressive left in Australia, as in many places around the world, has sharpened its tone against Israelis and Jews. A member of the Australian Greens party from New South Wales talked in a lecture about the Jewish lobby and its tentacles. What made it all the more shocking was that this party member was elected on an anti-racism platform, and she supposedly fights to protect minorities in the country. But she actually made use of the most notorious of anti-Semitic narratives."
"I think you have to go back to the Covid period to understand some of the changes taking place here," explains Philip Zajac, president of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV), the roof body of Jewish organizations in the state of Victoria. "Australia really is a wonderful multi-cultural country, it’s a melting pot. In Victoria, there are more than 200 different nationalities. It was a marvelous place in which to live, social solidarity was wonderful, and everything went fine. But things started to go off the rails. On October 7, life became full of confrontations for the Jewish community."
"The Muslims are dragging Labor into anti-Semitism"
If you ask Zajac, the main cause of the slide is the lack of consequences. "It started with anti-Semitic slurs, a little graffiti, a little sticking of anti-Semitic posters, and it gradually worsened into physical violence. We at the JCCV are about to release a report on antisemitism for 2024, and we have documented more than 500 separate incidents of antisemitism just in our region. And all this time we have not seen the authorities taking drastic measures against these phenomena.
"The anti-Semitism comes both from the extreme left and from the extreme right. We have a small group of Nazis in Victoria that is pretty active. The government is trying to strengthen the laws against them, but the wheels of legislation turn very slowly. On the left, the situation is much more complicated. We see how it has linked up with pro-Palestinians and parts of the Islamic community. Their slogan is ‘From the River to the Sea’. As far as they’re concerned, if you support the existence of the State of Israel, you’re a problem that has to be combatted."
How has the government responded?
"We have good working relations with the government, but they aren’t acting sufficiently strongly against the phenomenon on the left and among the Islamists. They don’t come out with powerful condemnation of what is happening."
In your opinion, is that out of electoral considerations?
"The Jewish community feels disappointed with the present government. Until very recently, there was support for Israel on both sides of politics, on the right and the left. But in the past eighteen months, the Labor government has shed this support for the State of Israel, and the Jewish people in Australia feel betrayed.
"There are about 800,000 Muslims in Australia. Many of them are located in three seats that are currently held by members of the present government, members of the Labor Party. The government is tottering, and is trying to win this vote. For its part, the Muslim community has put up candidates to contest these seats, and that has dragged Labor into an anti-Israel position. There is also the Greens party, which is a small party, but very opposed to Israel, and it too has an impact on the competition for left-wing votes."
Because of the events since the war started, Zajac says, security for Jewish institutions has been greatly reinforced. "We have had what is called the Community Security Group in Melbourne for 30 years now. The demands on them have grown since October 7, such that the security body that operates here in Victoria is much bigger than it was. The volunteers patrol most of the synagogues, and also escort students on their way to and from school. Fees for Jewish education have risen by about 5% because of the need to pay for security.
"I went to visit the biggest Jewish day school here, Mount Scopus Memorial College. On the external walls I saw graffiti saying ‘Jew die.’ Many of the calls we receive are about whether it’s safe to send my children to school today, whether it’s safe to leave home."
This brings us to the disturbing event that took place in Melbourne last December. "Look," says Zajac, "Graffiti is one thing, physical violence is quite another. The worst attempted attack, and unfortunately what put Melbourne on the world map, was the arson at the Adass Israel synagogue. The damage and destruction at the place were terrible. But it was a wake-up call."
For whom?
"For the general Australian community. This was a terrorist attack happening in multi-cultural Melbourne. The Australian population is passive. It wants to carry on with daily life and stay out of these things. But most people here still support the Jewish people, and also support the existence of the State of Israel. Still, there were progressive elements in the Jewish community that discovered that their friends had betrayed them, and had demonstrated against them."
Moran Dvir and Lillian Kline are among the founders of Project A, a movement formed in Australia in the wake of October 7, with the aim of combatting anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism through advocacy. "The perpetrators of the vandalism and violent actions are almost never caught, and so we can’t know where they come from," says Dvir. "There are suspicions that some of them were paid; the police don’t reveal too much. But the people we see on the streets at demonstrations are mainly Muslims of Middle Eastern extraction."
"The studies carried out up to now examining the attitudes of the Australian public have shown that most people don’t care about the subject at all," Kline explains. "If anything, they support Israel and the Jewish people more. In fact, several studies have been published recently that show that the Australian public’s attitude towards Muslims is far worse than its view of Jews. The problem is that the Jewish community is very small and doesn’t really have any electoral power."
Should Israel be doing something about the matter?
"There should be awareness in Israel of the fact that the Jewish community is suffering from high levels of antisemitism. At the same time, 90% of Jews in Australia are Zionists, and we want to be here for you."
I wear a kippah. If I were to come to Australia, would that be dangerous for me?
"I spoke recently to the president of the Australian Union of Jewish Students, and I saw that he wore a kippah. When I asked him about it, he said that he did it just so that other students could see it and feel more secure. He himself isn’t worried, but he has heard of students who are. On the other hand, in one of the chat groups of the Jewish community on Facebook, someone asked whether he should remove the mezuzah from the door, because he was afraid."
Dr. David Adler, president of the Australian Jewish Association, says that "the Jews wake up every morning and check the news to find out what anti-Semitic incidents took place the day before; there’s an emergency situation of anti-Semitism."
How exactly does the Jewish citizen encounter it?
"Geographically, it’s especially manifest areas known to have significant Jewish communities. It’s particularly prominent on school and university campuses. And to tell the truth, on the streets in Sydney and Melbourne at weekends we still come across mass protests against Israel that cross the line into blatant anti-Semitism."
A Zionist community
Adler too thinks that the government should take action and hasn’t done enough until recently. "In general, the government exacerbated the crisis though an extraordinary series of anti-Israel political decisions. Unfortunately, the law enforcement authorities were not effective. What’s true is that in the past few months there has been a significant rise in the effectiveness of law enforcement, and several arrests have been carried out of criminals and perpetrators of violent anti-Semitism. In my opinion, the reason for that is first of all to do with the fact that it has become a main subject of public concern. Furthermore, federal elections will take place in Australia no later than the end of May, and the government fears that it will affect its chances of reelection."
"In the past, the Jews were looked upon as the kings of Australia," explains Prof. Zehavit Gross, dean of the Faculty of Education at Bar-Ilan University and a researcher of educational issues in Jewish schools in Australia. "As far as many Australians are concerned, the Jews brutally attacked the residents of Gaza on October 7. Members of Parliament whom I met admitted to me that it is very difficult to fight anti-Semitism when Australians are exposed daily to pictures of horror and destruction."
Prof. Gross found in her research that Jewish students at state schools were exposed to harassment and bullying. "There are Jews who live in complete denial and believe that it’s a temporary phenomenon that will pass, but the signs do not indicate that we’re likely to see substantial change in the near future."
Could this situation lead to mass emigration to Israel? According to figures from Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, there were 200 immigrants from Australia in 2024, which compares with 125 in 2023, representing a rise of 47%. In addition, the ministry says that there has been a very steep rise in files being opened and expressions of interest in Israel this year, more than in any other year.
"I think that people are sitting on the fence and waiting to see the results of the forthcoming federal elections," says Dr. Adler. "If the present Labor government is returned to power, it’s likely that there will be a significant rise. The general view is that we can’t take another four years of this madness. But if there’s a change of government and the Liberal Party and the National Party come in, there’s a reasonable chance of stopping this trend."
"I’ve been to Israel twice since October 7, and I feel more at home in Israel than in Melbourne," adds Zajac. "The resilience of the people there gives me energy. There’s no doubt that more people are now considering aliyah. Ultimately, we’re a Zionist community."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 25, 2025.
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