Antisemitism royal commission as it happened: Jewish community fears ‘next Bondi’, social media giants failing to act on vile slurs

Thank you for reading our live coverage of the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. Twelve members of the Jewish community in Australia gave evidence today about their lived experience. Here’s what some of them had to say:

• SBS board member Dr Vic Alhadeff, a former chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, said: “I know I’m confident that I speak for most Jewish-Australians when I say that we fear the next Bondi. And that is our truth, that is our normal, that is our new reality.”

• Jeremy Stowe-Lindner, principal of Bialik College in Melbourne, said students “can’t go into the CBD in Melbourne any more in school uniform” after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack precipitated a wave of antisemitic abuse. “We have had Hitler salutes and Jewish slurs.” He said pupils were spat on by two students from another school during one university trip.
• A Melbourne mother, giving evidence under the pseudonym AAO, said she was subjected to an antisemitic rant at the Australian Open in Melbourne this year by a woman who said the Bondi terrorist attackers “should have killed more [people], and the Jews are the worst”. She reported the incident to police, and the woman was removed from the venue.
• A university academic in Victoria, Israeli-born Tali Pinksy, said social media giants had failed to remove antisemitic social media posts. Pinksy said the response “was almost always the same standard response … it does not violate the community standards”.

• Peter Wertheim, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and a former practising lawyer, said the ECAJ had been compiling annual reports on antisemitism since 1989. The “gradual trend” was up, he said. “After [the Hamas attack of] October 7, 2023 it went up by 316 per cent. It has changed our perspective, and I think it has changed the country.”

The hearing resumes at 10am tomorrow, follow our coverage here.

That marks the conclusion of evidence for today. The hearing resumes at 10am tomorrow.

Peter Wertheim said there had “always been a sense that it’s dangerous to be Jewish” and this was “nothing new in history”.

But this had not been a pervasive feeling in Australia until recently.

“Now the sense is, once again, it is dangerous to be Jewish. People hide their Jewishness. They take sensible precautions.”

Jeremy Stowe-Lindner, principal of Bialik College in Melbourne, offers a three-point plan for combating antisemitism.

• Where objective risk assessments conclude that there is a greater threat to the Jewish-Australian community, rather than “throwing some crumbs” of funding, there must be “systemic” funding for security.
• Within professions such as healthcare and education, members should be held to minimum standards. He said he did not regard the definition of antisemitism being used by the royal commission as controversial.
• Free speech is not unfettered. Slogans that call for violence should not be permitted, he said.

Dr Vic Alhadeff said antisemitism needed to be pushed back to the margins in Australia.

“We fear the next Bondi,” he said. “That is our reality.”

He said he felt “disillusioned” when he was met with silence by a member of a specific faith group after the Bondi terrorist attack.

Alhadeff said this person eventually said to him: “But look what’s happening to the Palestinians in Gaza.”

He said he replied that you would “have to be made of stone not to care about what is happening to the Palestinians in Gaza” but “why are you holding me responsible?”

Jewish-Australians were being held accountable for what is taking place on the other side of the world when they had no agency or control over this, he said.