Antisemitism royal commission as it happened: Eight witnesses share their experiences on day five of hearing

The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has now moved into a closed session. Public hearings resume next week.

Today the commission heard from:

• Benjamin F, a gay convert to Judaism, who became fearful for his safety during a Mardi Gras march and experienced “horrific” reactions to his embrace of the Jewish faith.
• Mia Kline, a student who says she was forced to leave her share house in Canberra after her housemates confronted her over Zionism.
• Maya Hockey, another student, who described experiencing antisemitism from her own friends and heard comments about gassing Jews at school.
• Sharonne Blum, a Victorian Jewish studies teacher, who called anti-Zionism a “hate movement” because it denied Jews a central part of their identity.
• A non-Jewish lawyer who was accused of being a “sneaky Jew” and a “Jewish rat” in an inner-west pub in Sydney.
• A crisis counselling hotline volunteer who became anxious about picking up the phone due to the “instant” increase in antisemitic calls after the October 7 terrorist attack in Israel.

Thank you for reading our live coverage. We hope you join us again next week.

An anonymous witness, known as ABJ, testifies that she spent 13 years volunteering for a national crisis counselling hotline, taking calls from people in distress.

“I loved working there,” she said. “It was a huge part of my life.” Before October 7, she had only received a few calls from people expressing antisemitic views.

But after the terrorist attack and the outbreak of hostilities, that changed. “It was instant,” ABJ said. Each shift would tend to include at least one antisemitic call, with callers telling her that Jews control everything, own all the businesses and “have their tentacles everywhere”.

ABJ said she asked her manager if she could hang up on these callers before giving the mandatory three warnings for inappropriate calls. But she said no change to the protocol was made, so she was forced to quit her role.

“I was so anxious to go back that I called in one day and I said, ‘Look, I’m not coming back, and I never heard from them again’,” she said.

ABJ said after she lost her nephew in the Bondi terror attack, her neighbours responded with offers of help and by sending flowers. She also said that her two children had never experienced antisemitism in careers in two different fields.

The royal commission’s Friday hearing resumes, following a break.

One more witness is set to give evidence, anonymously, before the commission moves into a closed session.

Maya Hockey, a Jewish university student, testifies that after posting a message on Instagram, she received a message containing coded violence.

“Gastza joosh,” a user replied, meaning “gas the Jews”.

Hockey, who moved to Australia from the US when she was a child, said she had heard similar messages – including “Heil Hitler” – from students at the public and Christian schools she attended. Sometimes, it even came from friends.

“I would just have to sit there and take it and, you know, act as if it was normal,” Hockey said.

When she changed schools, “I did not want anybody to know I was Jewish as I thought that if I hid that, then maybe I wouldn’t be subjected to comments.”

Victorian Jewish studies teacher Sharonne Blum, the next witness, describes anti-Zionism as a “hate movement” and a form of anti-Jewish bigotry.

In her view, anti-Zionism “charges that a central part of Jewishness, that being our connection to our ancestral land, is some kind of evil”. She said that criticism of Israel’s military conduct often employed modern versions of old antisemitic tropes.

Commissioner Bell asked if Blum believed it was possible to hold a legitimate, non-antisemitic view that Israel’s military action in Gaza was disproportionate.

Blum said the view could be legitimate; “whether it’s antisemitic or anti-Zionist, that would require a conversation.”

Parent Aaron Guttmann says he was shocked by the level of security at a Sydney Jewish school he and his family toured after relocating to the city in the 2010s.

The “Get Smart” set-up included three layers of security, including bollards, a long gate and “big, burly armed guards”. The level of protection reminded him of a brief trip to Israel, which he “hated” despite having a strong affinity to the Jewish homeland, given the constant security alarms.

“I don’t know if I can live here,” he recalls thinking about Australia, based on his experiences at schools. “Because I don’t want to be confronted with this arsenal of weapons. I understand the need for it and security, but I don’t think it addresses the key problems.”

Guttmann, who works in risk and compliance, says that even if you posted an armed tank outside a school, it couldn’t follow a Jewish person down the street.

Mia Kline, the day’s second witness, is a 22-year-old arts/law student at university in Canberra.

Actively involved in Jewish organisations, Kline says that in 2024 she was called to a meeting by her two housemates, whom she considered good friends. They said:

they felt like they’ve been walking on eggshells in the house around me, and that the house wasn’t a safe space for them to have tough political conversations about current events, and that they couldn’t reconcile my views with their values, and that we couldn’t live under one roof.

Kline says she was distraught and moved out. She describes to the royal commission how she went through a process of “de-Jewing” herself – not referring to Jewish engagements in conversation and taking off a Star of David necklace – to avoid antisemitism.

She later wrote a letter to her housemates, telling them that she was a “harsh critic of Benjamin Netanyahu, his government and the actions of the IDF” and that she hoped they would come to understand the hurt they had caused her.