Antisemitism royal commission: Police arrest man who wore swastika shirt; ‘guards at doors’ of aged care facility and schools; parents of bullied students condemn racism, inaction

After a late sitting, commissioner Bell has finished proceedings for the day.

The hearing will continue for a fourth day on Thursday at 10am.

In Jeremy Leibler’s written statement to the royal commission he had attached page after page of anti-semitic abuse directed at him by email and social media. It had also detailed additional threatening and obscene voicemail messages that he received as president of the Zionist Federation of Australia.

“But the scale and volume of it dramatically shifted after October 7, and I would say also before the October 7, it was almost always anonymous accounts people under fake names or thoughts, and then suddenly, within a very short period of time, it was normalised,” he says.

“It was acceptable for people that at least at some point in time played a role in parts of society, former journalists, individuals that had standing suddenly had the social license to attack and torment. Yes, me as a Jewish leader. But this was not just directed to me as a Jewish leader. Almost anyone that is openly Jewish on social media is a recipient. And what we’d observe is, you know, this sort of the horseshoe effect. You know, it would be the extreme left and the extreme right, and the only issue they could agree upon was how they felt about Jews, or as they would often use as a proxy Zionist.”

The commission heard the online abuse included the use of photographs of his family and children, which was the subject of a police complaint.

“You know, sometimes these things happen, you know, quickly but slowly, and it takes you a minute to realise, because the abuse is so constant and has no correlation to what you would put out. I could post a picture of a beautiful sunset, and I’d be called a genocide supporter child killer.”

After a late sitting, commissioner Bell has finished proceedings for the day.

The hearing will continue for a fourth day on Thursday at 10am.

Jeremy Leibler, president of the Zionist Foundation of Australia, has been speaking about his experiences of anti-semitism. At the end of his evidence, commissioner Virginia Bell asked him:

“Mr Leibler, can I ask you this: you talk about the delegitimisation of Israel, and as I understand it for you, that connotes the denial of the right of Israel to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people, and you talk about the excessive criticism of Israel, and I don’t want this royal commission to try and solve the Middle East, Mr Leibler. And I appreciate that there are views on both sides about the pursuit of the war in Gaza by the current administration.

“But can you appreciate there is a difficult line between what you describe as delegitimising Israel and the views that may be conscientiously held by non-Jewish Australians of goodwill, who are trenchantly critical of actions of Israel, even against the Hamas attack?”

Leibler responded, in part:

“There are many Jewish Australians that are also highly critical of the current Israeli government. I have been publicly [critical], as president of the Zionist Federation … of certain actions of the Israeli government. I don’t believe that it is difficult to draw the line. I believe that there are many that have an agenda that make it very difficult to blur the lines … It is perfectly acceptable to criticise Israel’s conduct of the war. It is not legitimate, it is not acceptable, and it does cross the line, to describe the Jewish right to self-determination as something that is inherently evil or immoral, that our identity, the core of who we are, is evil, because the logical extension of that is that we are evil… and that Zionism, the state of Israel, it’s an evil and racist endeavour.”

Gayle King, of Jewish Care Australia, is discussing a community organisation that specialised in multicultural youth services which told the charity it would not partner with them because they were a Jewish organisation.

“I asked them, ‘Was that a directive from their funders?’ They said, ‘No, it was the other youth they were working with that would not approve of them or like them working with a Jewish organisation’. They also added that Jewish youth didn’t need their services because they weren’t poor.”

Counsel Assisting Tamara Phillips asked: “Is the effect of what’s happened that a primarily, or if not wholly, government-funded organisation has refused to work with a Jewish social services organisation because they’re concerned about the optics of that association?”

King: “That is absolutely my interpretation, yes.”

“Since October 7, my Jewish identity is far more visible, and it’s definitely affected the way I think about my safety, my children’s safety,” a Melbourne mother is telling the commission.

“My husband and I have had multiple conversations around whether our two-year-old daughter’s Jewish daycare may ever become a target, like so many other noticeably Jewish institutions have, and whether we should remove her from there or not.

“We’ve also reconsidered our child’s future schooling, including moving her to a Jewish school, due to safety concerns as a visible minority in a non-Jewish setting, even though this would cause quite a financial strain for the both of us,” she says.

“Modern antisemitic incidents do feel like echoes or warning signs, and they’re not isolated incidents.”

Joshua Kirsh, chief operating officer of the Australian Union of Jewish Students, has been speaking about his experience running a political campaign for the NSW Legislative Assembly.

He faced a series of comments about his Jewish identity, including one that was “quite vitriolic”.

He began to document them, putting them together for the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

Kirsh references the saying of Toni Morrison that the “function of racism is distraction”.

“It takes up a lot of the time that you would have otherwise spent living a normal life, or the life that you choose, and instead, you’re sitting there proving that something bad happened to you, that that thing is bad, that it’s worthy of condemnation, that it’s worthy of being considered wrong, and that you know you should be at least recognised for having experienced that bad thing.”