Vic Alhadeff spends a lot of time calming people these days. Australia’s Jewish community is living in fear of the next act of hate. “People say to me, ‘Should we be leaving, should we be thinking of leaving?’”

Meaning leaving Australia permanently, out of fear of persecution. “We are in this awful spot where we’re getting bigotry from every direction”, the far right and the far left, the SBS director and former chair of Multicultural NSW tells me.

Illustration by Joe BenkeCredit:

He wrote a piece in this masthead about his own recent encounter with antisemitic abuse in Sydney, one of more than 2000 such incidents in Australia over the past two years, according to the tally by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

It’s “the most far-reaching outbreak of anti-Jewish racism in the history of this nation”, says Alhadeff, who has been recognised for his 40 years of campaigning for the full spectrum of human rights in Australia.

Australian Jews say they’ve never felt so threatened in their own country. But they’re not the only group feeling unsafe. The ancient prejudice against Jews puts them in the front rank for vilification whenever hatred breaks out around the world.

But their suffering is an early indicator, a beginning of trouble, not an end. Antisemitism is the original conspiracy theory. “Conspiracy theories are the oxygen of antisemitism,” Australia’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, Jillian Segal, said this week. “They move from fringe forums to mainstream feeds, then into real life as graffiti, disruption or threat. Antisemitism is never just about one group. It corrodes trust and licenses other hatreds.”

As we see in the past week, hate is on the march across Australian society, which, until now, has rightly claimed to be the world’s most successful multicultural country.

We see neo-Nazis in uniform, so emboldened that they address large public gatherings, unhindered, ranting against all immigrants. If immigration continues, their leader shrills, “our death is certain”. Hate-mongering from the front steps of the Victorian parliament, with the cameras rolling.

We see Indian-Australians singled out as unwanted. By some protesters at a march, yes, but also by a member of the federal opposition, Australia’s alternative government.

The Liberals’ Jacinta Nampijinpa Price in........

© Brisbane Times