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After brief hiatus, antisemitism in Australia rears head with Melbourne attacks
A pair of attacks on Jewish targets in Melbourne on Friday night show that Australia’s antisemitism problem continues to grow, despite brief glimmers of calm, Jewish community members said over the weekend.
“We’re starting to see outright calls for the death and murder of Jews become normalized on Melbourne’s streets,” Jeremy Leibler, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, told The Times of Israel on Sunday. “There has been a transition from coded slogans like ‘From the river to the sea’ and ‘Globalize the intifada’ to explicit incitement with the chant ‘Death to the IDF.'”
On Friday night, the East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation was set on fire while around 20 people were eating Shabbat dinner inside. Everyone escaped unscathed through the back of the synagogue, and damage was contained to the entrance. A suspect identifying as Iranian, 34-year-old Angelo Loras, was arrested, but has not been linked to other attacks, police said.
About half an hour after that attack, a mob of pro-Palestinian protesters stormed Miznon, a restaurant founded by Israeli chef Eyal Shani and co-owned by Shahar Segal, who has served as a spokesperson for the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The protesters hurled furniture and food at the restaurant and shattered one of its outer windows as customers dined both inside and outside. One suspect was arrested and later released.
Witnesses said the mob chanted “Death, death to the IDF” as they ransacked the restaurant, a slogan popularized several days earlier by rap duo Bob Vylan at the Glastonbury festival in England.
“That chant has now become common for pro-Palestinian protesters on the street,” Leibler said. “For a community founded by Holocaust survivors to have a synagogue and Jewish-owned business targeted on the same night has very worrying echoes of the past.”
Anti-Israel protesters also chanted “Death, death to the IDF” at their weekly rally in Melbourne on Sunday, local media reported.
Also Friday night, in a third attack, cars in........
© The Times of Israel
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