Latest / The Front / “I smell Jews”: Vile abuse on the school bus

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“I smell Jews”: Vile abuse on the school bus · The Front

0:05
Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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Speaker 1: It's Tuesday May five, twenty twenty six. One Nation will
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Speaker 1: campaign on its support for Ben Robert Smith, the ex
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Speaker 1: soldier who denies he's a war criminal, in this weekend's
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Speaker 1: federal by election for the Victorian seat of Farah. At
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Speaker 1: pre polling booths, the Pauline Hanson Party has posters declaring
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Speaker 1: he fought for US. One Nation stands with him. That's
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Speaker 1: an exclusive life now at the Australian dot com dot
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Speaker 1: AU Vile abuse, families living in fear and a profound
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Speaker 1: change to Australia. That's the tone of evidence to the
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Speaker 1: Royal Commission into Anti Semitism and Social Cohesion on day
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Speaker 1: one of public hearings. That's today's story before we begin.
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Speaker 1: This episode contains some swearing.
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Speaker 2: Are there any fucking Jews on this bus? I can
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Speaker 2: smell Jews.
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Speaker 1: It was a Melbourne suburban route and the young man
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Speaker 1: was with a group of friends, laughing as he raised
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Speaker 1: his voice.
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Speaker 2: If there are any Jews, We're going to burn this bus.
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Speaker 1: Sitting together were a young Jewish sister and brother, along
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Speaker 1: with the brother's friend. The shouting men were looking directly
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Speaker 1: at them. This story was told by the sibling's mother
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Speaker 1: under the pseudonym Aam as she gave evidence on the
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Speaker 1: first day of public hearings by the Royal Commission into
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Speaker 1: Anti Semitism and Social Cohesion. She told of crowds of
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Speaker 1: menacing protesters gathering outside her synagogue, of sitting to Friday
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Speaker 1: Shabbat dinner with the sounds of chance outside the window,
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Speaker 1: of how the family is now making plans to move
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Speaker 1: to Israel.
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Speaker 3: We never expect synagogues to be burned down. We never
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Speaker 3: expected Jews to be hunted on Bondai Beach. We really
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Speaker 3: didn't expect this sort of thing in this country. This
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Speaker 3: was the safest place in the world for Jews, and
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Speaker 3: it was golden and it is not anymore. And there
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Speaker 3: is so much fear and so much anxiety. All of
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Speaker 3: us are nervous and worried about what could possibly come
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Speaker 3: next after what happened on Bondi, what could possibly come next.
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Speaker 3: There's something coming and we all know it.
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Speaker 1: On Monday, the hearings in Sydney heard from community leader
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Speaker 1: Alex Rifchin.
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Speaker 4: I've dealt with dozens of individuals who day after day
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Speaker 4: post about me in a personal way, who drawed through
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Speaker 4: found photos and repost photos of my children. I've been
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Speaker 4: abused on the street and again that was a moment
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Speaker 4: that really harkened back to the Soviet Union. To be
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Speaker 4: called a Jewish dog on the streets of Sydney, it
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Speaker 4: shocked me. I stood there hearing these words and it
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Speaker 4: stopped me in my trucks and it made me realize
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Speaker 4: the low point to which we fall as a society.
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Speaker 1: Shana Goodnick, whose father Ruven Morrison, was shot dead at Bondai.
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Speaker 5: I have received and seen hundreds of comments that I
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Speaker 5: should have been killed in the Bondai attack, calls to
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Speaker 5: kill Israeli's comments celebrating violence against Jews, as well as
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Speaker 5: claims that attacks against the Jewish community are false flags
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Speaker 5: staged by Jews themselves for attention or sympathy.
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Speaker 1: And from other witnesses who spoke of losing friendships and
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Speaker 1: worrying that life would never be the same.
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Speaker 6: It was devastating. It was really devastating.
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Speaker 1: Ellie Dudley is the Australian's National Chief of Staff and
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Speaker 1: like me, she was covering the hearings on Monday.
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Speaker 6: The focus of this initial hearing block it goes for
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Speaker 6: two weeks. Is hearing about the lived Dick's sperience of
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Speaker 6: Jewish Australians. So we heard from people who had experienced
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Speaker 6: heinous anti Semitism and the way that it affected them
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Speaker 6: and their families. We heard about schools that are quite
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Speaker 6: more like a prison than a primary school because of
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Speaker 6: the terror drills that they need to run and the
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Speaker 6: equipment and the security that they have outside of them.
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Speaker 1: He is Stephanie Schwartz, president of the board of Mount
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Speaker 1: Sinai College in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs. Some of the primary
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Speaker 1: school's students were at Bondai on the day of the massacre.
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Speaker 7: Students who were president having these drills now post the
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Speaker 7: Bondie attack is very anxiety provoking and overwhelming for them,
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Speaker 7: and the school has had to put in place many
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Speaker 7: psychological supports and efforts to make sure that these children
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Speaker 7: aren't retraumatized after Bondie.
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Speaker 8: Can only imagine how difficult.
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Speaker 6: We heard about substitute teachers doing the Hail Hitlers salute
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Speaker 6: and making students feel uncomfortable to point where they had
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Speaker 6: to drop out of school or drop out of that school.
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Speaker 6: It was really moving. It was really emotional, and I
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Speaker 6: think it sets us up for the next two weeks
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Speaker 6: to know that we're just going to be hearing more
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Speaker 6: evidence like this.
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Speaker 1: Shanna Goodnick told a really moving story that correspondent with
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Speaker 1: something quite a few people said, the intersection of public
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Speaker 1: and private in the Jewish community. Now, she was walking
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Speaker 1: through Bondi Junction, Westfield and this is in a part
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Speaker 1: of Sydney where are a lot of Jewish people with
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Speaker 1: her twelve month old baby with a Star of David
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Speaker 1: necklace on when a man came up to her and
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Speaker 1: just started hurling disgusting abuse and she said that nobody
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Speaker 1: did anything to help. And that was a real theme
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Speaker 1: on day one of these hearings. Several witnesses are going
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Speaker 1: to tell the inquiry that nobody came to their assistance
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Speaker 1: when they were being abused on a bus or at
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Speaker 1: a bus stop or in public, and that's a very
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Speaker 1: sad aspect of it. Do you think we've got a
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Speaker 1: sense on day one of the Royal Commissioner's position on
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Speaker 1: what anti Semitism is and where she wants to go.
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Speaker 6: The Royal Commissioner is Virginia Bell, the former High Court judge,
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Speaker 6: and I think she made quite obvious that she is
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Speaker 6: standing with the mainstream Jewish groups that have been so
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Speaker 6: vocal in the wake of this Bondi terror attack. Those
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Speaker 6: are groups like the Executive Council of the Australian Jury,
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Speaker 6: the New South Wales Board of Deputies. There was an
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Speaker 6: interesting moment early on in the hearing where she said
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Speaker 6: that she was going to permit a limited leave to
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Speaker 6: the Jewish Council of Australia, a pro Palestine left Jewish group,
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Speaker 6: to question the definition of anti Semitism. She's abiding by
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Speaker 6: the IRA definition of anti Semitism, which they don't agree with,
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Speaker 6: and so they will have the opportunity to have legal
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Speaker 6: counsel in the room and question experts about what that
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Speaker 6: definition means and whether it's accurate or not. But in
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Speaker 6: allowing that she described them as almost a fringe groups,
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Speaker 6: to describe them as being much smaller, and while they're distinct,
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Speaker 6: they are smaller than some of those mainstream groups, and
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Speaker 6: I think that gave us a good indication on where
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Speaker 6: she stands.
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Speaker 9: I'm conscious that some use and other members of the
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Speaker 9: Australian community believe that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliances working
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Speaker 9: definition of anti Semitism can be weaponized in order to
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Speaker 9: suppress criticism of Israel. The Commission has received a number
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Speaker 9: of submissions to this effect.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, they won't be happy. I mean, this is a
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Speaker 1: group of lawyers really who have formed this group kind
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Speaker 1: of in opposition to the mainstream Jewish organizations. It's a
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Speaker 1: tiny community overall. There are only about one hundred thousand
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Speaker 1: Jews in Australia, and the Jewish Council really seeks to
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Speaker 1: I don't know if I would agree that they're necessarily
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Speaker 1: pro Palestine. I think they try to take the position
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Speaker 1: that not every Jew needs to be a supporter of Israel.
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Speaker 1: I mean that is a very controversial position. Most Jews
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Speaker 1: do believe that Israel has a right to exist, and
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Speaker 1: whether or not they agree with the policies of NETNYA,
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Speaker 1: who they would probably agree. I think that Israel has
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Speaker 1: been under attack since its formation and that Jews need
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Speaker 1: a safe place to go to, a safe harbor. One
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Speaker 1: witness spoke very movingly about that idea of Israel as
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Speaker 1: somewhere that ever since the Holocaust. Of course, Jews have
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Speaker 1: needed to believe in as a last resort, not necessarily
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Speaker 1: the place that they want to go to. One man
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Speaker 1: spoke about having moved here from South Africa, falling in
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Speaker 1: love with Australia, proudly supporting the Wallabies instead of the
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Speaker 1: spring Box, but now having to really think about Israel
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Speaker 1: much more as an option for at least for his
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Speaker 1: children and grandchildren, where he didn't necessarily want to. That
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Speaker 1: complexity of the way Jews view Israel is something that
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Speaker 1: has been lost I think in the anti seventiesm that
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Speaker 1: we've seen since October seven, hasn't it. Yeah, you know,
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Speaker 1: you can disagree with Israel's policies but believe that Israel
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Speaker 1: has the right to exist.
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Speaker 6: We heard today from counsel assisting so both Richard Lancaster
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Speaker 6: and zille Heiga as well. What did you make and
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Speaker 6: what can we know from some of the comments they
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Speaker 6: made today?
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Speaker 1: Their opening addresses were very interesting. Zillie Haeger drew a
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Speaker 1: bright line from the October seven attack by Hamas on
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Speaker 1: Israel and the taking of hostages and the murder of
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Speaker 1: twelve hundred people right through to the Bondai Beach massacre.
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Speaker 1: She set it out in that beautiful way that the
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Speaker 1: best lawyers do, as a very simple sequence of events,
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Speaker 1: and I think a lot of Jewish people listening to
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Speaker 1: that would have found that very reassuring and affirming.
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Speaker 8: These have included in February twenty twenty four, the doxing
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Speaker 8: of six hundred Jewish creatives who joined a private WhatsApp group.
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Speaker 8: Doxing refers to the publication of personal details such as names,
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Speaker 8: phone numbers without consent, and in this instance, participants names, businesses,
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Speaker 8: work details and pictures were published alongside comments they'd made
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Speaker 8: in the WhatsApp group, which made them vulnerable to online abuse,
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Speaker 8: amongst other things. Later that year came what has been
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Speaker 8: described as the Summer of Terror, which included the arson
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Speaker 8: attack on the Adash Synagogue in Mel, another arson attack
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Speaker 8: on a Kosher catering business in Bondai, a car being
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Speaker 8: torched and cars and buildings targeted with anti Israel graffiti,
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Speaker 8: and Wallara, a suburb with a high concentration of Jewish
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Speaker 8: residents Alawa, a newtown synagogues being defaced with anti Semitic
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Speaker 8: and anti Israel graffiti. An arson attack on the former
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Speaker 8: home of Alex Rifchin's co CEO of Ecage and all
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Speaker 8: evidence from him about that incident. The discovery of a
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Speaker 8: caravan containing explosives in dural capable of causing a mass
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Speaker 8: casualty event, with documents suggesting that they were intended for
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Speaker 8: an anti Semitic attack. While it was later reported to
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Speaker 8: be a fabricated terrorist plot, the fact that the event
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Speaker 8: was designed to create fear in the Jewish community is
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Speaker 8: deeply alarming.
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Speaker 1: Now for anyone who's been following this is hugely controversial.
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Speaker 3: Was this real?
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Speaker 1: Was it fake? The AFP says it was a fake
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Speaker 1: kind of corn job. The New South Wales police and
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Speaker 1: not quite so sure about that. They certainly took it
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Speaker 1: very seriously when it was first discovered, but Jewish people
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Speaker 1: really felt that this was part of a trend of
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Speaker 1: rising antisemitism. There were lists of Jewish addresses in that caravan.
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Speaker 1: Even if the explosives were never going to be taken
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Speaker 1: anywhere and never going to be let off, they were
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Speaker 1: certainly interpreted by many Jewish people as a threat. And
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Speaker 1: then we come to the Bondai massacre. So just in
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Speaker 1: outlining it in that way, I think Zilie Hager really
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Speaker 1: set out where the Royal Commission is going to go.
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Speaker 1: It's not going to have any truck with well, were
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Speaker 1: some of these just kind of anti Zionist protests or
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Speaker 1: were some of them just some criminal who wants to
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Speaker 1: distract the cops and not really antisemitism at all. That's
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Speaker 1: been one of the things that's enraged a lot of
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Speaker 1: Jewish people, I think is minimizing, and what they would
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Speaker 1: say is gas lighting of events that they say are
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Speaker 1: absolutely antisemitism and are terrorism. If they make a certain
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Speaker 1: community feel terrified, well it's terrorism, right. Richard Lancaster, the
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Speaker 1: other councilor assisting the Senior councilor assisting really movingly quoted
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Speaker 1: from the late Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, who were leading Jewish thinker,
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Speaker 1: in saying that Jews have been abused and discriminated against
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Speaker 1: for hundreds and thousands of years, and that the point
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Speaker 1: of antisemitism or the thinking behind it is always contradictory.
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Speaker 2: Anti Semitism is not a belief system, a coherent set
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Speaker 2: of ideas. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Jews
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Speaker 2: were hated because they were rich and because they were poor,
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Speaker 2: because they were capitalists, and because they were communists, because
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Speaker 2: they kept to themselves, and because they got everywhere, because
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Speaker 2: they were superstitious believers, and because they were rootless Cosmopolitans
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Speaker 2: who believed nothing. Anti Semitism is not a belief. It
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Speaker 2: is a virus, and like a virus, it mutates.
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Speaker 1: Basically, it's racism without a real explanation. I thought that
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Speaker 1: was very pointed as well, and very moving. Virginia Bells
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Speaker 1: deliberately chosen these people.
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Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah. He also made the point about a key
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Speaker 6: part of this Royal Commission is going to be looking
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Speaker 6: at when anti Zionism becomes anti Semitism, and that's something
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Speaker 6: that's also been hugely hurtful to Jewish Australians, the use
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Speaker 6: of the word Zionist being used as such a dirty slur,
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Speaker 6: and people who attend these pro Palestine rallies trying to
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Speaker 6: hide behind using that word to act like they're not
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Speaker 6: being anti Semitic. And so I think the fact that
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Speaker 6: they are investigating that should instill confidence in the Jewish
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Speaker 6: community that they're looking in the right places. That combined
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Speaker 6: with the opening statements of people like Zilli Hagar as well.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, as our colleague Jonni Bashan said, Zionis is just
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Speaker 1: a fancy word for jew I mean that is when
13:46
Speaker 1: you boil it down, That's how a lot of Jewish
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Speaker 1: people feel that you can complain about Zionists and you
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Speaker 1: can accuse me of being a Zionist, But actually, if
13:53
Speaker 1: you just change that word for Jew, it sounds a
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Speaker 1: lot worse, and it is a lot worse. Coming up
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Speaker 1: one critique of the hearings.
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Speaker 6: You were in the room today, Claire, What was that like?
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Speaker 1: Well, I must say I was at the Royal Commission,
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Speaker 1: and I was there from very early this morning, actually
14:23
Speaker 1: trying to get my seat in the hearing room. But
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Speaker 1: I was very disappointed that there was no room for
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Speaker 1: journalists in the hearing room itself. We were all sort
14:29
Speaker 1: of shepherded into a separate room where we could watch
14:32
Speaker 1: the stream from the chamber. This is in a rented premises.
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Speaker 1: They've rented level four of some anonymous city building, and
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Speaker 1: that's something that does happen with Royal Commissions. They don't
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Speaker 1: have a standing kind of premises or a courtroom where
14:43
Speaker 1: they always sit. I think it's a mistake and I
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Speaker 1: think it's undermined the import and meaning of these hearings.
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Speaker 1: Virginia Bell is a very experienced jurist. I think she
14:54
Speaker 1: should have anticipated that a lot of journalists would want
14:56
Speaker 1: to come, that a lot of members of the public
14:58
Speaker 1: would want to be there, and the Royal Commission should
15:01
Speaker 1: have made sure they had better premises any of the
15:03
Speaker 1: huge city ballrooms that we've all been to. There are
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Speaker 1: empty courtrooms on Philip Street in Sydney. The Bank Co
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Speaker 1: Court for example, which is where big appeal hearings are held,
15:12
Speaker 1: could have been used. That would have required a little
15:14
Speaker 1: bit of asking permission of Attorneys General and so on,
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Speaker 1: but I think it could have been done. You know,
15:19
Speaker 1: allowing journalists into rooms like that is important, but it's
15:22
Speaker 1: not about us. It's about the community members who might
15:25
Speaker 1: want to attend. I don't know if I was a
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Speaker 1: school teacher or a university electorer, and maybe I'd want
15:29
Speaker 1: to bring my class along to watch justice happening, and
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Speaker 1: there would be nowhere for us to sit. So yeah,
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Speaker 1: I think that's a real mistake by the Royal Commission.
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Speaker 6: And hopefully something they rectify ahead of hearing Block number
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Speaker 6: two whenever that that so comes along.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a big day for the Jewish community, I think,
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Speaker 1: as Alex Riftin said when I chatted to him outside
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Speaker 1: the hearings, the point is that these stories get heard,
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Speaker 1: and certainly there was a live stream and a lot
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Speaker 1: more people were listening today than could possibly fit into
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Speaker 1: any courtroom. That is very meaningful, so I look forward
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Speaker 1: to the rest of the hearings. Hopefully we'll chat about
16:04
Speaker 1: it again. Thanks very much, thank you.
16:06
Speaker 5: For having me.
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Speaker 1: Ellie Dudley is The Australian's National Chief of Staff for
16:14
Speaker 1: all our reporting and analysis from these public hearings in
16:17
Speaker 1: the Antisemitism Royal Commission. Check us out at the Australian
16:21
Speaker 1: dot com dot au.