Swatiskas, harassment and a knife to the throat - this is how Jewish students in Australia are growing up, while being told their persecution isn't real.
Ynet reports that much has been said and written about rising antisemitism in Europe and the United States, including in public schools. The situation for the Jewish community in Australia is also extremely grave and trending in the wrong direction, especially for students.
In the past two years, there has been a 41.9% increase in antisemitic activity nationwide in Australia, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Many of those incidents have involved not just college students, but elementary and high school students as well.
In 2019, an Australian Jewish 12-year-old was filmed being forced to kiss a Muslim student's foot “because he is a Jew” in a viral video uploaded to TikTok by the perpetrators, and threatened with violence if he did not comply. The Muslim children bullying the Jewish teen were his classmates at Cheltenham Secondary College in Melbourne, but since the incident occurred immediately after school hours the school refused to take action. The Jewish child had also received text messages telling him he would be “slaughtered,” which were being handled by the police.
Institutionalized antisemitism
He explains that children have experienced numerous incidents of horrific antisemitism that the larger Jewish community worldwide simply isn’t hearing about. For example, at Hawthorn West Primary School in Victoria, a 5-year-old Jewish student was called “Jewish vermin” because he was circumcised. When the bullying was brought to the attention of administrators, “the suggestion from the school was that he use the staff bathroom (which he did) only to have the staff tell him he isn’t permitted, and so he went back to the regular bathroom.” Abramovich says.
The culture of indifference at the administrative level is one of the most alarming concerns for Australian Jewish students and their families.
“There are principals and teachers who are in complete denial about the scale of the problem. When told of the ordeals Jewish pupils are experiencing, they are either deliberately indifferent to their plight, or they accept, excuse or choose not to act on complaints,” explains Abramovich.
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