The general public would be in “uproar” if they saw the security measures Jewish schools require to feel safe, the principal at an eastern suburbs Sydney school says.
Emanuel School is in Randwick in Sydney, and many staff were at nearby Bondi during the December 14 terror attack.
Principal Linda Emms gave evidence to the royal commission on Tuesday, telling how principals of other independent schools were shocked seeing police at the front gates this year.
Ms Emms hosted leaders from 45 independent Sydney schools for a meeting after the Bondi terror attack — principals who contacted the school to show support.
“They were generally really concerned about us, but it hadn’t hit them, the day-to-day implication of what it means. When they arrived at the school and they had to go through what is our normal security, they had to walk past uniformed police to actually just enter a school.
“The comments I got was, ‘is this normal?’ And my answer was yes. For us, this is now normal. This is what my staff and students do every day. And because they don’t see it, because their schools are in very different locations, in very different contexts, they hadn’t realised that this is still what our students are doing every single day.”
Ms Emms is not Jewish, and has worked at Anglican, Presbyterian and Uniting Church schools over a 30-year career before becoming Emanuel principal in 2025.
“If non-Jewish independent schools in Australia had to have the fences, walls and guards that Jewish students do, the Australian community would be in uproar,” she said in evidence.
This fifth block of the royal commission is focused on security arrangements undertaken by Australian Jewish institutions.
Emanuel School, some 5km from Bondi, has escalated its security arrangements in recent times.
“Amongst the staff at my school, we had lots of people who were at Bondi, and I don’t think there was anyone who wasn’t affected by it,” Ms Emms said.
Requests from parents and carers for discounts on school fees have nearly doubled in the past year, Ms Emms said, as security costs escalate.
“I don’t believe that our parents should have to be 100 per cent responsible for paying for security, which is over and above what any other school in NSW would need to have,” she said.
“Many of our families are making sacrifices financially to have their children at a Jewish day school. They’re there because they believe in a Jewish education.
“Many of them are also there because they don’t feel comfortable with their children being in other school systems at present.
“My concern is that to meet the increasing security costs, we are going to have to continue to increase those levies that will price some of our parents out.”
The school has received state government grants for security.
The majority of security costs are paid for by levies, and by pulling money from other areas of school operations.
Despite a general understanding of the security Jewish schools have, Ms Emms said she was shocked to see the full extent. She did not expect much of her initial correspondence to parents, when she started the job in January 2025, would be assuring parents the school was a safe place.
“We had come out of a fairly horrific summer in Sydney, of attacks on Jewish property, Jewish homes, targeting of people. One of the schools quite near to us had also been attacked.”
After the Bondi terror attack, Ms Emms could not assure students and families would be 100 per cent safe.
“ … because I can’t control what other people do. I can only control what we can control at the school.”
The Emanuel School has constant security guards, and police also attend every day.
But some school staff are not comfortable supervising the primary school pick-up spot, because it’s on a public road.
Parents and teachers feel “incredibly grateful” that police attend the school every day, but on the flip side uniformed officers remind them of anti-Semitic attacks.
“Our parents have worked incredibly hard, particularly with some of our younger students, to get their children to see the police as their friends and as being there to protect them.
“I watch some of them come in and they’ll fist bump the police as they come into the morning and say hello to them.
“And it’s lovely, but it’s really sad that we have parents who actually have to do this, because that’s how they’re actually reassuring their child that it’s okay.”
Melbourne Jewish K-12 school running $3000-per-student security regime
Security at a Melbourne Jewish school that was graffitied with the words “Jew die” is costing $3000 per student, the principal has told the anti-Semitism royal commission.
Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Dan Sztrajt fronted the Royal Commission on anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion on Tuesday, telling of the financial and emotional toll on families to feel safe.
In May 2024, the Jewish kindergarten to year 12 school was graffitied with the words “Jew die”. A student was filming a TikTok on the weekend as they drove past; that video alerted the community to the graffiti.
Melbourne Jewish schools collectively decided in 2015 to arm their security guards following a fatal terrorist attack at a French school.
However, Mount Scopus has recorded an escalating number of anti-Semitic incidents since October 2023 and continues to intensify its security arrangements.
Mr Sztrajt told the commission the security levy parents paid had gone from $500 in 2022 to $1130 in 2025, but the true cost of all security operations and capital expenditure was running more than $3000 per student.
The school had worked with security advisers for years, but now had a full-time on-campus security adviser with counter-terrorism experience, Mr Sztrajt said.
“To have a school where students can safely go on an excursion and not need know that someone else is worried about their security so that they can get on with being proud of who they are, wear their uniform with pride hold their head up. That is absolutely essential,” he said.
The time spent on security instead of furthering the students and staff “pains me tremendously”, Mr Sztrajt said.
“I’d have to say that at least 10 to 15 per cent of almost every one of my days as school principal is focused on security matters, not on education, not on student wellbeing, not on teacher professional development but on are we able to run this excursion? Can this happen?
“Or we might not want to go around these parts of Melbourne because they’re possibly considered too dangerous for our students at the moment.”
Melbourne’s Mount Scopus College has formally recorded 131 anti-Semitic incidents since January 1, 2022, though Mr Sztrajt says this figure would be much higher if parents felt the need to report everything.
In response to the 2024 graffiti incident, the school hoisted an Australian flag, and a flag with a Hebrew message saying “Jewish people live”.
“We knew that every single one of our students coming into school that day would be looking for the graffiti that they’d seen on social media,” Mr Sztrajt said.
“And what we wanted them confronted with was, no, you are proud Australians, and you should be proud that, you know, here you are living in Australia.”
Nobody has been arrested or charged over the 2024 graffiti.
Israel safer than Australia
Melbourne families are migrating to Israel over continual anti-Semitic abuse in Australia.
Benjamin Klein, who sits on the board of Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue, which was firebombed in December 2024, told the inquiry “good Aussie people” were leaving because of hatred.
Giving evidence on Tuesday, Mr Klein said some Jewish Australian families see Israel as safer than Australia.
“There’s two people from my son’s class who have picked themselves up and moved to Israel. Those stories never used to happen. We never heard of that,” he said.
“Growing up, people were proud to live in Melbourne. They were part of the Australian community. But now there’s good Aussie people picking up themselves up and moving to Israel.
“And it’s weird because if you think to yourself, Israel is not necessarily a safe place, there’s lots going on there and there’s these wars … it’s quite a scary place, but they’re still picking themselves up from Melbourne and moving to Israel,” Mr Klein said.
The ultra orthodox Jewish Australian community had seen a marked increase in anti-Semitic abuse since the end of 2023, he said.
The Adass synagogue could well be the busiest in the southern hemisphere, Mr Klein told the commission, but many devotees still did not feel safe.
“You have to think to yourself, why are people doing that (leaving for Israel)? Why are rational, successful accountants, lawyers, doctors picking themselves up and moving to Israel? “And the answer is they just don’t feel safe. They just don’t feel self safe.” Mr Klein said.
The December 2024 firebombing is subject to an ongoing criminal court case, so details of the incident were not discussed at the royal commission.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation has previously revealed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ordered the firebombing.
Anti-Jewish hate causes brain drain
Central Synagogue Sydney Rabbi Levi Wolff said Australia was losing highly skilled citizens amid heightened anti-Semitism.
Rabbi Wolff was asked if synagogue families had left Sydney recently. He said “many, many families” had “brought properties and apartments in Israel”.
Counsel assisting the royal commission, Richard Lancaster SC, did not ask Rabbi Wolff to clarify his response.
“I’m saddened that Australia is losing people who wanted nothing more than to build their life and to build and contribute to this beautiful country,” Rabbi Wolff said.
“I read an article a few weeks ago of a group of 100 doctors, 100 Jewish doctors, who came together to talk about plans of leaving this country.
“Australia isn’t just losing Jewish doctors. They’re losing people who contribute to make this place what it is. We’re looking for doctors in this country losing professionals and business owners, community builders.”
The Central Synagogue has been doing surveys of members to gauge and collate anti-Semitic incidents.
“I’m quoting all this from their response; ‘I declined to put my religion on my admission form at a time when I felt most vulnerable and at the mercy of others, I felt the need to shield myself by not openly identifying as a Jew’.”
Another respondent felt unsafe putting a religious symbol above their front door.
“In Australia, no one should have to have courage to simply place a symbol of their faith on the doorpost of their very own home,” he said.
The vilification of Jewish Australians, Rabbi Wolff said, was an insult to hundreds of years of history.
“If we want Australians to stand with the Jewish community, they must first understand the Jewish community. Jews have been part of this country since the First Fleet in 1788. They have served in our armed forces and thousands have paid the ultimate price.
“Jews have built and advanced medicine and law, science, education and philanthropy. We are a tiny community, but one that has always sought to contribute far more than our size.
“And that is why I remain, commissioner, very optimistic. I’m optimistic because I’ve now lived here almost 30 years and I’ve experienced extraordinary decency and fairness and generosity from normal great Aussies.”
Rabbi Wolff said since October 2023, many Jewish Australians felt the need to justify their right to live here.
“Imagine having to walk around and get abused in the street for just being a member of a faith.”
When Rabbi Wolff visits family back in New York, he says Jews in the US are shocked at the state of affairs in Australia.
“Over the last three and a half years, I cannot tell you, commissioner, how many comments people tell me as soon as I say I’m from Australia, the first thing is ‘what’s going on in Australia, what’s happened to Australia?’
“It is such a shock for people in the States to hear of the level of anti-Semitism that exists in this country. It’s a very sad reality.”
Commissioner Virginia Bell asked Rabbi Wolff whether “people who are protesting, on behalf of Palestinians’ right to self-determination, are not expressing a value that is inconsistent with Australian values?”
Rabbi Wolff said: “I often hear people say, I’m not anti-Jewish. I’m simply anti-Zionist. And in the same breath, in the same breath, they deny the Jewish people’s spiritual, historical and indigenous connection to their ancestral land.
“To me, it’s almost like saying I’m not racist against Aboriginal Australians; I absolutely love you, I just simply don’t believe that you have any cultural or historical connection to this land.”
Rabbi Wolff also equated criticism of the Israeli regime with intimidation of Australian Jews.
“When crowds march through the streets of Sydney and Melbourne and everywhere else in this beautiful country and chant, ‘Death to Israel, death to the IDF’, Jewish Australians do not hear a nuanced political debate,” he said.
“They hear threats directed to their families and to their communities, and hatred expressed in the streets rarely stays in the streets.
“Hatred spreads into classrooms, it spreads into universities, into workplaces where people in my community have to think twice about wearing a Star of David when they go to work.”
Rabbi Wolff then drew a link between these attitudes and the Bondi Beach terror attack.
“Words shape culture and culture shapes behaviour. And behaviour left unchecked becomes violent. And I saw that on the streets and on the beaches of Bondi. So if it’s left unchecked, there are 15 beautiful souls that are unfortunately not here today.”
‘Sadly, that came true’
The son of Holocaust survivors and a leader in Sydney’s Jewish community sees “disturbing parallels in the social atmosphere” between Australian anti-Semitism and Nazi Germany.
South Sydney Synagogue president George Foster made the comparison while giving evidence at the royal commission on Tuesday.
“I’m sometimes asked whether I believe that Australia is becoming another Germany in the 1930s. Now, my answer is no,” Dr Foster said.
“Australia’s democratic institutions, legal system and civilian, civil society are fundamentally different. However, as the son of survivors and president of the (Holocaust Survivors) association, and the synagogue, I can’t ignore certain disturbing parallels in the social atmosphere.”
These parallels include “the exclusion of Jews from parts of public life, the normalisation of anti-Semitic language, dehumanising descriptions of Jews, conspiracy theories, the resurgence of anti-Semitic tropes, attacks on Jewish schools, synagogues and businesses, and fear about displaying Jewish identity publicly”.
“While these were policies of Nazi Germany and encouraged by the Nazis, they’re not policies and never have been policies of the Australian government. They’re not the Holocaust today, but they are warning signs that Holocaust survivors recognise.”
Decades of relatively minor attacks, but also more physically damaging attacks, on the Southern Sydney Synagogue were aired at the royal commission on Tuesday.
Soon after the first Iraq war ended in early 1991, “four or five” Sydney synagogues were attacked, Dr Foster said, including the Bankstown temple which ultimately led to the congregation being dissolved.
In August 1993, the Southern Sydney Synagogue was attacked with petrol bombs, and in early 1995, the synagogue was graffitied with swastikas and bricks thrown through windows.
In May 2001, there was an unsuccessful attempt to firebomb the synagogue. In April 2002, more graffiti was sprayed on the synagogue.
In January 2025, the synagogue was graffitied with the words “Hitler on top Allah”, “F**k Jews” and “Free Palestine” and swastikas. Two men have been arrested and charged.
Dr Foster, a psychologist by trade, remembers telling the media in the wake of the January 2025 graffiti that the recurrence of anti-Semitic incidents would turn deadly. Later that year, 15 people were killed at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi.
“Personally, I was very angered that such a thing could happen. I had never imagined that my own synagogue would be repeatedly targeted like this, and in particular with this sort of (Nazi) graffiti,” he told the commission
“It is important to add, though, that despite all of those things and the subsequent anxiety that it has resulted in, I felt at the time a clear determination not to be intimidated.
“As part of my distress, I guess, and the atmosphere at the time in the country, I remember distinctly, answering one media question, saying that ‘if something isn’t done about the atmosphere, about the anti-Semitism at the time, then someone is going to die’.
“And now this is back in January 2025. Sadly, that came true,” Dr Foster said.
More to come
