High-profile witness opens up on ‘fashionable’ rise of antisemitism<\/a><\/p>\nA high-profile witness has told a royal commission that antisemitism is a “virus” which has evolved over time, with aggressors on the far right and far left side of politics.<\/p>\n
Benjamin F said he continued to fear for his safety, and felt he could not live “a true and authentic Jewish life”.<\/p>\n
“I was scared walking in here [to the royal commission] today,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I asked \u2026 whether there would be members of the public who would heckle me.”<\/p>\n
Benjamin F was one of dozens of people who had given evidence about their lived experience of antisemitism to the royal commission this week.<\/p>\n
The inquiry was called in the wake of the Bondi terror attack, in which 15 people were killed at a Hanukkah event at Archer Park on December 14.<\/p>\n
Bullying at school<\/p>\n
Sydney university student Maya Hockey did not have any fellow Jewish classmates at her Christian high school, saying she would regularly be told she should be gassed because she was a Jew.<\/p>\n
Ms Hockey told the commission her parents reported the bullying to the school, but was told nothing could be done unless she provided the names of the students.<\/p>\n
She said some of the antisemitic comments were made by her friends, some of whom changed their behaviour after Ms Hockey called out the remarks as offensive.<\/p>\n
She said she had hoped the impact of the Holocaust and antisemitism on the Jewish community would be covered as part of their Year 10 curriculum.<\/p>\n
But she said the topic was brushed over and the classes instead felt like a “Hitler sympathy session”.<\/p>\n
More on the royal commission<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Jewish Sydney teacher feared for his life while marching with a Jewish LGBTQIA+ group during Mardi Gras,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1544,257,2811,2799,8556,8555,2813,8554,1541,247,2810,2812],"class_list":{"0":"post-7177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sydney","8":"tag-bondi-beach-shooting","9":"tag-bondi-beach-terror-attack","10":"tag-bondi-beach-terrorist-attack","11":"tag-bondi-royal-commission","12":"tag-dayenu","13":"tag-feared-for-life","14":"tag-hearings","15":"tag-mardi-gras","16":"tag-royal-commission-on-antisemitism-and-social-cohesion","17":"tag-sydney","18":"tag-the-royal-commission-on-antisemitism-and-social-cohesion","19":"tag-virginia-bell"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}