From the AJN:

442 incidents, one conviction

The 442 antisemitic incidents that were logged between October ’05 and September ’06 were like the several thousands reported in the years before – investigated but then swept under the carpet. But when Menachem Vorchheimer was attacked by a busload of footballers on erev Simchat Torah last year, he decided not to look the other way. As PETER KOHN and MELISSA SINGER report, his tenacity has resulted in a landmark decision.

AROUND 6.30pm on October 14 last year, a languid Saturday evening, as Shabbat was passing into erev Simchat Torah, Menachem Vorchheimer was walking with his two children near the crossroads of Carlisle and Hotham streets in St Kilda East, in Melbourne.

At the same time, in a seemingly different universe, around 20 members of the Ocean Grove Football Club, from Victoria’s surf coast, were in a festive mood as they drove home from an outing to the Caulfield Cup Carnival.

More than six months after their paths crossed – a horrible few minutes that landed Sydney-born Vorchheimer, 33, in hospital that night – the way Australians approach racially motivated assault and abuse has changed.

On April 18, Magistrate Barbara Cotterell fined Ocean Grove footballer Simon Phillip Christian $1000 for yelling “Go Nazis!” out of the minibus window.

She flatly rejected his defence lawyer’s argument that his words were a slip induced by drinking.

Christian, 21, had earlier told police he had been “caught up in the moment”. But the magistrate was clear in her message: in playing down racist behaviour, booze and the revelry of peers no longer cuts ice in Victoria.
The footballer’s conviction – the first in Victoria over an antisemitic incident – is part of a bigger sequence of events, some of which are still before the courts.

There were taunts, not only about Nazis and hand motions imitating machine-gunning, but about “f***ing Jews”, “nice hat” and “where’s Joseph Gutnick?”.

An angry Vorchheimer, whose father and grandparents were Holocaust survivors, approached the bus as it stopped at the intersection of Carlisle and Hotham streets, to ask what their remarks were all about.

Instead, the driver, who happened to be an off-duty police officer, took off on the green light, but not before one of the footballers reached out and grabbed Vorchheimer’s hat and kippa.

Vorchheimer ran after the bus. When a car cut off the vehicle around 150 metres down Carlisle Street, his hat was flung from a window. Vorchheimer approached the bus again and asked for his kippa.

For his troubles, two passengers grabbed him by the arms and a third allegedly punched him in the eye.

The Jewish leadership, both within Victoria and at a federal level, has a history, for better or worse, of “playing down” antisemitic incidents.

That reticence is at least partly driven by a fear of destabilising the relationship between the Jewish community and the state government.

However, on the Monday following the incident, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) and the Jewish Community Council of Victoria’s (JCCV’s) Community Security Group did something unprecedented – they went on the offensive by calling a press conference.

The difference between this and the many antisemitic incidents of the past was that this time the alleged perpetrators could be identified. It was a rare window of opportunity for the Jewish communal organisations to do something about growing perceptions that antisemitic attacks were, in the words of one insider, “being swept under the carpet”.

Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council community affairs director Jeremy Jones says last week’s conviction was a double victory over “antisemitic and cowardly” attacks.

“Every case of assault and property damage has been carried out anonymously and we weren’t in a position to know how the perpetrators would be dealt with by the courts.”

An annual report on Australian antisemitism that Jones compiles for the ECAJ showed 442 incidents were logged from October 2005 to September 2006, an increase of 110 incidents over the previous 12-month period.

Convictions have been few – five or six for phone threats, two or three for assaults – about a dozen in all over the past 20 years. Jones does not blame police. “The random nature of abuse means that in most cases the perpetrator remains unknown. And verbal abuse by itself is not a high priority for police.”

Physical assault, of course, is a different matter, and the fact that Vorchheimer was able to identify a conspicuous bus with footballers rather than, say, a motorist in a sedan, helped police in their work, Jones says.

He paid tribute to Vorchheimer for pursuing his rights “because nobody in Australia should have to put up with this sort of behaviour and he pursued it as vigorously as he could to make sure there were consequences”.

Vorchheimer adds: “There was a consensus in the [communal leadership’s] change of tack – and I was happy to be their guinea pig.”

The gamble paid off. The dailies picked up the story and uncovered details, particularly in relation to the policeman driving the bus. That exerted extra pressure on police to pursue the matter to the full extent of the law, as well as internally.

For Vorchheimer, exposing the case to the media presented an equal number of opportunities and challenges.

“If you allow yourself to become public property, then you open yourself to criticism,” he concedes.

The police investigation swung into action. By the end of questioning, more than 100 witness statements were collected.

But then public debate, including in the letters pages of the AJN, had already shifted to whether Vorchheimer provoked the attack.

Callers to Neil Mitchell’s 3AW talkback radio show on October 17 – the day the story broke in the general press – argued that if Vorchheimer had not approached the bus for an apology for the verbal abuse, the alleged physical attack would not have ensued, a point the powerful – and popular – Mitchell initially supported.

Six weeks after the incident, with no charges yet laid, Vorchheimer returned to the Jewish communal leaders for assistance.

According to Vorchheimer, their enthusiasm for his case had dissipated over time, replaced instead with “caution” and an apparent unwillingness to make waves in police or government circles.

One email he received from a communal leader warned him that “interfering” with the police investigation could “prejudice the investigation or bring yourself or the Jewish community into a negative light”.

But Vorcheimer also rejects claims made by some communal figures in various emails to him that a prosecution tried and lost would have been worse than no prosecution at all.

“Emotionally, I wanted closure quickly, but I was careful to ensure that I didn’t jeopardise the good of the Jewish community … we needed a conviction,” he says.

“If anything, I tried to unwind the Jewish aspect. It was about a bunch of white males who, when part of a mob, felt they could treat people any way they wanted to.”

Still, if not for the pressure he exerted on police, including meetings with Deputy Police Commissioner Kieran Walshe, Vorchheimer believes the alleged offenders would have escaped without charge.

“Had we walked away, I don’t believe charges would have transpired … the police just saw it as another incident I don’t think they had any intention of following it through,” Vorchheimer says.

But for Vorchheimer, walking away was not an option, and that attitude was reflected in the track record of his friend and mentor, Melbourne lawyer Norman Rosenbaum.

Rosenbaum dogged, high-profile legal campaign – among the heavy-hitters of the New York law fraternity – to bring to justice Lemrick Nelson, who took part in the slaying of his brother Yankel during street rioting in Crown Heights in 1991, has become the stuff of legend.

Vorchheimer was going in hard, even at the expense of caution and smoothing things over.

Outside court last week, Rosenbaum spoke about Crown Heights – but more pertinently, perhaps, about Sydney’s beaches. “We don’t want another Cronulla [-style riot],” he told media.

“I think the real issue is if you condone something like this and you don’t appreciate the significance of words, those racial slurs are the forerunner of physical attack and what we saw here unfortunately was that the physical attack occurred very soon afterwards.”

But for the man at the centre of the six-month saga, the impact of Magistrate Cotterell’s decision last Wednesday is far greater than the $1000 infringement she issued against Christian.

“The conviction and sentence were never about the $1000, but about effecting a change in the attitude that people can treat someone badly because they look different,” Vorchheimer says.

Despite his critics, the red tape, the setbacks and the fear that charges would never be laid, Vorchheimer’s resolve to see justice meted out remains the same as – if not stronger than – it was on the night of October 14, 2006.

“People said, ‘let it go’, ‘you’re embarrassing the Jewish community’, and ‘the non-Jews won’t like it’.

“[But], as a religious person, I have to accept that God dictates whatever happens to me. If God decides that I am the person this was meant to happen to, then it would be irresponsible for me to just let it go.”

THE Australian football community was shocked when it first learned of the incident, particularly after more than a decade of loudly beating the anti-racism drum.

Australian Football League (AFL) CEO Andrew Demetriou was in regular contact with Vorchheimer from the start and applied subtle pressure on his behalf when police investigations seemed to be going slowly.

But there was always going to be one complication – the footballers were not representing their club when they were having a day at the races.

AFL Victoria (the roof body of Victorian football) CEO Peter Schwab says “These guys might have been plumbers, accountants and teachers or whatever, but because they happened to play for the same football club, they instead get lumped into the same basket as ‘footballers’.”

None of the three charged with Vorchheimer’s assault have so far been the subject of any formal disciplinary hearings through AFL Victoria. Ocean Grove’s players have taken part in AFL Victoria’s Bouncing Racism out of Sport program, but any formal action will wait until after the court hearings are completed in June.

“That’s the decision of the club and the league it belongs to [Football Geelong] and we support that,” Schwab says. “But let me also make it clear once again that racist abuse has no part in football. That is a given.”

For the organised Jewish community, Christian’s conviction sends an unmistakable message.

Jewish Community Council of Victora (JCCV) president Anton Block was in court last Wednesday for the historic decision.

“I was personally quite moved by what she said. Here’s someone who’s not a member of the [Jewish] community, who’s a member of the judiciary, saying … this sort of racist behaviour is unacceptable and will not be tolerated and, in fact, must be deterred.

“I think the community can take comfort in the fact that the judiciary, represented by this magistrate’s comments … was unwavering … that what he said and what he did was unacceptable and the community must know that this sort of behaviour is unacceptable in a multicultural society like Australia.”

But B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission executive officer Manny Waks says it took too long to achieve justice. “In future we hope that Victoria Police is able to deal with similar issues in a more expedited manner. Dragging out this affair has helped no-one.”

Waks, who participated in a Victoria Police strategic planning day, stated the community’s dissatisfaction with the lengthiness of the process. It is a complaint he also lodged in a November letter to Police Commissioner Christine Nixon.

Victorian Multicultural Commission chair George Lekakis, who has met with Vorchheimer, says he has received assurances from Victoria Police “that the appropriate steps have been taken”.

Liberal member for Caulfield Helen Shardey played a key role in placing Vorchheimer’s cause before the mainstream media.

“We talked about how turning the other cheek wasn’t an option and he was quite prepared for what was to happen.”
Shardey says Christian’s conviction “will become a lesson for anyone else who thinks it’s OK to racially abuse people verbally and physically … having a few too many drinks is no excuse for this type of behaviour.”

Following last week’s adjournment of a conciliatory hearing before the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission into the role of Senior Constable Terry Moore, who drove the bus while off duty, Shardey says: “I think there are still other matters to be dealt with on this issue and I hope they’re dealt with in a way that’s meaningful.”

Victoria Police’s Office of Police Integrity found Moore could have prevented the attack. A police statement says he also faces internal disciplinary charges over “unauthorised secondary employment”.

JCCV Community Security Group coordinator Gavin Queit warns the community not to become complacent, especially about broader security issues that may or may not ensue from spontaneous abuse.

“There are people who week in and week out abuse Jewish people on the street and this case puts them on notice. But it doesn’t offer a deterrent in security-related matters.”

ADDITIONAL REPORTING: Yossi Aron, Naomi Levin, Ashley Browne.