From the AJN:

Anti-Semites prowl streets and cyberspace: ECAJ report
PETER KOHN

ANTI-SEMITIC incidents have more than doubled in the past year, a report to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) has found.

The report’s author, former ECAJ president Jeremy Jones, who is director of international and community affairs at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, told The AJN a big part of the rise has been street abuse and emails.

These are anonymous and “people are not being reprimanded or punished”.

The increase also reflects an anecdotal rise in abuse of other minorities, such as Aborigines, Muslims and African migrants, he said.

Additionally, a drop in the number of anti-Semitic articles and anti-Israel public rallies has driven marginalised anti-Semites to the streets and to their computer keyboards to vent their hatred.

Jones said abusive and threatening emails were almost five times the average and 40 per cent greater than the previous worst year.

Facebook and YouTube “have been the venues of crude and intense anti-Jewish prejudice being expressed openly and unashamedly”.

Bigots have begun to desert the older technologies. Telephone calls with extreme anti-Semitic abuse were at the fourth lowest rate in 18 years, as was hate mail.

The report indicated there were 638 separate reports of anti-Jewish assault, vandalism, intimidation and harassment recorded during the 12 months ending September 30 this year.

This is a figure more than twice the previous average and eight per cent higher than the previous worst 12-month period.

The Report On Anti-Semitism in Australia listed nine major incidents during the latest reporting period.

At the top of the list was the verbal abuse and assault of an Orthodox man walking to shul with his young children.

The landmark case involving Melbourne’s Menachem Vorchheimer “was the first in Victoria in which perpetrators were identified and convicted”, Jones said.

Among other major incidents cited in the report are a school student hit by a full drink can thrown from a passing vehicle, a student assaulted on a bus, bricks thrown through windows at a Jewish school and vehicles parked outside a synagogue being spray-painted with swastikas.

“While the sum total of reports of each and all such behaviour is not sufficient to suggest that it is rampant, it is nevertheless cause for genuine concern,” Jones stated.

“Muslim and Christian leaders in Australia, as well as senior figures from other faiths and the broader community, have joined with Jewish leaders … in common cause against those who would use religion to justify hatred and racist violence.”

Jones said this level of solidarity “sets Australia apart from many other societies”.

B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission executive officer Manny Waks told The AJN: “The unprecedented level of serious anti-Semitic attacks over the past two years, including the use of weapons such as knives and baseball bats, is a clear indication that the issue of anti-Semitism in Australia must be addressed immediately and adequately by all relevant parties”.