TRANSCRIPT
It was while he was at work that Heshy Adelist saw a post of an antisemitic slur spray-painted on a Melbourne unit block.
Heshy, an outdoor maintenance business owner, was shocked at the words that said, quote "Kill Jews. Jews live here," plastered on the bricks.
“I'm Jewish, my whole family is Jewish, my community, everyone around me is mostly Jewish, and just to see that, it hurts and it's really sad that stuff like that has to happen and it's what we're facing right now and hopefully, you know, things like this won't happen again.”
So, he took matters into his own hands and washed the writing off himself. He also washed off a swastika painted elsewhere too, in the same suburb - free of charge.
“If there was, you know, 'kill Muslims' there, 'kill Christians', I'd clean it up tomorrow too, it's all about hate, that's the main thing really. Hate is the big issue right now and we're facing and that's what we've got to get rid of.”
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry says 400 incidents of antisemitism were reported in the 6-weeks since October 7th. That's as many reports as they received in 2022 alone.
It's prompted fears from some Jewish school students about wearing their uniforms in public.
Rabbi and school principal of Mount Scopus Memorial College in Melbourne, James Kennard, says he is appalled at how antisemitism has taken hold in the country - and around the world.
“For some of our students and some of our families, there's a real fear that somebody walking the streets and is identifiably Jewish could get physically attacked. Antisemitism wasn't banished, it was just sleeping and now two or three generations after the Holocaust, it's reawakened.”
But Rabbi Kennard says he trusts authorities will keep the community safe, and wants his students to walk with pride.
“Some parents have asked us to allow students to wear casual clothes to and perhaps on excursions. That's something I'm very very reluctant to permit and as of now the advice from police and security experts is that it's not necessary and therefore, our students are wearing uniforms at all times. I think it would be a very, very sad step for our school and indeed society that our students have to hide that they are Jewish.”
Anti-Muslim rhetoric is rife, too. The Islamophobia Register says there's been a 13-fold increase in reports since October 7.
Executive director Sharara Attai says the organisation has been inundated with unprecedented incidents, invoking concern that Muslims aren't safe in the country.
“Prior to October 7, we were receiving an average of 2.5 incidents per week and since October 7 we have now received 243 incident reports. There have been death threats, arson attacks at mosques, physical assaults, there's been extremely offensive signs and graffiti, a whole host of incidents really.”
And not all have been so explicit. A family of animal lovers, Sarah took her 2-year-old daughter to a pet exhibition last week. When it was her turn to pat a cat, she described the experience as "horrendous".
“I was leaning over to touch it and they said, the cat's really tired and the people that were behind me, the line carried on like nothing had happened. So, the next person came along and touched and picked up the cat and suddenly the cat wasn't tired anymore.”
Her daughter, she said, was also physically handled, by a breeder, twice.
“My daughter really wanted to touch a cat, so she went up to touch the cat. And my daughter, raised with cats in the house her whole life, she was born and cats were already in the house, she knows what to do when she touches cats and is really gentle. So she went up to to touch the cat and the woman smacked her hand away. I went back to the woman who was rude to my daughter to begin with, so she physically grabbed my daughter's legs and forced her into a kneeling position next to the cat and at that point I just reached boiling point.”
Having worn the hijab for more than 15 years, Sarah says, after several encounters of Islamophobia during her life, she has the experience to know when she's being deliberately excluded.
“You know when the way people are talking to you, it's coming from that sort of origin, it originates from the fact you are wearing the scarf or you don't look the way you look. It makes you feel very small. Subtle racism is very much alive and we've just learnt to be smarter about the way we're racist.”
Two communities on alert as they continue to report hatred on the rise.
