564 reports in a single year

The Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) now spends about 80 per cent of its time on antisemitism and community safety, an exact reversal of the position before October 7, 2023, CEO Naomi Levin told the Royal Commission last week.

Levin said that before October 2023 the JCCV had spent roughly 20 per cent of its time on antisemitism and security and 80 per cent on other issues. “Post October 2023, there has been an exact flip,” she said.

Levin told the commission that 564 antisemitic incidents were reported to the Community Security Group (CSG) in Victoria in 2025, the highest ever documented in the state in a single year, and said the upward trend had predated October 7 before being significantly exacerbated.

She opened by resisting the framing of the community as defined by its distress.

“I’m here today representing one of the most vibrant and active Jewish communities in the world, and it’s really regrettable for us that all many Australians know about our community is the sadness and pain,” she said, citing nine Jewish schools, more than 50 synagogues, and a welfare organisation whose volunteers provide more than 70,000 meals a year.

Levin was critical of the structure of security funding, which she called “very ad hoc” and driven more by the electoral cycle than by need, leaving organisations with large sums to spend in a short window and potentially nothing the next year.

She described the federal grant made after the Bondi attack, funded over three years, as the first ongoing security commitment from any level of government.

She also criticised earlier rounds requiring matched funding, saying smaller congregations without fundraising capacity had missed out, even though the most vulnerable locations tended to face the worst attacks.

Despite more than 100 engagements with Victoria Police since October 2023, Levin said community members did not feel safer, partly because those discussions could not be shared publicly. “When people don’t see the police, they don’t perceive them as being actively engaged in protecting the community.”

She said security also created barriers to Jewish life, contrasting a Melbourne cathedral’s open doors with the fences and guards at a synagogue.