Blatant and open discrimination against Jews
Jewish doctors working in major health services have been told by long-time patients they no longer want to see them because they know they are Jewish.
Not much shocks me anymore. But I have to say there is one exception.
In recent weeks, multiple local councillors of different political persuasions have declined to meet with Jewish representatives to discuss community-based antisemitism on the grounds they are “under pressure” or that they don’t want to engage on “international issues”.
Another, who did agree to a meeting, said quite seriously that if Jewish people spoke out more against the “genocide” in Gaza then local antisemitism would stop.
Jewish doctors working in major health services have been told by long-time patients they no longer want to see them because they know they are Jewish.
Generous Jewish philanthropists have reported that staff at local non-Jewish charities have voted to reject funding that comes from “a Jewish family”. Many donors have also withdrawn funding because recipient won’t retract blatantly antisemitic statements.
The emergence of blatant and open discrimination against Jews in Australia has come as a real shock.
Over the past nine months, Jewish Community Council of Victoria president Philip Zajac and I have sat in dozens of meetings with local councillors, Victorian MPs and political staff to help them understand how anti-Jewish speech and activity is becoming normalised in our society.
This activity has ramped up in the past month since the launch of the JCCV’s Action Not Words campaign.
During those meetings, we have shared incident statistics compiled by CSG. We have related anecdotes. We have suggested remedial action – speaking up with greater moral clarity, holding public officials to account when they use racist or divisive language, enhancing laws and legal mechanisms to deal with hate, continuing to support antisemitism education and more.
We have learned that there is so much more antisemitism in the community than is reported. From local councils telling us they have worked with community groups that publish material condemning “white Jewish pigs”, to bureaucrats telling us the difficulty with taking action against the rampant anti-Jewish hate being shared on video games.
We have learnt that there is a lack of understanding about the Jewish community, about our connection to Israel and about our current apprehension about our place in Australian society.
We have also learnt that we have many allies from all walks of life who are taking a myriad of actions – small and large – to address the problem.
On the whole, the meetings have gone well and we are generally well-received. But in the meantime, the situation has deteriorated further. We are now seeing a shift to overt discrimination of Jews.
I have grown up in Australia, and I am a keen student of local Jewish history, particularly here in Victoria.
In a chapter of Jews and Australian Politics, Emeritus Professor Andrew Markus writes that in the early decades of the 20th century “open expression of antisemitism and a degree of discrimination was a feature of Australian life”. Jews, he wrote, were denied entry to the Melbourne Stock Exchange and membership of various social and sporting clubs.
In What is Golf, Les Kausman writes that Melbourne’s Cranbourne Golf Club was set up in 1951 so Jewish players, indeed players of all minorities, had a place where they were welcome to play golf.
I am acutely aware that a number of successful law firms were formed by Jewish lawyers who were not offered job opportunities in the establishment firms in the mid-20th century.
But I recognise these accounts as historical. It did not ever cross my mind that they could be cyclical; that a few decades on, we are once again starting to record an uptick in overt discrimination.
There is one big difference between now and then though. Discrimination is now prohibited by law in Victoria under the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 and in NSW under the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977.
In 2023, NSW introduced a number of important provisions against religious vilification. The Victorian Act explicitly prohibits both direct discrimination and indirect discrimination on the basis of religion, and is unique in that it also requires organisations to take action to prevent discrimination, referred to as “positive action” in the act.
Employers, schools and universities, service providers and sporting clubs, among others, have a duty under the Victorian Act to actively prevent discrimination.
It should not, however, take a law like the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act to force action to stop discrimination against Jewish Australians.
In the face of emerging evidence of discrimination against Australian Jews, we must demand a renewed focus from state government departments, local government, health care services, universities and organisations big and small, to take steps to eliminate discrimination against Jewish people.
The first step is acknowledging it exists. The second step is educating leaders to recognise it. The next step is to take action, as determined by law, when it does happen.
We won’t sit back and watch Australia slip back to a time when Jews were routinely discriminated against in public life. We have to work with the laws that are already in place to crack down on rising discrimination.
Naomi Levin in CEO of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV).
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