Hate in Queensland
"Queensland Holocaust survivors say antisemitism today reminds them of the demonisation and propaganda their families experienced in Nazi Germany in the 1930s," says Jason Steinberg.
Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies president Jason Steinberg has declared “the hate toward our relatively small Jewish community must stop” after a man was assaulted in Brisbane last week for wearing a pro-Israel T-shirt.
In the incident on February 17, the man said he was called a “f**king Jew, Jew c**t”, before one of the assailants kicked him “right in the guts”.
“I have seen how quickly since the barbaric Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7 last year that people have descended into fanaticism in their unrelenting vilification of Israel, Jews and anyone who supports Israel’s right to exist,” Steinberg wrote in an op-ed last week.
“Now is the time for every political leader, at all levels, to call out hate and division whenever and wherever they see it.”
In the five months between October 1, 2023 and March 1, 2024 there were more than 60 incidents reported, in contrast to 47 for the whole year between October 1, 2022 and September 30, 2023.
These have included physical violence, verbal abuse, graffiti, social media abuse and the targeting of Jewish-owned businesses.
“Queensland Holocaust survivors say antisemitism today reminds them of the demonisation and propaganda their families experienced in Nazi Germany in the 1930s,” Steinberg said.
“Many Jews in Queensland are concerned, with some afraid to display their Jewish identity.”
He said whatever one’s view about the Israel–Hamas war, there is no excuse for bringing the hatreds of the war into Queensland or Australia.
“When the Greens and other far-left groups chant ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, this echoes Hamas’s open commitment to ‘obliterate’ Israel,” Steinberg said.
“Accusing Israel of apartheid, genocide and other demonising epithets, is divorced from reality, but lays the psychological groundwork to act out Hamas’s call to ‘slaughter the Jews’. That’s why the number of antisemitic incidents has sky-rocketed.”
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