Sport no longer feels safe
From football fields to netball courts, antisemitism in Australia is becoming disturbingly normalised.
Just last Thursday, the president of AJAX Junior Football Club told the Royal Commission about Jewish players as young as seven being subjected to antisemitic abuse on Melbourne sporting fields.
Swapping Melbourne for Sydney and the field for the court, just two days later the now infamous incident played out of a netball mum allegedly saying “f**k the Jews, they all should be eradicated”.
If ever Commissioner Virginia Bell needed confirmation that the testimony she heard is still being lived by Jews in Australia right now, that was it.
42-year-old Jody Scarcella, who claims she “has absolutely no problem with the Jewish community” and that her words were taken “well and truly out of context”, may find herself embroiled in this and will have her day in court – that of the legal kind – but this isn’t really even about her.
It’s about what has happened to a society when no one thinks twice about the consequences of expressing hate against others. It’s about how fractured and broken that society has become.
We opined here two weeks ago that “It would seem that not even the knowledge that antisemitism is being probed at the highest level is enough to make those who espouse it think twice before hatefully injecting their poisonous discourse into the public arena.”
And indeed, there has been much vitriol aired in Australia even in the 14 days since we wrote that, not just alongside the Royal Commission hearings but brazenly, in commentary about them.
Antisemitism has actually become that normalised, and as Special Envoy Jillian Segal told the Royal Commission last week “almost fashionable”.
Of course, while this latest netball incident has plenty of people talking, in the grand scheme of things one could argue it is actually a minor incident. But that is not the point.
Nearly every Australian child plays sport. It is a fun and social activity where they make friends and memories. They learn about sportsmanship, respect and a “fair go”. It is a time-honoured Aussie rite of passage.
And if this celebrated tradition, with all it stands for, has been infected, it shows how much trouble Australia is actually in.
For anyone who doubted why we are having a Royal Commission, this is your answer.