Witnesses on the fifth day of the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion have told of having their safe spaces destroyed as anti-Jewish hatred became normalised in Australia after the war in Gaza.
Witnesses described being bullied, harassment, in fear or discriminated against in schools, on public transport, at a Mardi Gras parade and in their own homes by housemates.
The first witness, known by the pseudonym Benjamin F, told the inquiry that the shadow of the Bondi massacre left him feeling unsafe in areas of Sydney he had previously enjoyed.
He detailed what he described as the “scariest moment of my life” at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras which he attended with a Jewish LGBTQIA+ community group.
Throughout the parade he spoke about the hate crowds hurled at his group and then an incident afterwards where a van passed by and shouted “f...k the Jews”.
“I was scared for my life. It was a guttural fear that I generally thought we were going to be attacked,” he said.
“I felt that after the massacre in Bondi, what was a terrible feeling of anti-Semitism in Australia had ramped up.
“I was scared to reveal myself as a Jewish person walking up Oxford Street in an area that I once thought was safe and progressive. It was a real and genuine fear.”
In an emotional testimony, he spoke about converting to Judaism after being raised in a Roman Catholic environment and how it was a “second coming out” for him.
While he said it was a “very positive experience in coming out” with his sexuality, he told how lost friends and faced “quite horrific” discrimination when converting his religion.
“I’ve lost friends, lifelong friends and companions who’ve abandoned me,” Benjamin said between sobs.
“With the Jewish community, the level of hatred that I felt towards myself and those around me has been profound,” he said.
“I’ve been subjected to slurs. I’ve been called a genocide supporter. I’ve been told that I’m immoral.”
High school graduate Maya Hockey also appeared before the inquiry on Friday and told how she received slurs about Hilter and gas chambers from classmates after finding out she was Jewish.
Her brother’s peers started a group chat titled “swastikas” where “kids all sent photos of themselves heiling Hitler”.
“The immediate recognition of what a Jew was was associated with anti-Semitic comments such as coming up to me and heilling Hitler or telling me that I should be gassed. These were 12-year-old kids,” she said.
“That was really my experience throughout that almost entire year of my first year of high school.”
Ms Hockey said the bullying made her feel an “extreme sense of embarrassment” about her Jewishness, which she felt compelled to hide.
“Eventually I developed a connection with the Jewish community, and I made connections, and really started to feel proud of my identity and embraced it,” she said.
“I would try to educate people. And sometimes I had really constructive conversations, and I had my friends engage and want to learn more.
“Other times, I would have kids tell me that I was playing the ‘Jew card’, or that anti-Semitism was just a word made up for Jews to victimise themselves.”
Mia Kline told the inquiry how she was kicked out of a Canberra sharehouse for her Zionist views.
Ms Kline had taught Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the Jewish Community Centre in Canberra and was the co-head of the ACT’s Jewish youth movement when she was living with two other women.
In May 2024, her former housemates held a meeting to ask her to move our as they felt uncomfortable living with her, she said.
“My housemates started speaking about how for the past couple of months, since October 7 and the war, they felt like they’ve been walking on eggshells in the house around me.
“That the house wasn’t a safe space for them to have tough political conversations about current events.
“That they couldn’t reconcile my views with their values, and that we couldn’t live under one roof.
“This was all in relation to me being a Zionist — a proud, visible Zionist — and they said that they couldn’t live with me. I was sitting there distraught. I was sobbing.”
She described feeling she was put on trial after the October 7 Hamas terror attack.
“When they saw a Jewish person, they felt that it was appropriate or welcomed to ask questions,” she said.
“About the IDF, the current government of the day in Israel, the mere existence of a country. And they were asking me those questions directly.”
Aaron Guttmann described a similar fear in public places to that of Benjamin F.
Mr Guttmann said he stopped taking public transport over concerns for his personal safety.
He also described how a pro-Palestine protest at Sydney Opera House on October 9 — just days after Jews were murdered at the Nova music festival in a Hamas terror attack — perpetuated his fears.
“The reports that were coming out ‘where are the Jews?’. The Sydney Opera House. Reports in Melbourne that there were people driving around the streets after October 7 saying ‘where are the Jews?’, ‘we want to get them’.
“There were neo-nazis going on trains looking for Jewish people.
“I am proud of being Jewish, but I also know my personal safety was at risk.”
He also shared how his family would face slurs while taking part in community sports, including his children hearing remarks about Hilter at soccer games attended by children aged 11 to 15.
“There were comments made about ‘gassing the Jews’ around ‘Hitler doing what’s right’.
“It’s traumatic for parents to hear what the kids are listening to, let alone the kids themselves.”
Jewish studies educator Sharonne Blum raised her concerns with the normalisation of anti‑Jewish hatred in Australian media and online, saying it had impacted her and her students.
‘’(Israel) is perceived as a kind of demonic monster and all the things Western civilisation feels guilty for, like colonisation, apartheid and genocide,’‘ she said.
She listed a number of examples in Australia since October 7, including slogans like “from the river to the sea” or “globalise the intifada” at rallies and the doxxing of Jewish creatives.
She also described seeing anti-Semitic tropes online which were anti‑Jewish and Holocaust inversions, depicting Israel as Nazis and Gaza as Auschwitz.
It included a cartoon from the Australian Financial Review which depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu riding a blimp with the face of Donald Trump.
Ms Blum said the publication of the cartoon — for which the newspaper has apologised — was “horrendous”.
“There are conspiracy theories and tropes . . .Jews control the media, Jews control politics, we are somehow nefarious puppet masters working behind the curtains,” Ms Blum said.
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