Sydney<\/a> hospital had threatened to kill Jewish patients.<\/p>\n\u201cI spent probably the worst 24 hours of my life imagining all the ways I could be killed legitimately in a hospital, particularly in the operating theatre, from putting toxic drugs into an IV to overdosing me on anaesthetic,\u201d she said. \u201cI was paralysed with fear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarah, a clinical psychologist, said Jewish Australians were seeking psychological healthcare as they faced growing harassment, from children asking \u201cwhy do they hate us?\u201d to adult academics.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have so many people that I\u2019m seeing currently that are not welcome any more in academic spaces or in places of profession,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Sarah, who did not share her surname, said she had faced that exclusion herself. She and other Jewish colleagues left a Facebook group of about 2,500 clinical psychologists, after some were accused of taking \u201cthe side of the oppressor\u201d for asking the group to avoid discussing Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat no longer became a safe place for us,\u201d Sarah said.<\/p>\n
Jillian Segal, the government\u2019s special envoy to combat antisemitism, said young Australians had become especially hostile to Jewish people. Conflation of the Israeli government with Jewish people was Australia\u2019s \u201cfastest-growing\u201d form of antisemitism, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost fashionable, so if someone that they follow online, an influencer, is of that view, they adopt that view,\u201d Segal said.<\/p>\n
Leading figures in Australian society had also been hesitant to speak out against antisemitism, both due to a lack of understanding and a fear of blowback, but that had changed since the Bondi terror attack, Segal said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been contacted by many leaders since then, wanting to be more engaged,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been a realisation that what the Jewish community was experiencing and complaining about \u2026 wasn\u2019t a collection of isolated incidents, it wasn\u2019t an exaggeration, it was very real and very dangerous for the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Workplace shame<\/p>\n
The fourth day of hearings at the royal commission heard from Jewish Australians who had been targeted in the workplace and lost work over anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiment.<\/p>\n
One woman, speaking under the pseudonym ABM, said she had left an Australian-owned global company after her chief executive asked her to use a \u201cless obviously Jewish\u201d name.<\/p>\n
The employee said she had last year replaced an Israel-based employee who had left after an overseas stakeholder in a \u201cbig commercial partnership\u201d declared it did not want to work with the company\u2019s Israeli division.<\/p>\n
ABM said she had been advised by the company\u2019s chief executive to use a different name and to changeher email signature and internal directories. She agreed, feeling she had no choice, but resigned months later.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt a sense of shame that I hadn\u2019t felt before,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really made me question whether or not I can be outwardly and openly Jewish in professional workplaces.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephanie Cunio, a longtime Sydney trade unionist and climate activist, said she felt she had to step down from the board of a green advocacy group as younger members fought the leadership to campaign against Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got called up by a board member and the board member said: \u2018I know this is getting very difficult for you, um, you know, maybe you should consider leaving,\u2019\u201d Cunio said.<\/p>\n
An Israeli musician, speaking under the pseudonym ABK, said he had taken a break from performing, affecting his income, after facing protesters at his show and campaigns to cancel his performances.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m forced now to call venues upfront and tell them you might get hate because I\u2019m Israeli, which I\u2019ve done just now, just a few weeks ago\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am scared to play and I\u2019m always thinking: \u2018Is there someone in the crowd that knows that I\u2019m Israeli and is here with a gun?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Others saw their workplaces destroyed, with the owners of Lewis\u2019 Continental Kitchen telling the commission of the alleged targeted attack that burned down their kosher restaurant in Bondi in 2024.<\/p>\n
Judith Lewis told the inquiry she had lost the restaurant she and her family had set up and run for 54 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people came and met there, and were able to sit and eat and then see other people there, it was a communal centre,\u201d Lewis said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, it\u2019s devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jewish Australians have been told to use \u201cless obviously Jewish\u201d names, felt pressure to resign and been verbally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-655325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}