Royal Commission: Antisemitism soars across Australia

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:01][music] >> Welcome to the Times of Israel's daily briefing. Today is Thursday, May 21st, and I am your host, Gabriella Jacobs, here from our Jerusalem studio. Today, I'm going to be speaking with Naomi Kaltman, an Australian lawyer and journalist. Welcome, Naomi. Thanks for having me back.

[00:00:22]>> Of course.

[00:00:23]Naomi has been closely following the Australian Royal Commission on antisemitism and social cohesion. Over the past few months, the commission has heard tons of evidence and testimony, but many questions still remain as to what it can achieve and whether it will lead to meaningful change. Over the past few weeks, specifically, the commission has focused on hearing the testimonies of Jewish Australians on their experiences following October 7th. So, Naomi, before we talk about what's been going on the past few weeks, can you give us a brief background on what exactly the commission is, what its goals are, and where we are in the process right now? So, a Royal Commission is Australia's highest form of public inquiry.

[00:01:09]It's usually headed by like a super subject expert, someone who's got very deep knowledge, or most often a retired judge. High Court in Australia has a retirement age, I think it's 70 off hand, so High Court judges will often head these commissions, and they've got sweeping powers. So, they can investigate matters of public law, of public importance.

[00:01:34]The kind of Royal Commissions that we've seen in Australia in the last few years have been like on institutional child sex abuse, looking at different religions and different institutions and how they handle child sex abuse. We had a banking Royal Commission scandal-ridden banks in Australia. So, the Royal Commission into antisemitism and social cohesion, it was a bit of a fight to get here. In the immediate aftermath of the Bondi attack in December 2025, the Australian government was obviously very concerned that something of this nature could happen. Uh it was a first mass gun violence event in Australia in approximately 30 years. So, they promised an inquiry um led by Australia's the equivalent of like what is it? The CIA? The FBI? One of those? It's It's called ASIO.

[00:02:22]And it was going to be like a look at like the security failings. But, immediately the Jewish community in Australia felt very strongly that only a royal commission with its sweeping powers, with a a retired justice at the head of it, that would be able to really deeply investigate what went wrong in Australia to allow a terrorist attack of this nature to target Australia's Jewish community would be sufficient. And why do we want a royal commission? I guess there's a few reasons. Number one, almost all royal commission recommendations are adopted whole sale by government. So, the government will actually appoint a commissioner for in this case in with the anti-Semitism royal commission, it's her name's Virginia Bell and she's a retired high court justice. So, she's she's been appointed by government, but she has independent powers. She can compel witnesses to come forward. She will write interim reports and a final report. And those recommendations will almost certainly be adopted by the government. They're going to shape law and policy in this country. So, when the Prime Minister didn't really want a royal commission, he said, "No, I'm dealing with it. I've got this security investigation."

[00:03:31]Our community as a Jewish community felt, "No.

[00:03:34]You reserve royal commissions in Australia for things that are of the highest and most important areas of public policy or failings.

[00:03:43]We felt that the Bondi attack was at that level. And although the Prime Minister originally refused, there was a massive lobbying effort, not just by our community, but eventually um business leaders, former Olympians, Australian sports stars, entertainment, all sectors of Australian society had a sustained campaign. And in the end, the Prime Minister decided, all right, fine, I'll do the Royal Commission.

[00:04:07]So, it started um this past January, and it's going to spend the next 12 months investigating what went wrong in terms of antisemitism in this country. It will also look at the attack in Bondi, but very carefully because there's a concurrent separate criminal and terrorism trial for the one of the surviving shooters. And it will make recommendations to the government.

[00:04:30]So, about 2 weeks ago, it released its first interim report, which was adopted with some policy recommendations, which was adopted. And what happened in the past 2 weeks was the first public hearings by members of the Jewish community and also non-Jews who had witnessed antisemitism in Australia. They're New York you write a written submission, and then the commission can ask you to come and appear before it if you consent to that.

[00:04:56]So, all the people who came through had provided written submissions. Okay, great. Thank you for that overview. And I definitely want to focus more on what Jewish Australians are actually saying in these testimonies. But first, we're going to go to a quick break.

[00:05:11]>> [music] >> And we are back.

[00:05:16]So, since it's beginning, this commission has pivoted to be much more focused on the testimonies of Jewish Australians on their experiences of antisemitism in Australia since October the 7th. Would you be able to tell me a bit about what the Jewish community in Australia has been experiencing, and what they've been saying in these testimonies? Yeah, I'll just sort of give a little bit of an overview. So, if you have experienced antisemitism in Australia since October 7, 2023, the commission has asked you to submit a written sort of document which outlines exactly you can make a submission online. So, about what that experience was like for you. And it's not actually limited to Australian Jews. If you're non-Jewish and you've witnessed antisemitism, you can also make a submission. So, to date, about 12,000 submissions have been received. And about 2/3 of them, about 8,000, are from Australian Jews.

[00:06:16]But, about a third are actually from non-Jews. So, the people who have come to the commission have come from all walks of life. The first person to be called to the Royal Commission in this block of hearings is actually Shayna Gutnik. So, Shayna is from Melbourne and her father, Rouvin Morrison, was murdered in the Bondi attack while he was trying to fight back against the terrorists with his bare hands. He threw a brick at them. He's on footage being extremely brave in the face of very terrible circumstances.

[00:06:49]So, she she testified about walking in a shopping center in Australia while wearing her Magen David, her Star of David, and someone told her, "Effing terrorist." And she spoke about when one of her daughters, she has children and one of her daughters needed a procedure in a hospital, she was very very scared.

[00:07:06]I don't know if you saw the video, but went viral in Australia where Max Vayfa, who is an Israeli, I guess he's a like he used to shoot English, but he sits on chat rooms and chats people around the world and he chatted two Australian nurses in a hospital in Western Sydney who made threats and said that they would kill Israeli patients who come to his to their hospital.

[00:07:30]So, ever since that happened, Australian Jews have been scared to go into the public hospital system not knowing if it's someone who's going to threaten them or do something horrible to to We had a paramedic who has been working as a paramedic for many years, but experienced um a 90-something-year-old patient who did a heil Hitler salute. He was like, "What are you doing?" And the the man said, "Oh, well, I'm an old Nazi." Cuz he noticed his skullcap, his kippah, of the paramedic who was treating him. Or um we heard from uh somebody who went to the Australian Open, a big major tennis um competition that we host, the one of the Grand Slams in Melbourne every year, in the immediate aftermath of Bondi, and the people sitting next to them said, "Ah, I wish that they'd killed more Jews at Bondi." Something to that effect. So, quite shocking testimony. We also heard from non-Jews. So, there was a teacher in Tasmania. Tasmania is a really small state at the bottom of Australia. It's actually detached. It's got a a Bass Strait. It's got a river a water body between the mainland and a non-Jewish teacher who teaches in a Tasmanian public school said that there was shocking antisemitism in the school where she taught. Um people who are testifying at the Royal Commission like news their surnames they want, they can use to say first name, they can use a pseudonym. And because we've just heard really terrible things, threats against Jewish schools, against Jewish businessmen. So, it's been quite a shocking 2 weeks of testimony um which really focused on the experience of Australian Jews since October 7, 2023.

[00:09:08]And if you understand the history of Jews in this country, it's quite shocking to most Australian Jews. This isn't a country that historically considered itself to have a problem with antisemitism. There was no entrenched antisemitism. Jews reached the highest levels of government, philanthropy, business, the arts.

[00:09:24]Most people who came here are the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors who had a huge and per capita who came to Australia after the war. So, quite shocking testimony. And we even had Holocaust survivors come and testify at the commission about the terrifying experience of coming to a country which you thought was going to be safe and has historically been safe and watch what it's been like since October 7, 2023.

[00:09:49]It's really shocking. And as an Australian Jew yourself, you live in Melbourne.

[00:09:55]Have you noticed this in your community?

[00:09:58]Is it something that you see around you this this change since October 7th? So I originally wasn't sure if I was going to put in a submission to the burrow commission into anti-Semitism. I live in Caulfield, which is a deeply Jewish suburb.

[00:10:11]Obviously, I've got non-Jewish friends, but mainly I hang out in Jewish circles.

[00:10:16]So I thought I thought about it a bit more and I and I had like one particular disturbing incident where it was a few months after October 7th.

[00:10:26]I've got a bunch of kids. We're at the park. It was just about afternoon. My oldest son got into a fight with another kid over a swing. That's a pretty normal sort of kid thing to do. And the kid's dad lifted up his his jumper, his sweater.

[00:10:42]He was wearing a free Palestine t-shirt and he goes to my son, "Do you know whose side I'm on? I'm not on your side." My son here was 7 years of age at the time and I was like I think that's anti-Semitism. That's like what is going on? I was so shocked and my son was like, "Mommy, do you know what he did to me?" Like it was a really terrible experience and he still brings it up. It was almost a year ago and he still brings it up with me from time to time.

[00:11:05]So I thought, "No, I think that was pretty serious." And then you have smaller things where you know, I bumped into a former work colleague. He was complaining about someone who was being annoying at his new workplace and he goes "Oh, you would know what they're like.

[00:11:18]They're part of your mob." And I was like, "What do you mean? Like they're Jewish? Is that Is that what I didn't say anything cuz it was like really off-putting in the moment, but I was like, "No, that was anti-Semitic." So I put together a submission and in the scale of like how severe my experience of anti-Semitism is low in Australia, but I still have had incidents. And if you have asked me prior to October 7th, no, I had never experienced antisemitism, neither had my parents are both born in Australia, three out of four of my grandparents were even born in Australia. No, we didn't think antisemitism we knew there were isolated incidents, but was antisemitism something we dealt with on a day-to-day basis? Absolutely not. And things have really changed when Jews have events in this country now, there's no location anymore on them. And events, you know, like I went to Purim parties, they were advertising the security features for the children's events. Or like, you know, I took my son to a uh Lag Ba'omer, I took a bunch of my kids to a Lag Ba'omer party. And once again, my son saw that there's one single police car there and he was like, are we going to be safe? There's only one car.

[00:12:23]He's 8 years of age. Why does he even think about something like that? That's not how other people in this country live. There's no such devastating at a children's party for, you know, a pre-Christmas party in Melbourne, anywhere else, but that's how we as Jews live. And it and it's really, really hard. It's different. It's changing.

[00:12:40]>> It's it's really upsetting. Um and I want to move on to discuss whether this Royal Commission may actually affect any change, whether it can actually help the situation of the Australian Jewish community right now. But first, we're going to go to a quick break.

[00:13:00]>> [music] >> And we are back. So, we have been discussing the surge in antisemitism in Australia following October the 7th. And now I want to move on to discuss whether this Royal Commission actually will be able to affect any change in the Australian community. Um what are the recommendations of the commission so far? So, the commissioner released an interim report about two and a bit weeks ago, and it had 14 recommendations, including, you know, a national firearms registry, a buyback scheme, about sort of gun control elements.

[00:13:38]Five of the 14 recommendations were actually withheld on national security grounds, so we don't know what those recommendations were, but the government of the day has advised that it all 14 recommendations will be adopted into law, even though we don't know what five of those recommendations were.

[00:13:55]Will anything change is a complicated question, right? So, the commission will make findings at the end of the year, around the 1-year anniversary, so the attack in Bondi was on the I think it was the 15th of December, first night of Hanukkah. So, the report is due around then, and will what will the report say? I don't know, because it hasn't been released, but the Jewish community is hopeful that it will have some law reform, that it will have some greater protections of um I guess maybe some hate speech legislation that will better protect Jews, or maybe some recommendations that will allow the Australian government to expel people who vilify Jews.

[00:14:42]The question is not law reform, though, because at a sort of people level in the Jewish community, we've had plenty of legislation on Australia's books, even up till October and part of October 7, 2023.

[00:14:57]And the problem has been, I guess, understanding what the problem of antisemitism is, where is it coming from? Is it something that has always existed and was under the covers, and now it's open season against Jews, so now it's socially acceptable to say these things.

[00:15:10]So, we want the Royal Commission to hear from Australian Jews, and we hope it's shocking to average Australian citizens that this is how our community is living, and we really feel like having the chance to be heard is important.

[00:15:25]But you need, I guess, a systemic change in this country because for the last 2 and 1/2 years, a lot of this anti-Semitic rhetoric or anti-Semitic activity that was always a little bit on the fringes has sort of crept into the mainstream.

[00:15:39]It's got problems in universities and the arts and culture sections of our society in Australia.

[00:15:45]So, it's about really thinking through and you obviously want to be careful that free speech and you want to give people the right to free speech. But for example, in my city in Melbourne, for about 2 years, almost every single week in our central business district in the downtown area of our city, there was protest. And I think people should have the right to protest.

[00:16:06]But every almost every single week, there was incitement and vilification of Jews at these protests and nothing happened. Or there was that famous protest on the 9th of No- 9th of October 2023 outside the Sydney Opera House where people were chanting, "F the Jews" and "Where are the Jews?" And nobody got arrested, nobody got charged, nothing happened to these people. So, when that kind of stuff is happening, we It doesn't help if there's more laws on the books.

[00:16:34]We already have laws to deal with these things. Nothing has happened.

[00:16:37]So, I guess it's a question of balancing. We want recommendations, we need things to change, but it can't be socially acceptable to vilify and incite against Australia's Jewish community. If I think that the average Australian, they're a pretty personal kind person, they're chill, they're hanging out on the beach, they're living their best life, they don't actually hate Jews. But I really want the Royal Commission to sort of investigate, where is this hate coming from?

[00:17:02]If it is a problem with different groups being brought here that are radicalized against the Jewish community or if it is a problem of incitement that hasn't been cracked down on and it's been allowed to fester. I really want the Royal Commission to investigate that and give recommendations and deal with those specific problems rather than wholesale legislation which we've had but has been less effective than we would have hoped in protecting our community up until this point.

[00:17:29]>> So, it's less about the legislation and more about the visibility and figuring out where this is stemming from in Australian society. Is that what you're saying? Absolutely. And do you think that the commission will accomplish that? I know it's early to say, but if you have any thoughts on it, I'd love to hear. Well, I'd like to be optimistic and say, yes, they're going to be able to figure it out.

[00:17:52]But, I would be lying if I say I have full confidence they're going to be able to figure it out. I don't know is the answer. It's worrying. It's scary. I've got little kids. My husband and I were building our lives here in our early 30s.

[00:18:05]And you keep having this horrible thought, right? Because I'm the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor who came to this country seeking safety after his mother was murdered, his father was murdered, his baby brother was murdered, his big sister was murdered. He's sole survivor. And he chose Australia because it was really far from Europe and he chose Australia because there was no anti-Semitism that wasn't entrenched like it was in Europe.

[00:18:28]So, when you're here and you look at the history of my family, it's not of abstract. This is my family's history.

[00:18:36]I'm sitting here and I I was just saying to my grandpa, like, why didn't your family leave Czechoslovakia? It was bad for a long time. And he always said, well, my dad had a business and we had our whole lives there and we had a shop there. Like, we weren't going to leave.

[00:18:48]So, I think about it, you know, I've got five kids. I've got a mortgage. I've got a job. I've got a lot on. I don't really want to leave, but then am I being stupid to stay here when the writing is on the wall? Is Is everything going to continue to escalate where it's going to be unbearable for Jewish people? Like, we we had already a period of escalation where there was incitement against our community. And then there was um the the attempted arson attack of the East Melbourne Hebrew congregation and there was the actual arson attack on the Adass Israel congregation where they burned down a synagogue around the corner from my house and they do being graffiti on Jewish shops in Sydney and in Melbourne and like and then they killed 15 Jews on the beach in Sydney.

[00:19:28]So what what am I waiting for? Am I being stupid? But then at sometime I love this country. I'm so proud to be Australian. I always loved being here. I haven't wanted to live anywhere else. So I think these are the really hard conversations that Australian Jews are having right now because we love this country. We feel part of this country.

[00:19:46]A royal commission can do so much. You can investigate it. You can you can do the work. You can try and do the work.

[00:19:52]But what happens if something has changed that's not going back to how it was on the 6th of October 2023 when I thought this was the best country on earth to be born as a Jew and to live as a Jew. I don't know if we're going back and that's what's scary.

[00:20:06]>> That is extremely scary and it's an it's extremely tough to have to have these conversations.

[00:20:12]Um, thank you so much for sharing with me Noemi. This has been the Times of Israel's daily briefing. Once again, I am your host Gabriella Jacobs and this episode was produced by Ari Schlaht. If you have any questions about this episode or any other, please reach out to us at [email protected].

[00:20:32]Thank you so much for listening and tune in tomorrow for another installment.

[00:20:36]Have a wonderful day.

[00:20:37]>> [music]