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Antisemitic Incidents in Australia Quadruple to Record High Since Oct. 7 Attack, New Report Says
A war memorial in Canberra was vandalized by anti-Israel graffiti. Photo: Screenshot
Antisemitism in Australia quadrupled to record levels over the past year, with Australian Jews experiencing more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, according to a new report published by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), an organization which advocates upholding the civil rights of the country’s some 120,000 Jewish citizens.
During the year following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, a total of 2,062 anti-Jewish incidents were recorded in Australia, far more than the 495 documented in the previous 12-month period and the most since the ECAJ began tracking such data in 1990.
Notably, the total did not include antisemitic statements made on social media. However, the figure did include dozens of assaults and hundreds of incidents of property destruction and hate speech. Physical assaults recorded by the group jumped from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. The level of antisemitism for the past year was six times the average of the preceding 10 years.
“Whilst the number of reported antisemitic incidents has fluctuated from year to year previously, there has never been anything like an annual increase of this magnitude,” ECAJ research director Julie Nathan said in a statement accompanying the report. “If anything, the raw numbers understate the seriousness of the surge in antisemitism that has occurred. There have been many new forms and expressions of anti-Jewish racism that would once have been considered alien to Australia but which have become commonplace.”
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, the number of attacks on Jews — digital, political, and physical — has skyrocketed in Australia since Hamas’s atrocities last Oct. 7. In just the first seven and a half weeks after the onslaught, antisemitic activity in Australia increased by a staggering 591 percent, according to a tally of incidents by the ECAJ.
In one notorious episode in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, hundreds of pro-Hamas protesters gathered outside the Sydney Opera House chanting “gas the Jews,” “f—k the Jews,” and other epithets.
The explosion of hate also included vandalism and threats of gun violence, as well as incidents such as a brutal attack on a Jewish man in a park in Sydney. The man was walking through a children’s playground in Arncliffe when he spotted an advertisement for a pro-Palestinian rally that had already been held and was mostly torn, according to Sky News Australia. He “absent-mindedly” tore the rest of it down, the report noted, but a father at the children’s playground saw him and approached, asking if he supported Israel and threatening, “I will murder you.”
Frightened, the man called the police, but they did not arrive before an anti-Israel mob of men and women quickly encircled him, shouting slurs and insults. Someone reportedly thumped him on the back of his head, knocking him to the ground. Then, three men joined in and proceeded to punch and kick him while calling him a “pro-Jew dog” among other names.
ECAJ’s report included other similar incidents. For example, a male assailant repeatedly punched a Jewish man while screaming “dirty rotten Jew c—t”; a group of young men jumped a Jewish boy, whom they called a “dirty Jew”; and pro-Hamas protesters “spat on, threatened, and kicked” an elderly Jewish woman during a demonstration held to raise awareness of antisemitism.
Anti-Israel sentiment has also led to vandalism. In June, the US consulate in Sydney was vandalized and defaced by a man carrying a sledgehammer who smashed the windows and graffitied inverted red triangles on the building. The inverted red triangle has become a common symbol at pro-Hamas rallies. The Palestinian terrorist group, which rules Gaza, has used inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “the red triangle is now used to represent Hamas itself and glorify its use of violence.”
Weeks later, multiple memorials near the Australian War Memorial were defaced with anti-Israel graffiti. The messages included “Free Palestine,” “Free Gaza,” “Blood on your hands,” and “From the river to the sea” — the last of which is a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
At other times, according to ECAJ’s findings, perpetrators targeted Jewish institutions, homes, and places of work and worship. In March, someone threw a rock through the window of a synagogue in Melbourne. In Sydney last November, a family’s mezuzah was stolen from their door. Months later, in June, the office of Member of Parliament (MP) Josh Burns was violently vandalized, with the perpetrators shattering windows, lighting fires, and graffitiing “Zionism is Fascism” on the building. In one of the most disturbing incidents of the year, someone sent a message to a synagogue which said, “We will blow up your building and cut your heads off soon. Gas a jew [sic].”
The list from the report continued — for example, citing the graffitiing of “kill Jews, Jews live here” on an apartment building and the depiction of Jews as inhuman, demonic creatures — demonstrating the extent to which antisemitism in Australia has become normalized.
So far, ECAJ added in its statement, few leaders have stepped up to denounce the explosion of hatred.
“With a few honorable exceptions, the response from political and community leaders, university executives, and civil society has been tepid at best. The result has been a ratcheting up of antisemitism from hateful words to steadily more serious hateful actions,” Nathan said. “If it was thought that anti-Jewish racism was a thing of the past and defeated, the last 12 months has shown that it has been cynically reactivated and stoked for political purposes. The physical, verbal, and other forms of attacks on Jewish individuals, families, and community venues will continue to worsen unless governments, police, and others show some spine by taking resolute action to halt the rising tide of acts of hatred against the Jewish community and bringing those responsible to account.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Antisemitic Incidents in Australia Quadruple to Record High Since Oct. 7 Attack, New Report Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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The BBC Slandered Israel — and Then Made a Lazy Correction
The BBC logo is seen at the entrance at Broadcasting House, the BBC headquarters in central London. Photo by Vuk Valcic / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The BBC corrected its article, originally titled “Malnourished Gazan Woman Flown to Italy Dies In Hospital,” about Gaza leukemia patient Marah Salah Mahmoud Zohry (or Marah Abu Zuhri), who died after being transferred to Italy for medical treatment.
The correction was done in tandem with a statement by a BBC spokesperson on Monday, admitting that the outlet was “not initially aware” of Zohry’s aggressive leukemia condition:
We were not initially aware that Marah Abu Zuhri was being treated for leukemia. In line with usual editorial practice, we added this to the story after the Israeli authorities put the information into the public domain, in what the hospital has described as ‘a very complex clinical picture’. We have amended the original headline and tweet and added an explanatory note.
As we wrote on X:
In a statement, a BBC spokesperson acknowledged that the broadcaster was “not initially aware that Zohry was being treated for leukemia.”
Because it’s not like @BBCNews to assume that Israel is responsible for every Palestinian misfortune without bothering to verify, right?
https://t.co/Uj5gDo7wqE pic.twitter.com/YCj03xPa3p
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 19, 2025
The UK outlet initially reported that Zohry “was severely emaciated” and “suffered severe loss of weight and muscle” when she passed away in the hospital, in addition to regurgitating Italian news outlets’ reports that “she was suffering from severe malnutrition.”
However, no further investigation was conducted to verify the information, such as requesting medical reports or obtaining a statement from COGAT, which would have helped facilitate Zohry’s transfer.
The correction came after the BBC was exposed by COGAT and subsequently criticized online for not getting a proper verification of her condition before her death.
Still no correction or update from @BBCNews.
If it had been an Israeli hospital or Israeli news agencies issuing statements, you can bet BBC Verify, the corporation’s pitiful fact-checking department, would have been all over it.
But in this case? They just wouldn’t bother. https://t.co/cmotmaw4UO pic.twitter.com/w9cWKrfoF6
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 17, 2025
It’s probable to assume that verification would have been easy to obtain for the BBC. Still, it would also appear that these facts would fracture the BBC and the rest of Western media’s favorite narrative that Israel is deliberately starving Gaza.
While a minimal correction of COGAT’s statement saying she was a cancer patient was made inside the article, it failed to mention that the Israeli body offered to get Zohry evacuated even earlier for treatment. Not to mention, the BBC still managed to get it wrong on X the second time around:
The BBC had the opportunity to issue a proper correction, but they chose to omit her cause of death again. Why?
BBC’s Reputation Already Shredded
It’s routine for the BBC to come under fire for its bias while covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This summer alone has witnessed several scandals:
- Earlier this month, a report that supposedly investigated two killings of little Gazan girls in November 2023, during the early days of the war, failed to provide context of the guerrilla urban warfare environment in which Hamas hides behind civilians, and uses them in combat with the IDF.
- In July, the broadcasting outlet took a documentary down from its streaming platform about the Israel-Hamas war, titled “Gaza: How to Survive A Warzone,” when the narrator was exposed as a Hamas minister’s son, without being transparent about who he was. It was also discovered that the interviewee’s language was sanitized by translating the Arabic word for “Jews” as “Israelis,” among others.
- In the same month, a Zoom call with the CEO of news, Deborah Turness, was leaked, in which Turness implored employees to make a distinction between the Hamas political wing and the military wing, even though both are declared a terror organization in the UK.
- In June, it aired an antisemitic and inciting performance by rap duo Bob Vylan, with chants of “death, death to the IDF.”
And the rest of the time? The BBC consistently takes Hamas’ word as fact, while casting doubt on Israel’s.
Yet another flub from the BBC — but it’s obvious that when it sees an opportunity to further an anti-Israel agenda, it’s happy to throw journalistic integrity out the window.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Anti-Israel Bias in UK Hospitals Alarms Jewish Patients, Fueling Fears of Global Trend
University College London Hospital. Photo: Tagishsimon via Wikimedia Commons
Two recent incidents at hospitals in the UK fit a troubling pattern of Jews feeling unsafe due to medical professionals expressing antisemitism or even outright threats of death against Israelis.
The University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH Trust) has issued an apology following a patient’s complaints about the placement of anti-Israel posters at a facility.
“I’m an outpatient but God forbid in other circumstances to feel so vulnerable already and be surrounded by hostility would be so scary,” the unnamed female patient told the group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), fearful of receiving subpar treatment if the hospital staff discovered she was Jewish. “I shouldn’t have to remove my Star of David necklace to go to a hospital visit.”
The poster read:
Israel is starving and killing Palestinians in Gaza.
Children are being slaughtered beyond measure.
We have a voice, they don’t.
We are the generation that can influence the system & government.
Please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Do not let the mainstream media influence you. It is poison. Zionism is Poison.
People are being killed, just to show the world what is happening, see for yourself:
@eye.on.palestine
@lowkeyonline @Wearethepeace
@hossam_shbat @anasjamal44
If you can’t lift the injustice, at least tell everyone about it.
Free Palestine.
End Zionism.
David Probert, chief executive of UCLH Trust, released a statement on Sunday to UKLFI.
“Firstly, I would like to apologize on behalf of UCLH for the distress and upset caused by these posters. At UCLH, we value diversity and inclusivity, and we are committed to providing a fair and non-discriminatory service to all individuals, regardless of background,” Probert stated. “Following receipt of your letter, I promptly made internal enquiries and was informed that the posters were initially noticed last week. This matter was immediately treated as an incident, and all the posters were removed without delay.”
Probert added, “Senior members of staff conducted a walk-around to ensure no further posters remained. Additionally, the department’s newsletter addressed the incident, reminding staff of the Trust’s policy against displaying political messages and encouraging vigilance in identifying and removing any similar materials. Security personnel have also been instructed to remain alert.”
Caroline Turner, director of UKLFI, said that her organization welcomed the hospital’s taking down of the posters.
“We welcome UCLH’s prompt, proactive, and constructive engagement with this issue. UCLH’s actions will help preserve dignity, equality, neutrality, and respect within NHS spaces, particularly for Jewish patients seeking medical care,” she said in a statement.
Another instance of anti-Israel rhetoric at UK hospitals involves midwife Fatimah Mohamied, who resigned from her position after UKLFI highlighted her anti-Israel social media posts. Mohamied has now filed a claim against Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, alleging a violation of her rights.
“I have been subjected to a concerted and targeted effort to intimidate, harass, and punish me into silence for my Palestinian advocacy and criticism of Zionism,” Mohamied said. “I am taking legal action against my former employer to finally seek accountability for a campaign of harassment against me in the midst of a live genocide perpetrated by the Israeli state — I will not accept the attempts to silence me and those like me.”
Mohamied added, “Health=care workers in the NHS have the right to critique a colonial political ideology that has upheld an illegal occupation for decades and is responsible for violating universal values of health.”
Examples of Mohamied’s posts include her declaration “hell yeah!!!” on Oct. 8, 2023, one day after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, as she reshared the statement “Palestinians have a right to resist their occupation-we have a right to support them. It’s that simple.”
She also wrote on Oct. 7, 2023, that “Palestinian women have birthed under blockade and seige [sic] This is apartheid and like all apartheid, no justice or dignity can be found.” The post was in response to another social media user defending Hamas’s atrocities as a justified response to Israeli actions.
In another online comment, Mohamied wrote, “The problem lies in using Jewish cultural safety as a smokescreen to propagate colonialism, occupation, apartheid, and genocide as somehow acceptable. The problem here are the Zionist speakers you hold no qualm or shame to platform. There is no neutrality in degradation, there is no balance in ignoring opposition to Zionists, there is no innocence in hosting Zionists.”
Liana Wood, a partner at the legal firm Leigh Day representing Mohamied, said that the trust’s “referrals against Fatimah, made a year after she had stopped working for them, were an entirely disproportionate response to her lawful expressions of belief on her personal blog and social media accounts.” She added that “Fatimah’s case, which has parallels with other cases we have seen recently in the NHS, highlights the need for employers to resist pressure from lobby groups in such cases, and to carefully consider any potential infringement on an individual’s rights before taking action against them.”
These instances in the UK track with other reports from Jews around the world expressing discomfort with health-care providers’ antipathy toward Israel manifesting as violent threats.
In the Netherlands, for example, police opened an investigation into Batisma Chayat Sa’id, a nurse who allegedly stated she would administer lethal injections to Israeli patients.
Sa’id denied making the comments. “It seems someone is pretending to be me, posting false and defamatory statements,” she said. “I want to make it clear — I hold no hatred toward Jews or any people, race, religion, or identity.”
Last year, however, an account under her name also posted threatening messages aimed at Jewish people, including “Your time will come — don’t spare anyone,” and another in which she described the burial of Israelis in Gaza as “a dream come true.”
The nurse’s alleged threat mirrors a similar incident in Australia, in which video showed two nurses — Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh — posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements.
The widely circulated footage showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.
“Now they actually brag online about killing Israeli patients,” Shira Nussdorf, a US-born Jewish woman who moved from Israel to Australia six years ago, told The Algemeiner earlier this year when the video first emerged. “I don’t know how safe I would feel giving birth at that hospital.”
Following the incident, New South Wales authorities in Australia suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide. They were also charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, they face up to 22 years in prison.
A December 2024 study by the Data & Analytics Department of StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights group, found that 40 percent of 645 Jewish American health-care professionals surveyed reported experiencing antisemitism in the workplace. A similar study of Canadian Jewish health workers conducted last year reached 80 percent.
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First Charter Aliyah Flight Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 Attack Brings 225 Newcomers to Israel
New olim disembark at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport on the first charter aliyah flight since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, arriving to begin new lives in Israel. Photo: The Algemeiner
NEW YORK/TEL AVIV — Defying the uncertainty of war, 225 Jews arrived in Tel Aviv on the first charter aliyah flight since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, determined to start new lives and contribute to the country they now call home.
On Wednesday morning, Nefesh B’Nefesh — a nonprofit that promotes and facilitates aliyah from the United States and Canada — brought its 65th charter flight from New York to Tel Aviv.
Aliyah refers to the process of Jews immigrating to Israel.
With the most children yet on a single flight, this historic aliyah brought 45 families to their new homeland — 125 children among them, ranging from the youngest at 9 months to the oldest at 72.
Migrating from across the US and Canada, these newcomers and families are settling throughout Israel to build communities and begin new lives of service to the Jewish state. Among them are professionals in fields such as medicine, journalism, education, law, accounting, engineering, and many others.
During a farewell ceremony in New York, Nefesh B’Nefesh chairman and co-founder Tony Gelbart commended those on the flight, holding them up as examples of Jewish resilience and unity in the face of adversity
“You’re fulfilling your dream, but I believe you’re doing something even more important at this time,” Gelbart said in his speech.
“Not only are you helping Israel; you’re showing the world that Jews everywhere stand together and care for one another,” he continued.
Israeli Minister of Aliyah and Integration Ofir Sofer, who traveled to the US to see off the new olim (immigrants who moved to Israel) on their historic flight, also praised them for embarking on this new chapter in Israel.
“I want to thank each and every person who made the decision to make aliyah during the war. It strengthens our resilience and our solidarity, and I am truly proud of them,” Sofer told The Algemeiner.
“Since Oct. 7, we’ve seen that most people want to support Israel … but the highest form of solidarity is choosing to make aliyah,” the Israeli official said. “These individuals want to be part of what’s happening in Israel, make a meaningful difference, and stand with their people.”
Founded in 2002, Nefesh B’Nefesh is dedicated to “strengthening the State of Israel by facilitating aliyah, advancing national service and development, and promoting Zionist education.”
Nefesh B’Nefesh, working alongside Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Kayemeth, and the Jewish National Fund-USA, helps olim become fully integrated members of Israeli society.
To this day, they have assisted nearly 100,000 olim in establishing thriving lives in Israel, guiding them through the aliyah process.
Those who decide to make aliyah receive comprehensive support to help them transition smoothly into their new life, including guidance through the immigration process, access to community programs, health-care assistance, and employment resources.
The Israeli government also provides a range of support and resources to ease the transition and adaptation for those taking this significant step, including housing subsidies and higher education incentives for young olim and professionals pursuing studies in Israel.
“I believe we’ll see an increase in the number of people making aliyah in the coming years. It won’t happen overnight, but it will be a gradual process,” Sofer told The Algemeiner. “The trend is clear, and there is growing interest among many in taking this step.”
“We’re seeing numbers rise year by year, especially from Western countries like the UK, France, and North America, and I expect that trend to continue,” the Israeli minister said.