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Antisemitism Rises to Shocking Levels in Australia — But the Media Doesn’t Care
Arsonists heavily damaged the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, Australia, on Dec. 6, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
The phrase gets repeated often — especially as antisemitism surges in the wake of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, terror attacks: The Jews are the proverbial “canary in the coal mine.”
The Jewish people have long been a bellwether for rising extremism and broader threats to society. When antisemitism takes root, other forms of hatred and bigotry inevitably follow, leaving other minorities just as vulnerable.
Australia, however, appears determined to ignore this history lesson.
Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, the country has seen an unprecedented wave of antisemitism. More than 2,000 incidents were reported between October 2023 and September 2024 — a staggering fourfold increase from the previous year. And that number only reflects official reports; the uncounted cases of harassment, intimidation, and online vitriol push the real figure far higher.
If Australia is the mine, then its canaries are screeching. But instead of taking action, the country’s institutions, from government to law enforcement, seem more interested in pretending the problem isn’t real.
Take Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. This month, he held a press briefing to announce the findings of a national task force — formed in December 2024, more than a year after antisemitic violence had already spiraled out of control — to establish a database tracking such incidents.
The task force received more than 160 reports in just a few weeks, yet despite this flood of evidence, Albanese had a rather curious take on what was behind the rise of violent attacks on Jews.
According to the prime minister, some of these antisemitic crimes are being carried out by “people who don’t have a particular issue, aren’t motivated by an ideology, but are paid actors.”
Who’s paying them? Unclear. Where’s the evidence? Also unclear.
So, by Albanese’s logic, Jews in Australia aren’t facing a surge in homegrown antisemitism — they’re being targeted by mysterious, foreign-paid operatives. The cars set ablaze outside a building owned by a Jewish community leader on January 17? The work of a hired outsider, apparently. The Sydney synagogue defaced with swastikas on January 10? No particular ideology at play there, and certainly not Jew-hatred.
It’s a convenient way to sidestep responsibility. Because acknowledging the reality of antisemitism in Australia would mean confronting some uncomfortable truths — namely, just how widespread and deeply embedded the problem has become.
And at the heart of this denialism sits the Australian media.
There’s an unspoken arrangement at play: the media doesn’t press too hard, allowing officials to feign concern without actually doing much, while the government, in turn, enjoys the luxury of unchallenged complacency. The result?
A climate where even violent, explicitly antisemitic attacks are treated as vague disturbances rather than the ideological threats they so clearly are.
Gaslighting Australian Jews
Over the past year, the Australian media’s hostility toward Israel, and its indifference — if not outright contempt– for Jewish concerns over rising antisemitism have become impossible to ignore. Several incidents since October 2023 have drawn international condemnation, forcing an uncomfortable spotlight onto the problem.
Mass Doxxing Attack
In January 2024, more than 600 Jewish academics, artists, and writers in Australia were subjected to a mass doxxing attack. Their personal details were leaked online after a private WhatsApp chat was downloaded and shared.
The leak originated from New York Times reporter Natasha Frost, who admitted to downloading and sharing 900 pages of messages from the closed group, which had been formed after October 7 to provide support amid rising antisemitism.
The Times later claimed it had taken “appropriate action” against Frost — without elaborating.
Frost insists she only shared the chat with one person — the subject of a story she was working on. That story was thought to be a January 23 New York Times piece about journalist Antoinette Lattouf, whose ABC Radio Sydney contract was terminated over anti-Israel social media postings. Lattouf is now suing ABC for unfair dismissal.
Not long before the piece was published, Frost left the WhatsApp group — and soon after, details from the chat began leaking online. The 900-page transcript was accompanied by the “Zio600” list, a spreadsheet meticulously crafted to isolate and target “Zionists.”
Is this what it takes for @nytimes to discover that unprofessional reporting on Israel leads to real life consequences for Jews all over the world? https://t.co/YBLTqFboDe
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 18, 2024
The harassment campaign was swift and vicious. Gift shop owner Joshua Moshe reported receiving anonymous calls branding him and his wife as baby killers and genocidal maniacs.
Frost and The New York Times insist that she never intended for the chat’s contents to spread. Yet, the outcome is undeniable: a journalist at one of the world’s most influential newspapers facilitated a data leak targeting Jews, who were then subjected to threats.
To this day, The New York Times remains tight-lipped about what “appropriate action” against Frost actually entailed, while she continues to be employed at the outlet.
“Where’s the Jews?”
In February 2024, the Australian media extensively covered a police review of an October 2023 incident that had previously made global headlines. Just days after Hamas’ October 7 attacks, a pro-Palestinian mob gathered outside the Sydney Opera House, lighting flares and chanting slogans reported as antisemitic, all while the Australian police stood by, seemingly indifferent.
One video appeared to capture them chanting “Gas the Jews.”
Four months later, Australian media outlets eagerly covered a police review — in seemingly more detail than the original incident itself. News.com.au reported that a police forensic analysis of video and audio from the protest found “no evidence a potentially criminal antisemitic phrase was used.”
ABC News ran with a headline that practically framed the mob as vindicated: “Protesters welcome police finding on ‘gas the Jews’ chant at Opera House rally.”
Except the police “forensic” investigation ignored witness statements and instead determined that what had actually been chanted was “Where’s the Jews?” along with other antisemitic phrases.
In short, rather than explicitly calling for Jewish extermination, the mob was actually implicitly shouting a call to hunt Jews down, which is clearly no better than the other chant.
And yet the Australian media’s framing of the police findings was almost triumphant, with headlines misleadingly suggesting no antisemitic chants had been heard at all.
Publicly-Funded Broadcaster Cleared
In October 2024, the ABC news outlet’s Ombudsman’s Office — tasked with upholding the taxpayer-funded broadcaster’s supposed standards of accuracy and impartiality — released its findings on a May 2024 article that described a Hamas rocket attack on Tel Aviv as a “show of resilience.”
The Ombudsman concluded that this phrasing did not breach the corporation’s guidelines, stating, “We do not believe the use of resilience represents lauding, glamorizing or celebrating Hamas’ actions.”
In a ruling that reads like satire, the Ombudsman elaborated: “By definition, resilience means the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties. After a sustained offensive from Israel over months, in firing this latest barrage of rockets, Hamas had demonstrated its continued capacity to launch rocket attacks against Israel.”
So, according to the ABC, when a proscribed terrorist organization fires rockets at civilian populations, it’s simply demonstrating its ability to “recover quickly from difficulties.” One wonders if the Ombudsman would extend the same generous definition to other acts of indiscriminate violence.
Calling Out Australian Media Bias
In the eight months following Hamas’ October 7 massacre in Israel, five of Australia’s major news outlets — The Age, News.com.au, The Australian, ABC News, and The Sydney Morning Herald — published thousands of reports on the war. A data analysis by HonestReporting found that these outlets referenced Gaza an average of nearly 20 times per day in their news coverage.
And these are just the national publications. Australia’s media landscape is vast, with countless smaller news outlets and local publications also shaping public discourse.
HonestReporting has taken an active role in holding the Australian media to account. Since the war began, we have secured numerous corrections from major outlets, including ABC News, News.com.au, and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Australia’s public broadcaster, @abcnews has issued the following editor’s note and corrected a serious error after we contacted them.
If only ABC took as much time doing due diligence when writing its articles as it appears to have done fact-checking our complaint. https://t.co/OEvoYoDQts pic.twitter.com/JaVH7e6qmF
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 1, 2025
However, monitoring Australia’s media is a mammoth task. While HonestReporting is using the latest tools to track bias, we continue to rely on our readers to flag instances of misinformation and unfair reporting.
Australia’s media helped fuel this crisis—and now, instead of confronting it, it’s making excuses. Enough is enough.
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.
The post Antisemitism Rises to Shocking Levels in Australia — But the Media Doesn’t Care first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Says He Expects Gaza War to Reach ‘Conclusive Ending’ in 2-3 Weeks
US President Donald Trump speaks during a swearing-in ceremony of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, May 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
US President Donald Trump said on Monday he expects the ongoing war in Gaza to reach a “conclusive” end within the next two to three weeks, even as ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas remain unresolved.
Speaking alongside South Korean President Lee Jae Myung at the White House, Trump told reporters he believed a resolution was close. “I think within the next two to three weeks, you’re going to have a pretty good, conclusive ending,” he said.
Trump also urged Americans not to forget the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust that started the war in Gaza.
“It has to end, but people can’t forget Oct. 7,” Trump said.
Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating rampant sexual violence during their onslaught, which led Israel to wage a military campaign aimed at freeing those who were abducted and dismantling Hamas’s rule in neighboring Gaza.
The comments came as Israel continued to deliberate over a ceasefire proposal agreed to by Hamas last week. Though Israel has not given an official answer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjmain Netanyahu said he commenced negotiations to secure an end to the war and a return of the remaining hostages.
The proposal, brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar, calls for a 60-day truce during which Hamas would free 10 living hostages along with the deceased bodies of 18 others. In return, Israel would release significantly more Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, and partially pull back its forces in Gaza.
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Cornell University Takes Cleaver to Budget Amid Trump Crackdown
Illustrative: Cornell’s anti-Israel divestment protests on May 25, 2024. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.
Cornell University is taking a cleaver to its budget amid what it described as a “contraction” in government funding caused by the Trump administration’s impounding $1 billion previously awarded to it via research grants and federal contracts as punishment for its alleged nonresponse to campus antisemitism.
“Urgent action is necessary, both to reduce costs immediately and to correct our course over time — achieving an institutional structure that enables us to balance our budgets over the long term,” Cornell president Michael Kotlikoff wrote in a letter to the campus community. “Our work toward this goal will progress in several phases, beginning with immediate budget reductions already underway for the current fiscal year across our Ithaca, Cornell AgriTech, Weill Cornell Medicine, and Cornell Tech campuses.”
He continued, “Hiring on all campuses remains restricted indefinitely, with rare exceptions from campus-based position control committees.”
Cornell announced the cuts even as it inches closer toward a reported $100 million settlement with the federal government to restore the confiscated funds. It has already resorted to borrowing, having placed over $1 billion in bonds on the market since April — according to Bloomberg — and refused to publicly discuss the decision.
Cornell University has seen a series of disturbing antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre perpetrated by Hamas across southern Israel.
Three weeks after the atrocities which ravaged Israeli communities, now-former student Patrick Dai threatened to commit heinous crimes against members of the school’s Jewish community, including mass murder and rape. He was later sentenced to 21 months in federal prison.
Cornell students also occupied an administrative building and held a “mock trial” in which they convicted then-school president Martha Pollack of complicity in “apartheid” and “genocide against Palestinian civilians.” Meanwhile, history professor Russell Rickford called Hamas’s barbarity on Oct. 7 “exhilarating” and “energizing” at a pro-Palestinian rally held on campus.
Cornell University and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) sparred all of last academic year, with SJP pushing the limits of what constitutes appropriate conduct on campus. In September, school officials suspended over a dozen SJP affiliated students who disrupted a career fair, an action which saw them “physically” breach the area by “[pushing] police out of the way.” In February, the university amnestied some of the protesters, granting them “alternate resolutions” which terminated their suspensions, according to The Cornell Daily Sun.
In January, anti-Zionist agitators at Cornell kicked off the spring semester with an act of vandalism which attacked Israel as an “occupier” and practitioner of “apartheid.” The students drew a blistering response from Kotlikoff, who said that “acts of violence, extended occupations of buildings, or destruction of property (including graffiti), will not be tolerated and will be subject to immediate public safety response,” but the university has declined to say how it will deal with the matter since identifying at least one of the culprits in February.
Other elite colleges may soon face the same hard choices as Cornell.
Just last week, the US Department of Education began investigating Haverford College over alleged violations of civil rights laws stemming from inadequate responses to antisemitism.
“Like many other institutions of higher education, Haverford College is alleged to have ignored antisemitic harassment on its campus, contravening federal civil rights laws and its own anti-discrimination policies,” acting civil rights secretary Craig Trainor said in a statement. “The Trump administration will not allow Jewish life to be pushed into the shadows because college leaders are too craven to respond appropriately to unlawful antisemitic incidents on campus.”
Earlier this month, a coalition of leading Jewish civil rights groups called on the higher education establishment to prioritize fighting campus antisemitism during the upcoming academic year, citing an unrelenting wave of anti-Jewish hate that has swept the US in recent years.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Jewish Federations of North America, Hillel International, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations issued a joint statement, putting forth a policy framework that they say will quell antisemitism if applied sincerely and consistently. It included “enhanced communication and policy enforcement,” “dedicated administration oversight,” and “faculty accountability” — an issue of rising importance given the number of faculty accused of inciting discrimination.
“These recommendations aren’t just suggestions; they’re essential steps universities need to take to ensure Jewish students can learn without fear,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Jewish students are being forced to hide who they are, and that’s unacceptable — we need more administrators to step up.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, colleges campus across the US erupted with effusions of antisemitic activity following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, an uprising which included calling for the destruction of Israel, cheering Hamas’s sexual assaulting of women as an instrument of war, and dozens of incidents of assault and harassment targeting Jewish students, faculty, and activists.
At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), anti-Zionist protesters chanted “Itbah El Yahud” at Bruin Plaza, which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic. At Columbia University, Jews were gang-assaulted, a student proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, and administrative officials, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting. At Harvard University, an October 2023 anti-Israel demonstration degenerated into chaos when Ibrahim Bharmal, former editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo encircled a Jewish student with a mob that screamed “Shame! Shame! Shame!” at him while he desperately attempted to free himself from the mass of bodies.
More recently, Eden Deckerhoff — a female student at Florida State University — allegedly assaulted a Jewish male classmate at the Leach Student Recreation Center after noticing his wearing apparel issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
“F—k Israel, Free Palestine. Put it [the video] on Barstool FSU. I really don’t give a f—k,” the woman said before shoving the man, according to video taken by the victim. “You’re an ignorant son of a b—h.” Deckerhoff has since been charged with misdemeanor battery.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Trump Admin Reviewing Visa Applications of ‘Terrorist Sympathizers’ Set to Appear at Pro-Palestinian Conference
Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
The US State Department is actively reviewing the records of foreign speakers at the upcoming People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit for potential ties to terrorism, The Algemeiner has learned.
A spokesperson for the State Department told The Algemeiner that officials have “noted” the conference, which is set to take place from Aug 29-31, and will also watch out for visa applications for invited international speakers, citing a preponderance of “terrorist sympathizers” on the program’s lineup.
“Given the public invite lists seems to include a number of terrorist sympathizers, we are going through and ensuring all international speakers slated to attend the conference are being placed on a ‘look out’ status for visa applications, so we are alerted if a request is submitted and can ensure they are appropriately processed,” the spokesperson said.
“In every case, we will take the time necessary to ensure an applicant does not pose a risk to the safety and security of the United States and that he or she has credibly established his or her eligibility for the visa sought, including that the applicant intends to engage in activities consistent with the terms of admission,” the spokesperson added.
The People’s Conference for Palestine will feature dozens of anti-Zionist activists, academics, artists, and political organizers, including US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
Tlaib’s appearance at last year’s iteration of the conference sparked intense backlash, with critics pointing out the event’s connections to Wisam Rafeedie and Salah Salah, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization.
The conference is convened by a coalition that includes the Palestinian Youth Movement, Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, among others. Several of these groups have maintained ties with PFLP, openly supported boycott efforts against Israel, and called for an arms embargo in the wake of Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. The programming highlights sessions on “Documenting Genocide” and “Breaking the Siege,” rhetoric that critics argue mischaracterizes Israel’s actions as it seeks to defend itself against terrorist attacks following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The Detroit gathering is expected to attract thousands of attendees, with dozens of speakers and activists scheduled to participate. Among the roster are well-known anti-Israel figures such as Linda Sarsour, Miko Peled, and Chris Smalls.
The planned presence of several alleged “foreign terror sympathizers” has sparked outrage among observers.
Abed Abubaker, a self-described “reporter” from Gaza, is expected to make a physical appearance at the Detroit conference later this month. Abubaker has repeatedly praised the Hamas terrorist group as “resistance fighters” on social media and won a “journalist of the year” award from Iran’s state-controlled media outlet PressTV. In a January 2025 social media post, he showered praise on long-time Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, saying that the terrorist’s “love of resistance and land is seen very clearly.” In a March 2025 post, Abubaker argued that international supporters of the Palestinian cause should “attack your governments.” He also defended Hamas’s murdering of dissidents, saying that the victims were “collaborating” with Israel.
Since returning to the White House earlier this year, the Trump administration has launched a major overhaul of the US visa system, part of what officials have described as an effort to root out individuals sympathetic to terrorism or those espousing antisemitic views. The sweeping measures include expanded social media vetting for new applicants, continuous monitoring of the 55 million current visa holders, and the revocation of thousands of student visas.
The Trump administration’s sweeping visa crackdown has ensnared high-profile foreign academics and students, fueling outrage among pro-Palestinian activists. Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese professor at Brown University, was deported after officials flagged content on her phone as sympathetic to Hezbollah, a US-designated terrorist group. Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and green-card holder, was arrested and assigned criminal charges for alleged ties to Hamas before he was released. At Tufts University, Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk was detained after co-authoring an opinion piece on Gaza.