In the aftermath of the Holocaust it was hoped that expressions of murderous Jew-hatred would be considered so odious as to be a thing of the past.
The Holocaust, the deliberate and planned killing of every Jewish man, woman and child the Nazis and their collaborators could get their hands on, was a seminal event for humanity.
It demonstrated that although human beings have the potential to rise to all kinds of lofty heights, there is also no limit to the moral depths to which they may sink.
In far too many European minds, Jews were not seen as thinking, feeling fellow human beings but as objectified examples of an impersonal “type”. The concept of “the Jew” became the repository into which Jew-haters projected their personal insecurities, cravenness, misanthropic impulses and self-loathing.
Fast forward to the next century and another continent. Despite the best hopes, and years of education about the evils of racism, incitement to murder Jews has been resurrected, even in Australia, which has no history at all of official persecution of Jews.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the peak representative body for Australian Jews, publishes an annual report on anti-Semitism in Australia, which documents anti-Semitic incidents.
Read the full article by Julie Nathan at The Australian (subscription only).