Jewish people and Australia’s media have been telling us over the past few weeks that anti-Semitism is on the rise, and I find this mystifying.
In the first place, I don’t understand why anyone would be hostile to Jewish people because they are Jews. Or to Italian people because they are Italian. Or English people because they are English.
In the second place, with one exception I do not know anyone who claims or appears to be hostile to Jewish people because they are Jews or for any other reason.
In the third place, with the one exception just mentioned I have not seen or heard any expression of hostility towards Jewish people. Yes, that may be because I am not Jewish, but it is a marked absence of hostility over many decades.
That said, almost 15 years ago I read in this paper that the Newcastle synagogue was vandalised and painted with the Nazi swastika. Now, I am not doubting that anti-Semitism may be on the rise, I am stating that I find this mystifying.
Perhaps it is an essential plank of the extreme right, and perhaps the extreme right is attracting more adherents, but even these rabid people would be hard put explaining that anti-Semitism as even remotely rational. Yes, I know that Jewishness is not race, that it is any or all of ethnicity, religion and even family history, but anti-Semitism certainly presents as racism.
Read the article by Jeff Corbett in the Newcastle Herald.