A Queensland road named “Jew Street” will be reconsidered by the council and community, after the Anti-Defamation Commission demanded the “racial and religious slur” be removed.
Councillors have said several roads in the Tin Can Bay area, about three hours north of Brisbane, were named after fish, including ‘Jew Street’, after the jewfish or goliath grouper.
But Anti-Defamation Commission’s chairman Dvir Abramovich wrote to the Gympie Council on Thursday morning demanding the council consider renaming the street, explaining people have used the word “Jew” as a term of disparagement, opprobrium and as a slur repeatedly.
“Today, ‘Jew’ is too often deployed as a barb, sometimes by well-meaning, often educated, people who are unaware of its tainted, stained past,” he wrote to the council.
“Indeed, there have been numerous reports that in Australian schools, students throw the word ‘Jew’ as a put-down in connection with the age-old, harmful stereotype that depicts Jewish people as stingy and money hungry, based on the anti-Semitic stereotype that Jews are cheap.
“It goes without saying that we are not asserting that the word ‘Jew’ has been used here in a hateful way. Clearly, there is no malice and while the intent is not to stigmatise and degrade Jews, the effect may be.”
Read the article by Clow Read in The Brisbane Times.