Australia’s Royal Commission on Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion has opened a critical window into the escalating crisis of anti-Jewish hostility across the country, with 56 witnesses sharing harrowing accounts of normalized abuse that has shaken communities in the months following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. Among the most moving testimonies came from a 15-year-old Jewish teen, identified only as ABB to protect his identity, who detailed relentless anti-Semitic bullying from peers at his own school that played out both in hallways and online in the popular sandbox game Minecraft.
ABB told the commission that the targeted harassment began in late 2024, when fellow students in a school-connected Minecraft chat group unleashed a torrent of virulent, anti-Semitic slurs. On one occasion, a user posted the explicit declaration “I hate the Jews”; on another, a vicious comment laden with age-old anti-Semitic tropes left the teen physically ill. “It made my stomach turn upside down, I really just had to step away from my computer for a little bit and then, when I came back, I think I just closed and logged off for the day,” ABB recalled.
Instead of ending the abuse after ABB confronted the group at school and explained the harassment was ruining his mental health, the bullying only intensified. The teen tried to handle the situation on his own for weeks before the pain became too much to bear. He ultimately walked into his parents’ room, tears in his eyes, and delivered a devastating line: “I have no friends left.” His mother ABD told the commission that the group of bullies even trapped ABB’s in-game character in a locked section of the Minecraft world and left him to die alone. Most disturbingly, ABD said her son had come to normalize the abuse, accepting it as an unremarkable part of his daily school life – a reality that leaves her constantly unsettled. While the school launched a formal investigation and three of the involved students apologized to ABB, the harassment continues: when ABB is near the group at school, he is still openly told to leave. The teen also shared that he recently overhead a group of Year 12 students casually remark in conversation that “Hitler was right to kill them all,” a comment that left him stunned.
ABB’s father ABE told the hearing he no longer recognizes the Australia he once knew, where a cultural commitment to “a fair go” for all used to foster widespread tolerance. “All of those Australian idioms that we have for people having a fair go, that seems to have been lost,” he said. “I would like to see something come out of this commission where we can chart the course back towards that Australia, or that attitude that we had in Australia.”
Witness testimony from other Jewish community leaders expanded on the teen’s account, painting a broader picture of a dramatic, unprecedented surge in anti-Semitic incidents across the country that has been supercharged by social media and public normalization of hate. Julie Nathan, research director for the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), told the commission that her organization’s 2024-2025 annual report documents a 316% jump in recorded anti-Semitic incidents since October 7 2023. Nathan, who herself was targeted with a horrifying, sexualized anti-Semitic caricature circulated online that relied on dangerous historical stereotypes of Jewish people, noted that this figure only counts offline and direct incidents – online abuse is so widespread that it is impossible to fully count, comparing the task to “trying to count the stars.”
Nathan clarified that legitimate criticism of Israeli policy is not counted as anti-Semitism, noting that political discourse around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains protected even when it is harsh or offensive. Anti-Semitism is only recorded when rhetoric crosses the line into targeting Jewish people as a group, such as when pro-Palestinian messaging is placed directly on Jewish community sites like synagogues or Jewish schools. Even so, Nathan said modern anti-Semitism has become far more brazen, with perpetrators openly sharing hate without fear of social consequences. “We’re getting much more brazen and much more confident coming out and not ashamed or worried about it being anti-Semitic and inciting violence against Jews,” she said.
Tahli Blicblau, chief executive of the Dor Foundation – an organization launched in 2024 to combat anti-Semitism – told the commission that the normalization of anti-Jewish hate began immediately after the October 7 attack, pointing to an October 8 2023 protest in Western Sydney where celebratory fireworks were set off as Israel was still counting its dead from the Hamas assault. “The glorification of violence that night at a time when Israel was still counting its dead really set the tone for a permissive environment in which glorifying violence was accepted and permissible,” Blicblau said. She added that anti-Semitic tropes are now often framed in the language of human rights, making them difficult for most Australians to recognize, while social media has allowed hate to move from the extreme fringes of society into mainstream public discourse, reaching millions of users in seconds. “The role of the internet and social media allows these hateful comments to reach millions of people within milliseconds, so in order to combat the new form (of anti-Semitism) … we need to operate there,” she said.
The commission entered its second week of public hearings Monday, with eight additional witnesses scheduled to give evidence as the inquiry continues to gather evidence to address rising anti-Semitism across Australia.