ECAJ report finds extreme antisemitism has become part of the mainstream

The newly released ECAJ Report on Anti-Jewish Incidents in Australia 2025 reveals that Australian Jews have endured a second frightening year of unprecedented antisemitism.

The report confirms that for the second year in a row, assaults, abuse, vandalism and hate messages are occurring at almost five times the level recorded before the October 7, 2023 massacre of Israelis and the war in Gaza.

Researched by Julie Nathan, the report was launched by ECAJ President Daniel Aghion today at the annual J7 meeting in Sydney. This gathering of community leaders from the seven largest Jewish communities outside Israel coordinates policy, security insights, and international monitoring. Presenting the report in this forum underscored its global significance and the concern felt across Jewish communities worldwide.

The report warns that “We are now at a stage where anti-Jewish racism has left the fringes of society and become part of the mainstream, where it is normalised and allowed to fester and spread, gaining ground at universities, in arts and culture spaces, in the health sector, in the workplace and elsewhere.”

The report says this shift has created an environment where Jewish Australians face growing fear for their safety and for the security of future generations. The year from October 2024 to September 2025 brought some of the most serious antisemitic attacks ever recorded in Australia.

These serious incidents include the destruction of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, which was firebombed a year ago this week, and the arson attack on Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney. ASIO later confirmed that both attacks were directed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) through local criminal networks.

The scale of the problem is laid out starkly in the statistics. From October 1, 2024, to September 30, 2025, there were 1654 anti-Jewish incidents recorded. This compares with an annual average of just 342 in the decade before October 2023. Although the total number was slightly lower than last year’s record of 2062, arson and vandalism reached new highs, and verbal abuse remained at extreme levels.

Victoria and NSW recorded the largest numbers, with 738 and 662 incidents, respectively. They were followed by Western Australia (108), Queensland (72), the ACT (50), South Australia (17), Tasmania (five), and the Northern Territory (two).

The report details a worrying rise in physical violence. Incidents ranged from threats at knifepoint and flaming projectiles thrown at Jewish families to attacks on cyclists outside synagogues. Several cases involved children.

In Melbourne, Jewish school students were abused by teenagers giving Nazi salutes on a tram. In Brisbane, Year 9 students told a Jewish classmate to “die in a gas chamber”. Property attacks also escalated significantly during this period.

The former Sydney home of ECAJ co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin was vandalised, and two Sydney synagogues were defaced. Several cars in Jewish neighbourhoods were set on fire with antisemitic graffiti. In one January incident in Woollahra, graffiti reading “Death 2 Israel” and “Kill Israiel” (sic) appeared on homes alongside a torched vehicle.

In another serious incident, a childcare centre in Maroubra was set alight and vandalised with offensive slogans. In total, the past 12 months included 621 cases of verbal abuse, 24 assaults, 33 acts of vandalism, and almost 1000 cases of hate messages, graffiti, and posters.

The report highlights a sharp increase in direct incitement. Graffiti reading “Kill a Jew”, “Burn all Jews”, and “Murder your local Zionist” appeared across cities and regional towns. The report does not count general online content as incidents.

Social media posts, commentary, and broader digital hostility are classed as antisemitic discourse rather than incidents unless they involve direct threats of violence or death. Only messages that target specific Jewish individuals or institutions with explicit menace are included in the incident tally. This means the true scale of online antisemitism is not reflected in the report.

Weekly protests in Melbourne, Sydney, and other cities played a major role. According to the report, these demonstrations routinely included calls for the end of Israel and false comparisons between Nazism and Zionism. In one December incident in Sydney, police told congregants not to leave a synagogue because it was unsafe until a nearby protest dispersed.

The report warns that political extremes in Australia are becoming more emboldened and increasingly converging in one area: their common hatred of Jews and Zionists. It says neo-Nazis, the anti-Israel Left, and Islamist groups have begun aligning around shared hostility to Jews, with growing cooperation between some of these movements.

The report also criticises ongoing attempts to trivialise or discredit concerns raised by Jewish groups. It found that when Jewish organisations raise the issue of anti-Jewish racism, their concerns are often belittled, mocked, or twisted to claim that the issues are fabricated.

The report concludes that the trail of burnt and damaged synagogues, schools, and other Jewish institutions stands as a mute indictment of those who deny or seek to minimise the magnitude of the antisemitism in their midst.