A self-proclaimed „Nazi” with a knife abused Jewish students with antisemitic obscenities on a public bus in Melbourne, Australia, following them after they got off the vehicle.
Jewish Students from the Leibler Yavneh College in Australia were travelling on a public bus when they were abused with antisemitic slurs in early August, reports The Jerusalem Post.
According to a few students aged 14-15, a group of around ten students, some of whom were primary school kids, were getting on an almost empty bus outside their school in the afternoon. The only passenger was sitting in the back, mumbling to himself.
The students recounted that after a while, they noticed the passenger was mentioning Jews, money, and drugs. Though they first ignored him, he was getting louder and louder, at one point shouting ‘Nazi’, apparently referring to himself.
„He was speaking in a very heavy Eastern European accent,” one of the students said.
When the man pulled a huge knife from his bag, the students immediately alerted the bus driver and decided to get off the vehicle and run. However, the man followed them, throwing a soccer ball at the students. Still, they got away and returned to the same bus later, luckily unharmed, though very shaken up.
Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC), spoke with one of the students, who he described as deeply traumatised.
„I am shocked to the core,” he said. „This is a hate crime, pure and simple, and this savage and violent incident could have ended in serious injury or worse. No wonder the community is on edge, and it may be an uncomfortable truth for some, but the reality is that the rising wave of attacks against Jews here is becoming commonplace and taking a firm foothold in our life. „
Dr Abramovich stressed that „this is not an isolated incident but part of an alarming pattern.”
According to organisations that log antisemitic incidents in Australia, from 2020 to 2021, there were substantial increases in the number of reported antisemitic incidents.
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