Now Jews Have to Be Hidden in Court

If Covid shattered many of my illusions about my fellow Australians, October 7, 2023, ground the pieces into the dirt – and the blood of Jewish Australians.

It was one thing to realise just how many of my friends and families were all too ready to lick the boots of unhinged authoritarians, quite another to watch open and bloodthirsty antisemitism rage in the streets – while police and politicians did nothing. It shouldn’t have surprised anybody that the suburbs of Western Sydney, dominated by Muslims, erupted into spontaneous celebrations of Hamas’ mediaeval barbarities. But to watch as thousands of Muslims stormed the Sydney Opera House, chanting to ‘Gas the Jews’, while Greens politicians marched proudly alongside them, and police did nothing, was beyond shocking.

It only got worse. And worse.

Australia has recorded a 246 per cent increase in antisemitic abuse and vandalism since October 7, 2023, marking the steepest increase of any major Jewish diaspora nation, a damning new report reveals […]

Germany and the US recorded the second and third-highest increases, with jumps of 215 per cent and 131 per cent, respectively.

When you’re beating Germany in an antisemitism competition, you really are fucked.

It may have culminated – so far, at least – in the horror at Bondi. But it’s far from over.

The report ended its section on Australia with a fairly bleak “outlook” statement but held on to hope the royal commission could spark real change, and even inspire other governments to take similar action against antisemitism […]

“It is unknown whether Jews will be murdered in 2026, as they were in 2025, but this remains a key concern.

If that sounds overly pessimistic, consider that middle-class suburban women are, even after Bondi, so comfortable with their antisemitism that they have no compunction about telling everyone in earshot that they’d like to see Jews killed. It’s got so bad that Jewish Australians have to have their identities obscured by a court order.

In May, at an under-12s netball game in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, 43-year-old Jody Scarcella (allegedly!) mouthed off about “fucking Jews” and declared they “should all be eradicated”. She has been charged with using offensive language in a public place – a fine-only offence – and has pleaded not guilty.

This week a judge granted a non-publication order over the names of seven witnesses, citing genuine fears they would be doxxed or harassed simply for giving evidence, which is an entirely founded fear, given that 600 Australians were doxxed by high-profile leftists, simply for being Jewish. Odious misandrist Clammy Ford was just one of the lefty luvvies who circulated a ‘Jew List’ of names, addresses, business places and phone numbers of Jewish Australians to her quarter of a million followers.

The police prosecutor told the court that any witness in an antisemitism case now requires protection from the kind of hate directed at those who appeared before the royal commission. Judge Michael Barko agreed the order was “necessary to protect the safety of those witnesses and all their families”. In decades on the bench he had never seen such an “extraordinary” inundation of hatred and criminal acts against one particular community. Bits and pieces, yes – but never this.

The defence complained that the application rested on a “blanket statement” about Jewish community concerns and noted that Alex Ryvchin, who filmed the confrontation, was not on the witness list. The judge was unmoved. Five police officers were excluded from the order; the remaining seven, including at least one non-Jewish witness, were protected.

When ordinary people who simply report what a suburban Karen screamed at a children’s sports match require court-ordered anonymity for their own safety, the rot has gone far beyond protest chants and Opera House invasions. It has settled into the suburbs, into the sidelines of junior netball, into the mouths of middle-class mothers who no longer bother to lower their voices.

The 246 per cent surge was never an abstraction. It is the reason a judge in 2026 has to hide the identities of witnesses in a fine-only case about a comment made in front of children. And still the outlook remains that more Jews may be murdered this year. The pieces ground into the dirt on October 7 have not yet been swept away.