Children at Sydney’s Jewish schools are afraid to wear their school uniform and have been approached by strangers shouting “Heil Hitler”, principals have told a parliamentary inquiry into antisemitism.
Moriah College principal Miriam Hasofer told the inquiry on Friday morning that a year 9 girl had been “chased” up Queen’s Park Road near the eastern suburbs school by a woman repeatedly shouting “F— the Jews” and “free Palestine”.
Moriah College in Queens Park was one of Sydney’s Jewish schools which gave evidence to the inquiry.Credit: Louise Kennerley
“This was a child walking to school. She was terrified,” said Hasofer, adding that “what was once repugnantly un-Australian has become disturbingly routine”.
“The unacceptable has been normalised,” she said.
Hasofer said the school has been exposed to a “relentless drip-feed of hate” since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and was averaging “at least one security incident per week” this year.
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The NSW Legislative Council launched an inquiry into antisemitism in NSW in February. Its purpose is to consider the “underlying increasing incidents of antisemitism across the state, and the threat that these incidents present to social cohesion”.
Hasofer revealed that, in the days after the October 7 attack, the school received an anonymous Instagram message which described the school as a “disgrace” and said: “I hope all the children, parents and staff get cancer and die a slow painful death, praise Hitler.”
In a separate incident that year, a person drove past the school gates and “gave a Nazi salute”, while in September 2024, a man driving along the road adjacent to the school yelled “F— the Jews”, and two men “exposed themselves to our security cameras” in June, to “intimidate Jewish children”, she said.
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