ARE YOU A JEW?': FATHER OF THE BRIDE TARGETED AT CROWN HOTEL IN MELBOURNE

The Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) has condemned an antisemitic confrontation at Crown Melbourne, where a 74 year old man says a stranger approached him threateningly shortly after his daughter’s wedding reception.

The man says he was sitting alone in the hotel foyer at approximately 11.45pm on 11 October, waiting to leave after the reception at the Palladium. He was wearing a dinner suit and a black straw hat, with nothing that he believed identified his religion or ethnicity.

According to the man, one of three young adults walking nearby veered towards him, came within centimetres of his face and asked, in a threatening tone, “Are you a Jew?” The man remained silent and turned away. When he looked back, the group had gone.

The man has since reported the incident at Caulfield Police Station. He says he was told the matter would be referred to Southbank Police for triage. According to the man, Crown security advised that any assistance involving possible security footage would require a police report and police enquiries.

The ADC is calling for police to investigate the circumstances and obtain any available footage.

ADC Chairman Dr Dvir Abramovich said:

This is Jew-hatred on the hunt, and Melbourne should be sick to its stomach. One of the happiest nights of a father’s life should not become an opportunity for somebody to terrorise him. You do not need a yarmulke. You do not even have to look Jewish. The suspicion alone can put a target on your back.

An ordinary person, minding his own business, can be singled out because somebody decides he might be a Jew. This was an ugly exercise in intimidation. Get close. Make him afraid. Make his identity the reason he no longer feels safe. When an aggressive stranger gets that close, how are you supposed to know whether the next thing coming is another word or a fist? Or whether you are going home, to hospital or to the morgue?

Nobody should have to confront those possibilities because someone suspects they are Jewish. And what if he had answered, ‘Yes, I am Jewish’? What then? We do not know. That uncertainty is the terror. What a disgrace that, in Melbourne, we are even asking whether a man could safely acknowledge who he is.

It speaks volumes that he did not tell his wife because he wanted to spare her the distress and protect the happiness of their daughter’s wedding. He carried this ugly experience himself rather than let it contaminate her memories too. That is the cruelty of this hatred.

The stranger walks away, but the person he has frightened is left deciding how much pain to take home. And I do not accept that a broken jaw should be the price of being taken seriously. The absence of a punch is not the absence of intimidation.

We keep hearing that antisemitism has no place here. Those words mean nothing to a person wondering whether the stranger in front of him is about to become violent. Safety is not a slogan. It is being able to finish a beautiful family occasion without having your identity turned into a threat. Being Jewish is not a provocation. Sitting quietly is not an invitation. And a victim should not have to bleed before his fear counts.