A Jewish academic who lodged complaints with Facebook over posts glorifying Hitler and likening the Jews to rats has told the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion that social media giant Meta failed to act after claiming the content did not “violate community standards”.
Israeli-born Tali Pinsky, who moved to Australia last year for an academic posting, told the commission on Tuesday she did not believe social media was “necessarily the main driver of antisemitism, but it’s certainly a great amplifier”.
Pinsky was one of 12 witnesses to give evidence to the commission about their lived experience of antisemitism during the second day of public hearings before former High Court judge Virginia Bell in Sydney.
SBS board director and former chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies Dr Vic Alhadeff also appeared, warning: “I know I’m confident that I speak for most Jewish-Australians when I say that we fear the next Bondi”.
“And that is our truth, that is our normal, that is our new reality,” Alhadeff said.
During Pinsky’s evidence, the commission was shown a series of social media posts glorifying Hitler, accusing Jews of masterminding the John F. Kennedy assassination and the September 11 terror attack, as well as likening Jewish people to rat plagues.
She told the commission that when she had tried to report the posts to Meta-owned Facebook she was given “the standard response” that they did “not violate the community standards”.
In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said its “hateful conduct policy” prohibits attacks against people based on protected characteristics, including religion and ethnicity, and this includes dehumanising speech, harmful stereotypes, and calls for violence.
“We use a combination of AI technology and human review to enforce our policies. While we do not always get it right, we are committed to improving our systems and we continuously invest in our ability to detect and remove hateful content at scale.”
The spokesperson said the company works with “Jewish community groups to understand how antisemitism is expressed online” and said when mistakes were made “people have the ability to appeal to us or the Oversight Board”. The board independently reviews Meta’s decisions.
Pinsky said she intended to return to Israel at the end of the year because she and her family no longer feel Australia is safe.
Another witness, a Victorian mother who used the pseudonym AAP, said her high school-age children attended single-sex Catholic schools and are “probably the only Jewish children there”.
“Very soon after [the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023], the sentiment towards Jewish people became very negative,” she said. Antisemitic messaging was “in their face” on social media.
She said slurs included “We owe Hitler an apology. The Nazis should have finished them off” and “Racism only applies to humans”.
Antisemitic comments like “dirty Jew” were thrown around by “ordinary kids”, AAP said.
AAP said some of her son’s friends joked about dressing up for year 12 muck-up day “as Adolf Hitler or the Bondi shooters”.
Another witness, known only as Dina, told the commission she grew up on Bondi Beach, a place she said was welcoming to everyone.
However, Dina, whose paternal grandfather was murdered in the Holocaust, said the Sydney she knew and loved as a child had changed dramatically. She said her children attended the “exact same school” she did, but the level of security was extreme.
There were “concrete bollards so they don’t get rammed with a car”, high fences, security guards and often police in attendance, Dina said. The contrast was “frankly shocking”, she said.
Dina said her children were deeply affected by the December 14 massacre on Bondi Beach. When her 8-year-old passes Bondi Beach, the little girl says she “[thinks] about dying”.
“It’s impossible for children not to internalise and understand that they are living through that reality. They hear antisemitism around them all the time,” Dina said.
“Now when you hear the word Bondi, it’s associated with the massacre, with the terrorist attack, with the death of Jews.
“I remember saying to my husband not long after the December 14 attack, while we were trying to process it, that it’s so painful – even if you weren’t there – because the reality is they came to kill us, we just weren’t there.”
Dina said she had now seen security guards being hired for a Bat Mitzvah, a coming-of-age ritual for girls, and said she would likely do the same for her own children.
She said she now approached everyday situations with caution and suspicion.
Jeremy Stowe-Lindner, principal of Bialik College in Melbourne, said students “can’t go into the CBD in Melbourne any more in school uniform” after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack precipitated a wave of antisemitic abuse.
“We have had Hitler salutes and Jewish slurs,” he said.
Stowe-Lindner said pupils were spat on by two students from another school during one university trip.
He told the royal commission it should not fall to the Jewish community to fund their own security measures, in the same way one would “never expect there to be a tax” on any group of citizens to protect themselves.
This was “a tax on Jewish identity”, he said.
Peter Wertheim, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and a former practising lawyer, said the ECAJ had been compiling annual reports on antisemitism since 1989.
The “gradual trend” was up, he said. “After [the Hamas attack of] October 7, 2023 it went up by 316 per cent. It has changed our perspective, and I think it has changed the country.”
The hearing continues on Wednesday.
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