‘They came to kill us’: royal commission hears horrific accounts of antisemitism faced by Jewish children in Australia

Jewish children in Australia face antisemitic abuse at school, see swastikas daubed on walls and witness classmates perform Nazi salutes: they live with antisemitism “all day, every day”, a Sydney Jewish mother has told a royal commission hearing.

The woman, known as Dina before the commission, said Australia had become a more hostile, more dangerous place for Jews, most horrifically demonstrated by the Bondi massacre in December in which 15 people were shot and killed.

“And it’s impossible for children not to internalise that they are living through that reality.

“They hear antisemitism around them all the time … they see the stickers … they see the graffiti, they know about Bondi. It’s become part of their psyche.”

Dina told the commission she had overheard Jewish children saying they would be too scared to go to a Hanukah party now, and gave evidence that when her family went to Bondi, her eight-year-old child started crying, telling her: “Now, when I come to Bondi, I think about dying”.

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Dina said the Australian Jewish community was “living a very different reality” to the non-Jewish community and that the Bondi massacre was the violent manifestation of unchecked antisemitism across Australia.

“The reality is, they came to kill us. We just weren’t there. And it’s living with that truth that makes it very hard to feel safe as a Jew in Australia.”

The second day of the public hearings before commissioner Virginia Bell heard evidence from Jewish parents who say they fear for the safety of their children, who grow up facing a rising tide of antisemitic abuse, graffiti and attacks.

In evidence before the committee, Natalie Levy said her daughter was one of only two Jewish children at a government school in Sydney.

“She sees swastikas etched all around the school, children saying ‘Heil Hitler’ and putting up their hand in a salute. She sees things that no 15-year-old should see,” Natalie said of her daughter.

“She’s a very proud Jewish young lady but she’s scared. She’s scared for me being here [giving evidence to the commission] today.”

Levy told the commission that antisemitic rhetoric had become normalised in contemporary Australia.

Natalie Levy, centre, told the royal commission antisemitic rhetoric had become normalised in Australia. Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP

She said she had been called “kike”, a “dirty Jew”, a “dirty Jewish pig”, a “baby killer”, a “baby eater” and “genocidal” on social media.

“The chants and the protests and the words and the online rhetoric: it feels so surreal.

“I can’t believe that in 2026, in this beautiful country, that antisemitism has become so normalised. People are unashamedly being antisemitic and saying the most vile things about Jewish people and Jewish children … it’s a real shock.”

Levy said she had been born and grown up in Australia not experiencing antisemitism.

“It’s heartbreaking. I truly grew up believing that this kind of rhetoric only existed in the past. That it has resurfaced so aggressively is a real shock.”

Another Jewish mother, pseudonymised as AAP and giving evidence from Victoria, said her children had come home from school telling her they didn’t want to be Jewish.

She said her children were being bombarded with antisemitic content on social media.

“These are some of the things that the kids have shown me: ‘we owe Hitler an apology, the Nazis should have finished them off’; ‘Jews are controlling the government’; ‘Israel has no history, only a criminal record’.”

AAP gave evidence that slurs against Jews were commonplace at her children’s school and that her children told her they were frightened to attend a recent street food festival organised by a Jewish community group in Melbourne.

“They didn’t want to go. They said they might be shot. I said ‘there’s going to be police there, there’s going to be security there’. They said, ‘well, they don’t stand a chance against a gunman’. They just had no confidence.”

The royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion was established after December’s Bondi massacre, in which two alleged Islamic State-inspired gunmen shot and killed 15 people and injured 40 others as they attended a beachside Hanukah event for the Jewish community.

The first fortnightly block of hearings is focused on defining antisemitism, its historical and contemporary manifestations, and its current impact on Jewish Australians.