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Anti-Semitic Fliers Appear in Sydney Mailboxes

Residents in areas with large Jewish populations receive unsettling letter

by
Stephanie Butnick
August 26, 2014
Knox Street in Double Bay, Australia. (Wikimedia)
Knox Street in Double Bay, Australia. (Wikimedia)

Residents in the Sydney neighborhoods of Bondi Beach and Double Bay received some unsettling mail this week. JTA reports that anti-Semitic fliers were discovered in mailboxes across the two neighborhoods, which both boast sizable Jewish populations.

“Wake up Australia,” reads the flyer. “Jews have been kicked out of countries 109 times through history. … Could it be that having them in a European country is harmful to the host?”



The flyer included an invitation to join Squadron 88, a local white supremacist group, and included a reference to Stormfront.org, a neo-Nazi website.

Australia, usually a quiet haven for its Jewish residents, has gotten attention recently for a spate of surprising anti-Semitic incidents. Earlier this month, five teens in Sydney were arrested after boarding a school bus of children from several local Jewish day schools and shouting, “Heil Hitler” and “Kill the Jews,” and reportedly threatening to cut the children’s throats.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.