Image: Image: Instagram & NSWJBD / X.
Jewish bakery Avner’s in the inner-city suburb of Surry Hills was defaced with antisemitic imagery related to Hamas and the Nazi regime on the night of Saturday 12 October. The owner, Ed Halmagyi, also discovered a threatening note which had been slipped under the door.
The popular bakery is owned by Halmagyi, a television chef and presenter who goes by the nickname ‘Fast Ed’.
Halmagyi posted about the incident on social media on Sunday, sharing a picture of a note on which was scribbled “Be Careful.”
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“But the fact is, it’s hard to be intimidated by inner-city middle-class Cosplay Radicals who graduated primary school without their pen licence,” wrote Halmagyi.
Red triangles graffitied on windows of Avner’s
Two upside-down red triangles were painted on the front of Avner’s overnight on Saturday 12 October.
The symbol was originally used by Nazi authorities to mark Jewish people in concentration camps.
More recently, the red triangles have been utilised by terrorist group Hamas, which carried out the 7 October atrocities in Israel in 2023, beginning the last year of escalation in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Co-Chief Executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry Alex Ryvchin denounced the vandalism as an incitement to violence, which he said was counter to Australian values and standards of decency.
“For a year now there has been a permissive attitude towards boycotts of Jewish businesses and the public display of this and other terrorist symbols and it is entirely predictable that the behaviour has progressed to identifying and targeting specific Jewish businesses,” Ryvchin remarked.
Police stated on Sunday that they were investigating the incident, urging anyone with information to contact Surry Hills Police or Crime Stoppers.
Increase in hate speech and antisemitism in Australia
The October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas was followed by Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza, with conflict now spilling into Lebanon.
This escalation of conflict in the Middle East has fuelled a rise of hate incidents, including antisemitic and Islamophobic hate crimes and hate speech.
Labor MP Peter Khalil, representing Wills in Melbourne’s inner suburbs, had his electorate office vandalised with the same red triangle on Monday 14 October.
“This is vandalism. This is defacing property. Worse, this is using violent symbolic material or actions that are harmful to others … in their place of work. It is completely unacceptable and it needs to be called out,” Khalil said.
The Commonwealth Government in July appointed lawyer and businesswoman Jillian Segal as a special envoy to combat antisemitism, followed in September by an Islamophobia envoy.
“Jewish Australians want to feel free to live their day-to-day lives, and also want to feel safe to practise and express their religion without fear,” Segal stated at the time.
A government motion in the House of Representatives in 2023 condemned antisemitism, along with Islamophobia and other forms of hate speech. A motion proposed by the opposition focused on antisemitism.
University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott apologised to Jewish students and staff in September, saying he had “failed them” in the university’s handling of the pro-Palestine encampment on its main campus.
