An ABC Radio presenter has raised eyebrows after questioning NSW Premier Chris Minns over whether the attacks in the city’s eastern suburbs on Wednesday morning were anti-Semitic.
It followed the words ‘Kill Israiel (sic)’ being graffitied on a home next to a burning car in Woollahra, a prominent Jewish suburb in Sydney’s East, on Wednesday morning.
Minns was quick to describe the incident as a ‘deplorable anti-Semitic attack’ that will be ‘met with nothing less than the full force of the law’.
ABC Sydney Breakfast’s fill-in host, Chris Taylor, questioned the premier about his wording.
‘Just on your wording in your statement this morning, what’s your reasoning for branding the attack anti-Semitic and not anti-Israel? How do you make a distinction?’
Minns responded: ‘I think we would have to be wilful at this point to turn a blind eye to that sequence of events and suggest it’s anything other than an anti-Semitic attack.
‘And I want to make it clear if there was an attack on any other community group in NSW on the basis of their religion or on the basis of their nationality, then I would say exactly the same thing.’
The host continued to press Minns on the issue.
‘So if you’re calling it anti-Semitic rather than just a political anti-Israel statement … would you say anti-Semitism is at an all-time high in your experience?’
The fill-in host for ABC Sydney breakfast, Chris Taylor (pictured), asked the premier how you ‘make that distinction’ between an incident that is ‘anti-Israel’ and ‘anti-Semitic’
A fill-in host for ABC Sydney has caused a stir after questioning NSW Premier Chris Minns (pictured) on his description of an incident as ‘anti-Semitic’ and not ‘anti-Israel’
Mr Minns replied: ‘Yes, I would.’
When questioned over Mr Taylor’s line of questioning, the ABC said he ‘referred to anti-Semitism twice’ when first covering the story earlier that morning.
‘There’s been another suspected anti-Semitic attack in the Eastern Suburbs just a few hours ago,’ Mr Taylor told listeners.
‘We’ll keep an eye on this story across the morning, and see if we can get some comment on what continues to be a rather ugly trend, in this apparent rise in anti-Semitism behaviour.’
But Former Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger claimed the national broadcaster had a ‘shocking and disgraceful … anti-Israel bias’.
Mr Minns was quick to describe it as ‘anti-Semetic’ after police found graffiti reading ‘kill Israiel (sic)’ beside a burning car in Woollahra, in Sydney’s East, on Wednesday morning
Mr Kroger said opposing Israel and not the Jewish community is a ‘three-card trick the extreme left use to hide their anti-Semitism’.
‘People shouldn’t be fooled by their protestations that they’re not criticising Jews,’ he told Sky News Australia.
Police have launched an investigation into the incident and urged anyone with information to come forward
They believed the perpetrators are two people of slim build, aged between 15 and 20 years, wearing face coverings and dark clothing.
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