These Aussie kids went on a school excursion to the museum - but what happened inside left parents horrified
Year five pupils from Mount Scopus Memorial College took part in a shared activity with students from a Melbourne public high school on Thursday.
A group of older students from the other school repeatedly chanted 'Free Palestine ' and called the children 'dirty Jews', along with other racist slurs.
The children were quickly moved away by their teachers to de-escalate the situation.
'Our group leader immediately confronted the senior school educators to address the behaviour of their students,' Mount Scopus Memorial College Deputy Principal Greg Hannon said in a letter to parents.
'Upon returning to the college, we conducted a wellbeing check on all students to ensure they felt safe and supported.'
Principal Dan Sztrajt has commended his pupils on their dignified response.
'They really have lived up to the community's set of values, I'm proud of them,' he told Australian Jewish News.
'They were strong, they were of good courage. They did not respond in kind. They did not see this as an opportunity to launch slurs, to attack back at the other school. They responded like mensches, and I'm proud of them.'
The college has previously been targeted by vandals, who spray-painted 'Jew Die' on the fence at the front of the school.
Furious families have demanded answers.
'My granddaughter really doesn't understand why this happened, this is the first time she's ever experienced any anti-Semitism,' one man told 3AW radio on Friday.
A father posted online: 'They were tapped on the shoulder and then chanted at by these 16 and 17-year-old students [who said] 'free Palestine' and then, as they walked away, were called 'dirty Jews' and other racist comments.
'This is not a political debate; this is pure, unadulterated anti-Semitism and hate.'
The incident has sparked outrage from Jewish community leaders, who have expressed concerns about the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia since the Israel-Hamas war ignited tensions worldwide in October 2023.
'All Australians should be outraged that 10-year-old Jewish children were accosted during a school excursion to a museum, simply because of their ethnicity,' Australian Jewish Association chief executive Robert Gregory told Daily Mail Australia.
'Children aren't born with hate. What we're seeing is the tragic result of the relentless demonisation of the world's only Jewish state, driven by activists, media figures, and sadly, even politicians.
'These attacks are becoming more frequent. I'm hearing from an increasing number of Jewish Australians who no longer feel safe in their own country.'
Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich called for an immediate investigation by the Department of Education and mandatory anti-hate education following the 'unforgivable and chilling' incident.
'If we can't protect grade five students from hate in a museum, then we have failed as a society. We cannot allow this to be normalised. What happened in that museum is not an isolated outburst,' he said.
'It is part of a rising wave of anti-Semitism that is engulfing our country.'
Victoria Deputy Premier and Education Minister Ben Carroll also condemned the 'unacceptable' incident.
'I've spoken with the principal of Mount Scopus College today and conveyed my disgust at the anti-Semitic attacks on their students,' he said.
'I have offered every support possible to help them through this incident.
'It is unacceptable that students or staff feel unsafe in the community where they learn, work and play.'
Museums Victoria chief executive Lynley Crosswell has launched an investigation.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News
17 minutes ago
- Sky News
A father criticised the use of airdrops in Gaza. Five days later, he was killed by a falling pallet
Why you can trust Sky News Five days before he was killed by a falling aid package, father-of-two Uday al Qaraan called on world leaders to open Gaza's borders to food - and criticised the use of airdrops. "This isn't aid delivery," said the 32-year-old medic as a crowd of children rummaged through the remains of an airdrop behind him. "This is humiliation." Using footage from social media, satellite imagery, eyewitness testimony and flight tracking data, Sky News has examined the dangers posed by airdrops - and just how little difference they are making to Gaza's hunger crisis. A tangled parachute and a crowd in chaos Based on six videos of the airdrop that killed Uday, we were able to locate the incident to a tent camp on the coast of central Gaza. We determined that the drop occurred at approximately 11.50am on 4 August, based on metadata from these videos shared by three eyewitnesses. Flight tracking data shows that only one aid plane, a UAE Armed Forces C-130 Hercules, was in the area at that time. Footage from the ground shows 12 pallets falling from the plane. The four lowest parachutes soon become tangled, and begin to fall in pairs. As a crowd surges towards the landing zone, a gunshot rings out. Nine more follow over a 90-second period. Sakhr al Qaraan, an eyewitness and Uday's neighbour, says that Uday was among those running after the first pallet to land. "He didn't see the other pallet it was tangled up with, and it fell on him moments later," says Sakhr. "People ran to collect the aid in cold blood, devoid of humanity, and he suffocated under that damned blanket - under the feet of people who had lost all humanity." The scene descended into chaos as Palestinians, some armed, tussled over the limited food available. By the time Uday was pulled from the crowd and rushed to hospital, it was too late. The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment. Parachutes failed in half of airdrops analysed This was not the first time that airdrops at this location had posed a threat to those on the ground. The day before Uday was killed, the same plane had dropped aid over the site. The footage below, shared by the UAE Armed Forces, shows the view from inside the plane. Just before the footage ends, it shows that one of the parachutes was broken. Hisham al Armi recorded the scene from the ground. His video shows the broken parachute, as well as another that had failed completely. Military planes dropped aid at the site on eight consecutive days between 30 July and 6 August. Sky News verified footage showing parachute failures during four of those eight airdrops. Flight tracking data shows that almost all of the 67 aid flights over that period followed a similar route along the coast, which is densely packed with tent camps. An Israel Defence Forces (IDF) official told Sky News that the airdrops are routed along the coast, because this is where much of Gaza's population is now concentrated. An IDF spokesperson added the Israeli military "takes all possible measures to mitigate the harm to uninvolved civilians". Hisham al Armi told Sky News he is grateful to the countries that donated the aid, but "the negatives outweigh the positives". "Fighting occurs when aid is dropped, and some people are killed ... due to the crush and parachutes." Other dangers are also posed by the airdrops. The footage below, taken on 29 July, shows Palestinians venturing into the sea in order to chase aid that had drifted over the water. The IDF has banned Palestinians from entering the sea. One woman, a relative of Uday who witnessed his death, described the airdrops as the "airborne humiliation of the people". "There is not enough aid for them," she said. "It creates problems among the people, and some are killed just to obtain a little aid. And most people don't receive any aid, they remain hungry for days." Between 27 July and 1 August, Gaza received an estimated 1,505 tonnes of food aid per day via land routes - 533 tonnes short of what the UN's food security agency says is needed to meet basic needs. Based on flight tracking data, we estimated that airdrops added just 38 tonnes daily, 7% of the shortfall. "The quantities involved are minuscule in terms of the scale of the need," says Sam Rose, Gaza director of UNRWA, the UN agency previously responsible for distributing food in the territory. UNRWA claims it has enough food stationed outside of Gaza to feed the population for three months, but that Israel has not allowed the agency to bring in any food since 2 March. "We should be dealing with that rather than introducing something else which is costly, dangerous, undignified and somehow legitimises ... the access regime by suggesting that we found a way round it through airdrops," Rose says. COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for coordinating aid deliveries, referred Sky News to a statement in which it said there is "no limit on the amount of aid" allowed into Gaza. An IDF spokesperson also denied restricting aid, and said the Israeli military "will continue to work in order to improve the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip, along with the international community". In his interview five days before he was killed, Uday al Qaraan appealed to world leaders to open Gaza's borders. "What would happen if they just let the aid in?" he asked. "If you can fly planes and drop aid from the sky then you can break the siege, you can open a land crossing."
BBC News
35 minutes ago
- BBC News
Policing minister 'shocked' over brazen shoplifting in Hull
Policing Minister Dame Diana Johnson has told of her shock at the "brazen boldness" of a shoplifter she witnessed in Diana told BBC Breakfast she was in Marks & Spencer when "a man came in and took a really large bunch of flowers" before walking MP for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham, who said she immediately told a shop assistant what had happened, urged others who saw shoplifting to report comes after the Home Office announced funding for increased police presence in 500 town centres across the country to deter crime and anti-social behaviour. Dame Diana said the recent surge in shoplifting was "unacceptable", and insisted the government was "clamping down" on part of its Safer Streets campaign, the government said it planned to assign named local officers to neighbourhoods and increase police ranks by 13,000 by Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said police forces will recruit 3,000 extra neighbourhood officers and PCSOs over the next 12 months in an attempt to end the policing "postcode lottery".But Dame Diana stressed that retailers also had a role to play by increasing shop security and making sure goods were not left easily accessible to to increases in assaults against shop workers, the Crime and Policing Bill proposes a new offence of assaulting a shop Conservatives criticised Labour's plans and claimed the government was "leaving communities at the mercy of criminal gangs".Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: "The government likes to talk tough, but the reality is they are releasing criminals in our communities whilst failing to grip the border crisis."[The Labour] announcement comes without a single extra pound of new funding whilst they are actually cutting 1,300 officers." Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here. Download the BBC News app from the App Store for iPhone and iPad or Google Play for Android devices
The Guardian
35 minutes ago
- The Guardian
How German media outlets helped pave the way for Israel's murder of journalists in Gaza
What is the role of journalism when Palestinian reporters are treated as criminals and left to die? Last October, I spoke with the journalist Hossam Shabat. He described families packing what little they had left in northern Gaza as Israel began implementing its 'generals' plan'. Six months later, Shabat was dead – killed by Israel, accused of being a Hamas operative. Israel does not try to hide these killings. Instead, it often smears its victims in advance – branding journalists as 'terrorists', accusations that are rarely substantiated. These labels serve a clear cause: to strip reporters of their civilian status and make their killing appear morally acceptable. Journalists are not legitimate targets. Killing them is a war crime. The latest round shook the world: five Al Jazeera journalists were assassinated in a press tent in Gaza City, among them Anas al-Sharif, whose face had become familiar to anyone following Gaza up close. Both the UN and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had warned that al-Sharif's life was in danger. Weeks later, he was dead. Meanwhile, a growing consensus recognises Gaza as the site of a livestreamed genocide. Yet in Germany – a country that prides itself on having learned the lessons of its own genocidal history – some of the most powerful media institutions have played a part in enabling Israel's actions. Some German journalists have even justified the killing of their Palestinian colleagues. The clearest example is Axel Springer, Europe's largest publisher and owner of Bild, Germany's biggest newspaper. Hours after the killing of al-Sharif became public, Bild splashed his image under this headline: 'Terrorist disguised as journalist killed in Gaza' (which was later changed to 'Journalist killed was allegedly a terrorist'). Let that sink in. About a week before, Bild had published another piece: 'This Gaza photographer stages Hamas propaganda.' The article targeted the Palestinian photographer Anas Zayed Fteiha, accusing him of staging images of starving Palestinians as part of a Hamas campaign, despite the evidence that the subjects of the photos were indeed starving and waiting for food. In the article, Fteiha's title as journalist appeared in quotation marks, implying he wasn't a real journalist, and that images of starvation were exaggerated fabrications. The Bild story – along with a similar piece in the liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) – was swiftly amplified on X by Israel's foreign ministry, which cited them as proof that Hamas manipulates global opinion. Fteiha was branded an 'Israel- and Jew-hater' serving Hamas. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation quickly piled on, joined by rightwing influencers. In this case, German media had become a direct pipeline for Israeli talking points, quickly recycled into the international arena and repackaged as 'evidence'. Fteiha said in response: 'I don't create suffering. I document it.' Calling his work 'Hamas propaganda', he continued, 'is a felony against the press itself'. Just days before the Bild and SZ articles were published, one of Germany's largest journalists' associations, Deutscher Journalisten-Verband (DJV), issued a statement warning of 'manipulation' in press photography. It specifically cast doubt on images showing emaciated children in Gaza, claiming their condition 'apparently is not attributable to the famine in Gaza'. The DJV offered no evidence for this claim – largely because no such evidence exists. Facing backlash online, the association cited a July article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, whose author had speculated whether images of emaciated infants were really the result of starvation – or rather of preexisting conditions such as cystic fibrosis. The piece suggested that publications had been either negligent or manipulative in publishing these photos without further detail. Omitted was the fact that hunger and preexisting conditions can't be neatly separated and that no preexisting condition alone could produce such extreme emaciation. Bias isn't new in the German media landscape. At Axel Springer, support for the existence of the state of Israel is second on the list of the company's guiding principles, its so-called essentials. In September last year, Bild helped derail ceasefire negotiations by publishing an 'exclusive' report – excerpts from a Hamas strategy leaked to Bild by Benjamin Netanyahu's aides. In it, Bild claimed Hamas was 'not aiming for a quick end to the war', which neatly absolved Netanyahu of any responsibility for the breakdown in talks at the time. (In response to queries about the story, a Bild spokesperson told +972 magazine that the publication does not comment on its sources.) As it turned out, the Hamas document had been broadly misrepresented by Bild. The timing couldn't have served Netanyahu better: the story landed as mass protests put pressure on his position. Shortly after the Bild report was published, Netanyahu cited it in a cabinet meeting to cast the demonstrators as pawns of Hamas. The Bild article remains online, uncorrected. The problem, however, extends far beyond Bild and Axel Springer. Across legacy German media, failures to provide fact-based, balanced coverage of Israel and Palestine have been far reaching – and became glaringly obvious after the 7 October attacks. Fabricated claims, such as that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies, along with various other pieces of deliberate misinformation, remain uncorrected. Outlets across the political spectrum in Germany routinely omit historical context, frame Palestinian deaths in passive, depoliticised terms, and display a near-blind faith in Israeli military 'verification' – while ignoring a well-documented record of misinformation by Israeli state sources. In January, the ostensibly leftwing Die Tageszeitung ran a piece headlined: 'Can journalists be terrorists?' The article cited the Israeli military four times – and did not quote a single journalist in Gaza. Across the German media landscape, such narratives contribute to stripping Palestinian journalists of credibility, and – in the worst case – handing Israel readymade justifications for targeting them. Germany's 'never again' pledge should carry weight given its deeply genocidal history. Yet it rings hollow when the country's dominant outlets launder or supply propaganda to legitimise mass killing in Gaza. This is not journalism in the service of truth – it is journalism in the service of violence. Breaking this cycle would require a serious reckoning with the editorial cultures and political loyalties that have enabled German journalism to be weaponised in this way. The killing of journalists in Gaza makes one thing painfully clear: Israel does not want a record to be left. When the history of this genocide is written, there will be chapters on the media's role. Germany's section will be uncomfortably large. No one should claim they didn't see it happening. Hanno Hauenstein is a Berlin-based journalist and author. He worked as a senior editor in Berliner Zeitung's culture department, specialising in contemporary art and politics
