Anti-Semitic attack in Australia leaves 5 injured

Five Australian Jews were injured Saturday morning in what is being called an anti-Semitic attack in Bondi, a suburb of Sydney.

Eight young men set upon the victims – four men and a 62-year-old woman – and injured all of them in a brawl after yelling “derogatory comments,” New South Wales police said.

“Some [of the victims] have suffered concussion – there’s also a fractured cheekbone, a possible broken nose, lacerations and bruising,” NSW police told ABC News.

Three men, two of them teenagers, were charged in connection with the attack, after being restrained by employees of a nearby hotel who rushed to intervene in the fight.

“There’s been severe racial vilification here, that’s a term under the legislation, and I think we should look at taking action,” Stepan Kerkyasharian, president of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board, told Australian media.

The Anti-Discrimination Board, a government body, promised an investigation into the incident.

“Violence of this kind and, in particular, racist violence, anti-Semitic violence, is completely unacceptable in our society,” Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull was quoted by The Australian as telling the Nine Network following the attack, which occurred as the victims were on their way home from synagogue.

David Faktor, a spokesman for St. Vincent’s Hospital, where the victims were treated, expressed consternation at the attack, telling ABC News that “maybe in Germany in the 1930s and Russia in the 1970s but, certainly in Sydney, Australia, Bondi, you just don’t expect an unprovoked attack.”

Faktor, who is Jewish, alleged that the victims were chosen because they were Jews.