https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/10/03/forced-to-kiss-the-shoes-of-a-muslim-classmate-called-a-dirty-jew-antisemitic-bullying-exposed-at-australian-schools/?utm_content=news1&utm_medium=daily_email&utm_campaign=email&utm_source=internal/
Shocking accounts of antisemitic bullying at two schools in the Australian state of Victoria over the past year have led to calls for more assertive action by educational authorities to protect Jewish students.
The two cases — one involving a 5-year-old boy at a junior school, the other a 12-year-old boy in high school — revealed a pattern of dehumanizing language and violent behavior on the part of the bullies, alongside a disturbing indifference from officials at both schools when the abuse was brought to light by the parents of the children.
In an interview with the Melbourne-based Age newspaper on Thursday, the mother of the 5-year-old disclosed that her son was repeatedly taunted and laughed at over his circumcised penis — to the point where he began to wet himself in class rather than go to the toilet.
Other insults faced by the little boy at Melbourne’s Hawthorne West Primary School included epithets like “you dirty Jew” and “Jewish cockroach.” His parents began investigating whether there was a problem after the child began wetting his bed at home and complained about going to school. One morning, he reportedly told his mother, “‘Mummy, you shouldn’t love me. I’m a worthless, Jewish rodent. I’m vermin,” while she was making his breakfast.
“I grew up with Holocaust survivors, I used to go to synagogue with my uncle who was a Holocaust survivor and those were the words, literally, he was taunted with when he was five,” his mother told The Age.
The 12-year-old boy, meanwhile, was subjected to several months of antisemitic abuse that began with an incident in which he was forced to kiss the shoes of a Muslim fellow-student.
