Jewish cafe patrons sitting quietly chatting over their drinks have been subjected to a threatening tirade from a complete stranger, who accused them of being part of a ‘genocidal race’.
The two men, readily identifiable as Jewish by their yarmulke skull caps, and a woman were sitting at the cafe in the eastern Sydney shopping hub of Bondi Junction on Wednesday afternoon when the furious woman approached their table.
She began berating them over the bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
A group of Jewish cafe patrons in Sydney’s east have been accosted by an angry stranger who accused them of genocide over Israeli actions in Gaza
‘What you people did…’ she yelled in an incident filmed on Wednesday afternoon by former journalist Alison Bevege and posted to her Substack Letters from .
‘You are going to be spread around again,’ the woman said, in an apparent reference to the dispersal of Jews around the world following historical persecutions.
The group sitting at the table responded in reasoned tones but the woman shouted them down.
‘Your people, your race are committing genocide,’ she said.
‘Bombing international health aid, for God’s sake. Bombing hospitals in Palestine.
‘Officially 25,000 people die, children, old women, old man.’
In the video other onlookers can be seen filming the exchange as the woman storms off towards the lifts in the Eastgate shopping centre.
‘The young woman sitting at the café had only arrived in Sydney yesterday,’ Ms Bevege wrote in her Substack.
‘She was in for just one day before being abused.’
Ms Bevege also wrote that she ‘challenged the woman as she retreated to the lifts before giving words of comfort to the shocked Jews’.
‘It is important, but sad, to remember that this woman sincerely believed she was doing the right thing,’ she wrote.
n Jewish Association CEO Robert Gregory told Daily Mail on Thursday that Jews were being increasing openly targeted.
‘Sadly, these scenes are becoming all to common,’ he said.
The woman also threatened that Jews would be ‘spread around’ in a reference to Jewish dispersal to escape persecution
‘We are aware of numerous incidents of Jewish people being abused in the streets.
‘Anti-Israel activists claim to not be antisemitic but their actions often end up leading to attacks on individual Jews in .
‘There has been a complete failure of leadership from the federal government to confront surging antisemitism.’