Antisemitism and Jewish Children and Youth in Australia’s Capital Territory Schools

Abstract

Issues pertaining to religion and Australian schools have generated a significant amount of controversy and scholarly attention in recent years, and much of the attention in the religion and schools debate has focused on Muslim and nonreligious children's experiences (Erebus International, 2006;Halafoff, 2013). This article, by contrast, explores the manifestations of antisemitism as experienced by Jewish children and youth in Canberra schools. It considers the characteristics of antisemitism; when and why it occurs; its impact on the Jewish children and young people; and also the responses to it by them, the schools and the Jewish community. Based on focus groups with the Jewish students and their parents, the study reveals that antisemitism is common in Canberra schools, as almost all Jewish children and youth in this study have experienced it. The findings from this study suggest that there is a need for more anti-racism education. Specifically there is an urgent need for educational intervention about antisemitism, alongside education about religions and beliefs in general, to counter antisemitism more effectively and religious discrimination more broadly in Australian schools.

Testing the Contact Hypothesis: The Association Between Personal Friendships and Anti-Jewish Attitudes Among 13- to 15-Year-Old Students in England and Wales

“…In addition to the findings from research conducted in the UK, since 2010 there has been a small body of empirical research across a number of other countries, including Australia (Ben-Moshe & Halafoff, 2014; Gross & Rutland, 2014), Norway (Thomas, 2016), Sweden (Bevelander & Hjern, 2015), and the USA (Dupper, Forrest-Bank, & Lowry-Carusillo, 2015;Forrest & Dupper, 2016) which either investigates the attitudes of young people towards their Jewish peers (Villano, 1999;Bevelander & Hjerm, 2015;Thomas, 2016), or which explores directly the lived experience of hostility, stereotyping and prejudice as encountered and reported by Jewish young people in schools (Ben-Moshe & Halafoff, 2014;Gross & Rutland, 2014;Dupper, Forrest-Bank, & Lowry-Carusillo, 2015).…”

“…The negativity shown toward their faith and experienced by Jewish students in studies both in the UK and internationally was not always to the exclusion of more positive interactions with peers. Both Moulin (2016, p. 692) and Ben-Moshe and Halafoff (2014) reported Jewish students also describing relationships characterised by more positive intergroup contact in that they also had non-Jewish friends who rejected anti-Semitism, and who included them in their friendship groups. Ben-Moshe and Halafoff (2014, p. 53) concluded that the social inclusion and social exclusion of Jewish students was 'occurring simultaneously.…”