By Nomi Kaltmann on The Tablet…
In November 2023, just weeks after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, New Zealand’s Holocaust Centre in Wellington issued a report focusing on Jewish children age 9 to 18 that revealed that 50% of responding parents reported their children had faced antisemitism in their school since Oct. 7.
“Pre-Oct. 7, we received one or two complaints a year,” said Deborah Hart, the centre’s board chair, who commissioned the report. “After [Oct. 7], the steep rise in complaints we were getting was incredibly concerning and we wanted to know how big this problem was.”
In a follow-up report compiled in July 2024 by the same organization, that number shot even higher: A staggering 80% of respondents said their children had suffered antisemitic episodes in their schools.
These reports, which have more than 30 respondents each, have not been made public to protect the location and identity of children, who are often the only Jewish people in their local area, but the data can be backed up with New Zealand police statistics. New Zealand’s Holocaust Centre found that antisemitism was not limited to one place or demographic in the country.
Read the full article on The Tablet here.
