‘We should never allow this to become normal’: School leaders tell of armed guards and threats

The head of the Australian Council of Jewish Schools and two prominent school leaders have suggested government should carry more of the cost of protecting Jewish schools and students, not parents.

Appearing at the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion on Tuesday, Stephen Rothman said the council’s position was that “at least the recurrent expenditure on guards and other operational recurrent expenditures should be funded by the federal government”.

In a hearing block focused on the security needs of the Jewish community, the leaders of Mount Scopus College and Bialik College in Melbourne told the commission the security bills for their respective campuses had increased in recent years, with about 70 per cent of the cost going to armed guards – an expense non-Jewish schools do not require, they said.

The evidence came as three rabbis from three different synagogues – including Adass Israel, which was burned down in 2024 in an alleged terror attack – spoke of the burden of security on Jewish communal life in Australia.

Dan Sztrajt, the principal of Mount Scopus in Burwood, in Melbourne’s east, spoke of his shock when the words “Jew Die” were painted on the school’s gates in 2024.

Quickly, he said, he was contacted by parents “who told me personally that they would not be sending their children to school” because the graffiti suggested “the school might be targeted, or that this demonstrates that the school doesn’t have sufficient security”.

Sztrajt told Commissioner Virginia Bell that a number of schools, including his own, began employing armed guards in 2015 following an antisemitic attack in Europe, and charged parents a levy to cover the cost. Following the Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza, the cost of maintaining security had escalated dramatically, he said.

Last year, Mount Scopus parents paid a levy of $1130 per student – up from $500 in 2022, which still fell short of covering the $3000 per student security cost, Sztrajt said, noting that while state and federal governments contributed funding, it was not available to spend on guards.

“The idea that government grants should not be used towards providing that level of much-needed protection has been problematic,” he said.

Tyson Wodak, board president of Bialik College in Hawthorn East, told the commission parents at the school paid a security levy of $840 per student – up 230 per cent in recent years.

The college also receives government funding, but like Sztrajt, he said it did not cover the full cost of security.

“In my view, a well-functioning society ought to provide security to its people as a core part of its orderly function,” Wodak said.

He said his school was one of three in the area, but the only one with such a high level of security.

“The other schools, you can walk in at the weekend and play basketball or do whatever you like. We have high fences. We have security everywhere – it’s a secure environment. I just can’t understand why we live in a country where one aspect of our community is expected to live under heavy security which it has to pay for in large part itself.”

Another witness, Rabbi Levi Wolff of the Central Synagogue in Sydney’s Bondi Junction, told the royal commission: “Our children, as all Jewish children in this country, are growing up attending schools where they have armed guards in front of their schools and the houses of worship, and that’s normal.

“That’s normal. But that is not normal, and we should never allow this to become Australia’s normal.

“And when any Australian feels that they must hide who they are … by covering their kippah with a cap, or ensuring that they have an armed guard in front of their homes of worship, something has gone wrong for all Australians, not just for the Jewish community.”

Wolff spoke of being struck by the difference when standing outside St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral in Sydney just 10 days after the Bondi terror attack in December.

“I was struck by the absence of security. How this magnificent house of worship had its doors wide open, and people from all walks of life were able to just walk off the street with a knapsack on their back and come inside and pray and feel like nothing would go wrong,” Wolff said.

“Would that ever be a possibility [at my synagogue]? Where there would be no armed guards, no bollards, no ongoing security screenings for every single person to be able to walk through?”

Wolff said the threat began with words, and ended with violence. He drew attention to the language heard at campus protests.

“I often hear people say, ‘I’m not anti-Jewish. I’m simply anti-Zionist’, and in the same breath they deny the Jewish people’s spiritual, historical and indigenous connection to their ancestral land.

“I mean, to me, it’s almost like saying, ‘I’m not racist against Aboriginals; Aboriginal Australians, I absolutely love you. I just simply don’t believe that you have any cultural or historical connection to this land,’” he said.

“For many Jews, Zionism is not an abstract political ideology. It is the belief that the Jewish people, like every other people, have the right and self-determination to their ancestral homeland.”

The assertion of indigenous connection to Israel is politically controversial – pro-Palestinian protesters, and much of the political left, assert that the Zionist movement which began in the late 19th century and culminated in the Jewish state of Israel was a colonial project.

The commission heard from witnesses on Monday who spoke of the increased reliance on community security groups, or CSGs – organisations of volunteers set up to protect Jewish people and institutions against threats and attacks – at Jewish schools and synagogues across Australia following October 7, 2023.

Benjamin Klein, who appeared on Tuesday as a lived experience witness on behalf of the Adass Israel synagogue in the inner Melbourne suburb of Ripponlea, said he knew of two people from his son’s school who had “picked themselves up and moved to Israel” amid rising antisemitism.

“Those stories never used to happen. People … were proud to live in Melbourne. They were part of the Australian community. But now there’s good Aussie people … moving,” Klein told the commission.

“It’s weird because, if you think about it, Israel is not necessarily a safe place … It’s quite a scary place. But they’re still picking themselves up from Melbourne and moving to Israel.”

“Why are rational, successful accountants, lawyers, doctors [doing this?] … And the answer is they just don’t feel safe.”

The Ripponlea synagogue was largely destroyed after it was firebombed on December 6, 2024.

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