According to the Australian Jewish News, cafe owner Aliza Shuvaly arrived at work to find the graffiti.
“I started to shake, I didn’t know what to do,” Shuvaly told AJN, noting that many members of her family were Holocaust survivors.
She said that she is now scared, but that she will not let the incident deter her from running her business.
“I couldn’t close the cafe,” she told AJN. “It’s not going to break me as a Jew. I’m not sure if I’m the target or [if it’s] just because we are Jewish.”
Antisemitism is on the rise in Australia. The 12 month period ending September 30, 2018 saw a 59% increase over the previous year in total antisemitic incidents in Australia involving threats or acts of violence, according to the annual Report on Antisemitism in Australia published by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).
In response to the cafe incident, Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich told the Australian paper, “We need to make sure that we do not reach the point where Jews in Victoria will not feel safe walking the streets or in their businesses, yet the recent surge in hate and white-supremacists activity in our state, which is hitting an all-time high, is causing many to feel this way.”