Violent antisemitic abuse was allowed to proliferate across a Jewish political candidate’s social media as part of a broader trend designed to intimidate Jewish Australians from public life, a royal commission has heard.

Joshua Kirsh launched a campaign as an independent candidate for the New South Wales upper house in late 2025 but found his advertisements online bombarded by antisemitic tropes, abuse and threats.

“The ads … were deluged with antisemitic comments of a nature that was particularly vitriolic, in the sense of … ‘Fuck off you Zionist cunt’,” he told the commission on Wednesday.

“And there were a range of conspiracy theories about Israel paying people to firebomb places in Australia, that the October 7 massacre was a false flag, that we’ve got enough Jewish politicians already.”

Kirsh catalogued the abuse and reported it to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry for its annual report on antisemitic incidents, a process he described as exhausting and distressing.

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