Elderly and Disabled, a Jewish Woman Went to a Vodafone Store for Help

And she got more than she expected, being subjected by an employee to an outburst of antisemitic invective, leaving her in tears. More about this dismal story, one of thousands of similar antisemitic incidents that have become so widespread after the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, can be found here.

A disabled elderly Jewish woman was allegedly subjected to a tirade of antisemitic abuse and filmed without her consent inside the Vodafone Elsternwick store in Melbourne earlier this week.

The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, recounted the incident to Dr. Dvir Abramovich, Chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC).

She reported entering the Vodafone store at approximately 3:35 p.m. on Tuesday, June 23, seeking help with a pocket WIFI device.

After several rounds of being told by a young man at the Vodafone store that the device only needed charging, the employee became visibly agitated and did the following: shouted “Free Palestine” at the elderly lady repeatedly inside the store; called her a “dirty Zionist”; told her “Jews are disgusting”; insisted she hand over her personal mobile phone with no explanation; and filmed her on a phone without her consent while she stood trapped at the counter, unable to leave without her device.

After the ordeal ended, the woman burst into tears in the street.

She has since formally complained to Vodafone.

“Him saying Free Palestine to me basically felt like a call for my murder,” she told Abramovich. “I was very scared. I didn’t know what he was capable of. And I just hope he doesn’t have my details and that he doesn’t doctor the video or use it in any way. I feel very unsafe and scared for my life and for my future.”

“Free Palestine,” rightly understood, is indeed a call for murder — not of this particular Jewish woman — but murder of the Jewish state, that should disappear, in order be replaced by a 23rd Arab state, the state of “Palestine.”

Vodafone needs to complete its investigation right away — how long could the company’s looking into such a cut-and-dried example of virulent antisemitism take? — and then promptly fire the employee in question. And others should make known his name online, so that when he applies for other jobs, a potential employer’s quick searching should pull up his antisemitic outburst, and one hopes that that will put the kibosh on his hiring.

On the other hand, this is Australia. The December 2025 attack on Jews at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, which a Muslim father and his Muslim son carried out, did not appear in a vacuum. Ever since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s response — a ground invasion of Gaza — anti-Israel and antisemitic demonstrations and attacks have increased in Australia, and the government of Anthony Albanese has done little to prevent or stop them. Its hostility to Israel helped create the atmosphere in which these attacks on Jews are tolerated, or even approved.

Both the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and his Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, have a history of anti-Israel animus, and of being silent on the role of Islam in the Arab-Israeli conflict. They have been slow in the past to react to antisemitic incidents, including the firebombing at the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne on Dec. 6, 2024, and the role of Iran in these attacks, until the intelligence services pushed him to do so. Albanese has said that Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza is “quite clearly” a breach of international law, and also “a breach of decent humanity and of morality.”At least he has refrained, until now, of accusing Israel of “genocide.”