Giant Swastikas and Hateful Slurs Deface Golf Course in Australian City of Melbourne With Historical Jewish Ties
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by Algemeiner Staff
Swastikas deface the surface of the Cranbourne Golf Club in Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Anti-Defamation Commission.
Two outsized swastikas were among the hateful words and lewd images sprayed onto the playing surface of a private golf club in Melbourne, Australia, this week, in an outrage denounced by witnesses as “cowardly” and “vile.”
The offending symbols — located alongside obscene drawings and crudely-homophobic slurs — were discovered on the fourth green of the Cranbourne Golf Club on Tuesday night. The club, founded by Jewish golfers in 1953, retains close links with the Jewish community and is open to all.
Cranbourne Golf Club General Manager Cameron Mott told The Age newspaper on Thursday that the graffiti was being painted over.
“We’re cleaning it off at the moment and covering it up with turf paint so that people aren’t exposed to it,” he said.
Attorney General Jill Hennessy, who has commissioned a review into banning Nazi paraphernalia and symbols such as swastikas, said the perpetrators should be ashamed of themselves and that “items that promote hatred and violence have no place in [the state of] Victoria.”
Members of the club quickly reported the graffiti to Australia’s main Jewish civil rights organization, the Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC), which has been urging action to counter a recent outbreak of swastika vandalism in Melbourne.
“Another day, another sickening and chilling incident of swastika vandalism and if this hate spree continues, Melbourne will soon be known as the swastika capital of Australia,” Dvir Abramovich — head of the ADC — told The Age.
Continued Abramovich: “When this type of cruel and vicious vandalism comes into full view, it reminds us that there are white supremacists in our midst wishing to intimidate us.”
