The Melbourne couple who held an illegal engagement party in Caulfield North have been hit with so much anti-Semitic hate speech and death threats that they’ve had to hire a bodyguard.
Last week, footage emerged of a 69-person engagement party in Caulfield North, where there was COVID transmission between guests. Guests at the party were quickly identified, including two medical professionals. Each person at the party was fined $5500.
According to the Daily Mail, the couple at the centre of the party have now been forced into hiding and have hired private security to protect them after receiving death threats.
The party was undoubtedly wrong, with Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews describing the people who attended as making “shitty choices”. However, some people have used the couple as a scapegoat for their own anti-Semitism, which is disgusting.
In fact, Daniel Andrews had to remind people that the event had nothing to do with the Jewish community as a whole, but the selfish actions of a small few.
“The (engagement) was not a function of being Jewish,” Andrews said.
“It was a stupid function. Them breaking the rules was not a reflection on the Jewish community more broadly. It is unacceptable and evil for anyone to be trading in anti-Semitic comments.”
COVID commander Jeroen Weimar also had to apologise for naming the party-goers as members of the Orthodox Jewish community.
“I am hugely disappointed that my words have been interpreted as a slight or criticism of the Orthodox Jewish community – this was absolutely not intended,” Weimar said.
“I apologise to Melbourne’s Jewish community for the hurt and harm that my words have done.”
It’s one thing to condemn the actions of a group of people breaking the law. But it’s another to take that anger out on an entire community who had nothing to do with it.
