“There is no place for Jews in Australia,” he continued. “I think most Jews are going to end up in Israel.” 

Yemini is one of Australia’s most influential commentators. But after Oct. 7, the father of four children, including two biological children and two stepchildren, was forced to invest close to $60,000 to secure his home from Muslim extremists who he believes want to harm him. 

“It’s not what I think is gonna happen to me. It’s just preparing for the worst,” he said matter-of-factly. “I know the reality. There are a lot of people who would love to harm my family and me for sure.” 

The threats feel personal and immediate. 

One weekday morning, Yemini was at his local gym when a group of young Arab adults, one wearing a Free Palestine shirt, spotted him working out. They began filming him. According to Yemini, those videos are shared in online groups where even more extreme Muslims can identify where he lives and potentially plan something. He said he feels more exposed because he does not live within the Jewish community but “among regular Aussies,” in neighborhoods with many Muslims. 

Australia’s census reports more than 800,000 Muslims living in the country and only around 100,000 Jews. 

“You’re at the gym, and one of them’s got the Gaza top, and they’re pointing at you. And then I’m looking in the mirror, and I can see they’re filming. So my location has been compromised, so I’ve just got to be smart about it,” Yemini said. “If I go to the wrong place at the wrong time, I’ll get f***ing killed.” 

When he needs to attend pro-Palestinian protests, he brings bodyguards paid for by his media outlet. 

But despite the risks, Yemini has not stopped since Oct. 7. He believes Australians need to understand that what begins with the Jews will eventually target others as well. 

“First it’s the Saturday people, then the Sunday people. It’s real. It’s true. They hate you too,” he told The Media Line. 

Yemini is the 10th of 17 children. He was raised in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish home in Melbourne, but as a teenager he drifted onto the streets, became involved with drugs, and found himself on the wrong side of the law. Eventually, he ran away to Israel, where he cleaned himself up during his service in the IDF. After that, he returned to Australia to restart his life. 

He has been back in Melbourne ever since. 

When he first returned, he opened two gyms focused on Israel Defense Forces training, similar to Krav Maga facilities. Later, he worked for the controversial far-right activist Tommy Robinson. But during a previous Gaza war, he watched the Australian Broadcasting Corporation report on the conflict, and it made him angry. Having served in the army, he said he understood what Israeli soldiers were fighting. 

“They were lying through omission,” Yemini said. “I started just talking about it on social media. I guess that’s when my political views were molded. I self-radicalized.” 

Yemini went on to become one of the most outspoken voices against Australia’s severe COVID-19 restrictions in 2020, a period he said trained him to speak out publicly and forcefully. 

“Sometimes you feel like you’re fighting a losing battle,” Yemini admitted. “I’m not gonna lie. Sometimes I feel defeated and deflated and want to move to Israel, but I think I don’t really have a choice at the moment, so you have to keep fighting.” 

Before Oct. 7, Yemini was seen as extreme right even by many within the Jewish community, especially those he calls “the establishment,” people working in mainstream Jewish organizations who wanted to maintain good relationships with their colleagues. Many labeled him a racist and an Islamophobe. According to Yemini, some of those same community members have since approached him, publicly or privately, to say he had been right all along. 

“I’ve seen their posts since October 7, when they realized that the friends that they worked for all of this interfaith nonsense have turned on them,” Yemini said. “The exact statements they condemned me for six or seven years ago are the exact statements they are making now. You can wish for everyone to be your friend, but there are certain ideologies that just preach hate towards us. They genuinely hate us.” 

New data support his sense that something has shifted. 

On Dec. 2, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry released its annual antisemitism report, showing that antisemitic incidents in Australia remain at historically high levels, at more than five times the average number recorded before Oct. 7, 2023. According to the report, Australia has experienced the most significant spike in incidents among the J7 countries between 2021 and 2024. 

The J7, also known as the Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism, brings together major Jewish organizations from Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States to coordinate responses to rising anti-Jewish hate. 

Although the overall number of incidents has slightly decreased from last year’s record high, the most severe categories, including arson attacks against synagogues, preschools, and other Jewish institutions, are higher than in any previous year documented. 

In a statement published Dec. 3, Marina Rosenberg, ADL senior vice president for international affairs, said: “What is happening in Australia is not an exception; it should be a wake-up call to communities worldwide. Across North America, Europe, and Latin America, Jewish communities are reporting the same pattern of unprecedented harassment, threats, and incitement. When synagogues can be firebombed in Melbourne, and Jews threatened and attacked in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Buenos Aires, and Toronto, this is a threat not only to Jewish safety but to democratic stability itself.” 

Yemini agrees. He said, “There is a clash of civilizations happening in the West, and a big part of it, as uncomfortable as it is to say, is that they’re importing ideologies like Islam. That’s not saying every Muslim, but there is an ideology there that is teaching Jew hate.” 

He added that since Oct. 7, people who once avoided such hostility now appear newly willing to express it. 

“This is what I was warning about the whole time,” Yemini said. “People are feeling more empowered to do it publicly. It’s not just in Arabic anymore.” 

Yemini said he now better understands how Jews in Germany failed to recognize the danger before the Holocaust and chose to stay. 

“People are either turning a blind eye, playing it down, minimizing it, excusing it, or whatever,” Yemini told The Media Line. “There aren’t many people who are willing to actually stand up and publicly defend against it, defend us. And I don’t think we’re that far off.” 

He believes that although the established Jewish community has become more alarmed since Oct. 7, its leaders are still not taking intense enough action. Instead, he said, they continue to focus on appeasing interfaith partners or the Labor government, which leads Australia. 

“I’m sure it was like that in Nazi Germany as well,” Yemini said. “I’m sure the establishment was trying to appease the Nazis in the beginning, until they got beaten.” 

Critics have accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of being anti-Israel and ineffective in confronting the rise in antisemitism. Some claim the country’s growing hostility toward Jews is directly connected to what they describe as the Labor government’s extreme anti-Israel stance. 

After a firebomb attack on one of Australia’s most prominent synagogues, the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued an unprecedented statement on X, calling Albanese a weak politician who had betrayed Israel. 

“History will remember Albanese for what he is: a weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews,” Netanyahu tweeted. 

For Yemini, these developments reinforce his belief that there is no path back to safety because, in his view, the Australian government is not changing. 

“My biggest fear is that, like during the Holocaust, no one cared. It was after the Holocaust when Jews were the victims, after the fact,” Yemini said. “That’s what’s happening now. We’re in this phase where Jews are fair game.