A concert to raise money for the victims of the shooting attack on a Chanukah party on Sydney’s Bondi Beach has been canceled after the Greek choir that was to take part voted not to sing with a Jewish choir, JTA reported.
A majority of members of the 50-member Australian Hellenic Choir “politically objected” to singing alongside the Sydney Jewish Choral Society. Others said they did not feel safe in a joint performance with Jews.
“I was not expecting this to happen at all as we’d performed with the Jewish choir without issue in 2022,” the Greek choir’s founder and president, James Tsolakis, told the Australian newspaper. He added, “The Jewish people are all into it, I’m into it, but the Greek choir was a bit anti doing it because of the political climate.”
The “Concert for Hope and Unity,” which had received government support, was to have featured “The Ballad of Mauthausen,” about a romance between Greek and Jewish prisoners at the Nazi concentration camp. The groups performed the piece together in 2022, but the reaction to the Gaza war has perceptions of Jews across Australia, including, Tsolakis said, within his community.
“There’s a bit of antisemitism in the Greek community; I didn’t realize the extent of it. Unfortunately, we have a lot of people in the community blaming the Jewish community for what’s happening in Israel, Palestine … that’s not correct,” Tsolakis said. “You want to hate [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu? Hate Netanyahu, but what have the Jewish people done to you? The whole antisemitism thing has got be wound back.”
