The Anti-Defamation Commission has demanded that a knife attack on a Jewish teenager in Bentleigh be prosecuted as a hate crime, after an 18-year-old yeshiva student was threatened with a blade, told he would be killed and punched in the stomach in broad daylight.

The young man was doing his weekly outreach on Centre Road and its side streets on Friday 24 July, helping Jewish residents put on tefillin. At about 1.35pm he politely asked an older man on a residential street whether he was Jewish, was sworn at, wished him a good day and walked away. According to the account he gave the commission’s chairman, Dr Dvir Abramovich, the man circled back with a knife in his right hand, screaming that he would kill him, and punched him in the stomach.

“A knife for a question. That is the going rate in Melbourne for being openly Jewish,” Dr Abramovich said. “An eighteen-year-old asked it, politely, on a Bentleigh street on Friday. Minutes later a blade was coming at his face, and a man was promising to kill him. In daylight. Over nothing.”

A knife for a question. That is the going rate in Melbourne for being openly Jewish.Dr Dvir Abramovich, ADC Chairman

“We were one movement of a hand away from a Jewish teenager bleeding on a Melbourne street and a family receiving the phone call no parent survives,” he said. “This was not a misunderstanding. This was not a heated exchange. This was terror on a footpath.”

The young man called triple zero at 1.48pm. By 2.04pm Victoria Police detectives had detained a man and taken his statement. After giving it, he picked up his tefillin and finished his route.

Dr Abramovich thanked police for their swift response and called on the law to act with the same urgency. “If prejudice drove this alleged attack, the charges must say so. Not just assault. Not just threats. A hate-motivated attack on a Jewish teenager, named for what it is, prosecuted for what it is, and punished for what it is,” he said. “Because if a Jewish boy cannot walk through Bentleigh in daylight without being threatened with a blade, then this is not just his problem. It is Melbourne’s shame.”