A small business owner with Jewish heritage was forced to consider closing his wine bar after a member of the extremist “far left” walked in and said “we don’t need your kind here.”
Tim Cohen said he faced a series of abuse while working at his Brunswick East wine shop in Melbourne’s inner north in a video posted to social media on Friday.
Cohen, who runs Brunswick East Wine, seemed defeated as he told his customers that his abusers “had won” and that he felt “really torn up inside.”
He explained that a woman, who he believed to be an extremist from the far-left section of society, came into his store on Thursday and said she was glad to see it empty.
“She just said, ‘It’s so good that you’re quiet.’ We want you out of this suburb. We don’t need your kind here,” and she turned around and waddled away, Mr. Cohen said.
“I feel like after 10 years I’m really devastated as a person and as a business owner in this suburb.”
Cohen has been the target of far-left attacks since October 7 last year, when Hamas invaded Israel and massacred hundreds of revelers at a festival.
Since then, he has painted two inverted red triangles on the outside wall of his bar.
Tim Cohen said he was “devastated” after an anti-Semitic attack by a customer at his Brunswick East Wine store in Melbourne on Thursday.
Hamas militants use the symbol to identify targets to kill, and the first time Cohen found one in his store it was accompanied by a threatening message warning people not to shop there.
Another appeared without accompanying text on September 8.
Cohen said he had had enough of the abuse and defamation of Jewish people in Melbourne’s inner north.
“I’ve gotten a lot of hate from the far left, not the far right,” he said.
“The far left in the inner north, because of my Jewish heritage and I can’t deal with that anymore.”
Cohen said the woman who abused him had a “smug” look on her face, adding that the interaction left him crying into a box behind the counter for the next hour.
“I was sitting on a box in the corner thinking ‘wow, this is hateful, this is brown shirt material.'” This is Hitler Youth material,” he said.
Cohen said it was not the first time he had been attacked by the “far left” and that he also found Hamas symbols painted outside his wine bar.
He specifically highlighted the “hatred” he claims Greens members have been fermenting since Hamas’s invasion of Israel.
“Green sycophants like Adam Bandt and Tim Read, who have done nothing but put on a (Palestinian) keffiyeh and spread hate,” he said.
‘Tim Read, Adam Bandt and Samantha Ratnam, these are your sycophants, these are your followers.
“I’m devastated inside.”
Now Cohen says his business is quiet and “dying” thanks to the “far left” and “hateful, Jew-hating people.”
‘You have won. I’m done. It won’t be long until you’ve seen my back. Good for you,” Mr. Cohen said to end the video.
On two separate occasions, Cohen said he found inverted red triangles painted on its walls, a symbol used by Hamas to mark places where political enemies live.
Anti-Defamation Commission chair Dr Dvir Abramovich said Cohen’s story tells the entire Jewish community that it is not safe in Australia.
‘When someone like Tim Cohen, a man who simply wanted to build a life, a business, a dream, is met with hate, the Jewish community tells him, “You’re not safe here,” Dr. Abramovich told Daily Mail Australia.
‘This is not only painful; It’s terrifying.
‘When a person is told, “You are not wanted here” because of their faith or heritage, it is more than an insult.
“It is a denial of their humanity, a form of psychological violence that leaves scars far beyond what the world can see.”
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mr Cohen, Mr Bandt, Mr Read and Ms Ratnam for comment.