Letter of the Day

We must kick back, not just Harry

TOP AFL prospect Harry Sheezel observed that the anti_semitic slurs hurled at him online ahead of this week’s AFL draft were “ignorant and uneducated” (“League to probe online vile slurs”, HS, 29/11). That is an understatement.

Your report appeared in the back pages, but readers other than sports fans need to be made aware that anti-Semitism is still extant in this country.

This is unfortunately obvious among the far-right groups- and by the fact that only this year the Victorian government had to bring in legislation to ban the public display of Nazi symbols.

Sheezel stated that “those (commenting) probably need to learn that that’s not right or tolerated in today’s society”.

May I assert there is no “probably”. Moreover, people must be confronted to understand why they entertain these vile thoughts in the first place, so we can eradicate all cruel Jewish stereotypes.

I certainly hope Sheezel can just focus on football, as he says, and become as great a player as Sid Jackson and Eddie Betts (I’m an old Blue), Adam Goodes, Buddy Franklin and Darcy Vescio.

They and many others have triumphed with race, religion and sexuality irrelevant.

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