The owner of a rival jumping castle operator in Western Sydney has received death threats and abusive phone calls, after her business was incorrectly identified as the company who refused a booking from a Jewish school.
On Tuesday it was revealed the owner of Western Sydney Jump refused a booking from Masada College in St Ives, writing in an email: “There’s no way I’m taking a Zionist booking. I don’t want you blood money. Free Palestine”.
Shortly after the story broke that night, Rebecca Locker-Cole, who operates a business called Western Sydney Jumping Castles & Face Painting, received hundreds of threatening phone calls and abusive messages from strangers.
One man sent a Facebook message that read: “I’m going to come and jump up and down all over your Nazi face”.
Ms Locker-Cole believes she has been incorrectly targeted an onslaught of hate, decimating her business’ hard won social media following, and leaving her fearing for her family’s safety, because Western Sydney Jump has deleted their social media profiles and temporarily disabled their website.
“Since last night we’ve had over 100 phone calls. We’ve had people say to us: ‘You Nazi, you fat pig, we know where you live,’” she told NCA NewsWire.
“I’ve been breaking down all day, and crying. We’ve worked so hard on our business for the past seven years.”
Receiving the first message on Tuesday night at about 7pm, Ms Locker-Cole and her husband Michael initially thought it was a scam, however by Wednesday morning they were contacting police, and working fast to remove their home address from the website.
While the business normally receives 20 inquiries a day, on Wednesday they had none.
“It’s just not worth the risk – we’ve got so many trailers in our front yard for advertising, and for the safety of our two children. It’s just been too hard,” she said.
Ms Locker-Cole has also since made multiple posts on Facebook and Instagram emphatically stating the business does “not support any hate towards other humans”.
“Please understand that these comments where made by another company called Western Sydney Jump,” it read.
“This was not created by our company Western Sydney Jumping Castles and Face Painting. Different companies all together.”
The actions of Western Sydney Jump have been denounced by politicians and Jewish groups, with NSW Police attending the St Ives school to conduct inquiries.
NSW Health Minister Ryan Park said the messages were “appalling, despicable and disgraceful”.
“I can’t condemn them any more than that. They have no place in a modern Australia,” he said.
“I find those comments, not only offensive, but highly racist. They should be called out for what they are.”
He also called on owner of Western Sydney Jump to apologise for their email, and said it was the “last thing” needed in the community, “particularly given the challenges we see overseas every day”.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry chief executive Alex Ryvchin said the incident was “indicative of the surge in anti-Semitism” in Australia.
“To refuse to hire a jumping castle to kids who happen to be Jewish is the height of prejudice and low bigotry. The business should be ashamed,” he said.
“The reference to blood money of course invokes the blood libel, a classic anti-Jewish myth.”
After her initial post, the owner asserted her “right to decline any booking” before issuing a long post on the conflict in Gaza.
“Just to be clear, this is about Zionists. Not Jews. I have zero issue with the Jewish community,” she continued.
“You know what actually blows my mind … when Palestinians chant ‘From the river to the sea. Palestine will be free!’ you find Zionists crying and saying ‘Look, they want us all dead’.
“But when Zionists actually say ‘flatten Gaza’, or ‘give them hell’, or ‘there should be no limit to the number of civilian casualties in Palestine’, they say nothing.