Childcare educator Ealaf Al-Easawi was brutally bashed by a stranger in a shocking Islamophobic incident. She told her story to Solidarity
Ealaf was on her lunch break on Thursday 13 February and decided to visit the Pacific Epping shopping centre in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
Out of nowhere, a tall, blonde woman slap-punched her across the face and shoved her so hard that she fell.
“I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me. We didn’t make eye contact. The attack was only because I was wearing a hijab.
“She didn’t say anything, just sort of roared at me.
“She hit me so hard that my earring came off inside my hijab and I lost it. I’ve got bad bruising all down my side.
“This is a multicultural country. I was born here. This has never happened to me before and now I’ve got back problems and I’m so scared that I had to get my sister to come with me when I went back to the Northern Hospital on the weekend.
“After the attack, two nurses having their lunch gave me support and the security guards came. Then another woman (named by the ABC as Kawthar Ali) turned up with two young kids. She was pregnant and she’d also been attacked.
“The same woman who’d attacked me had choked her from behind with her hijab.
“The woman didn’t speak very good English and no one supported her after her attack. So she just sat there until she knew her attacker had gone.
“Her older kid was really scared but the younger one didn’t understand what was going on.
“I can speak Arabic and so could the security guards, so we could translate for her to the police.”
Harassed online
Ealaf said police failed to give her an incident number or contact her again until she reported the assault to Action Against Islamophobia and a case worker followed up on her behalf.
She spent 10 hours in the Northern Hospital on the night of the attack before being discharged. Then, to add to her pain, she was harassed online.
“I told my story on a Facebook group and 95 per cent of people were really supportive. But one man called me a liar and said he wanted to meet me and break my legs.”
The state Labor MP for Thomastown, Bronwyn Halfpenny, visited Ealaf and her husband for an hour and a half on Sunday night, to show support.
Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton have condemned the attacks, following sharp criticism from the likes of Australian cricket star Usman Khawaja and Senator Fatima Payman.
But so long as Labor and the Coalition punch down on the Palestine movement—and focus on antisemitism at the expense of the much larger number of Islamophobic attacks—Ealaf’s horrific experience won’t be the last.
Action Against Islamophobia case manager Mariam Ardati told The Age, “For many months, Islamophobic incidents and hate crimes against Muslims have been on the rise but little has been done to address it and most have not received any media attention.
“More real action needs to be taken before someone gets killed, or we see another Christchurch massacre right on our doorstep.”
