Former Westfield Boss Says Family Has Experienced 40 Years of Anti-Semitic Threats

Steven Lowy, the son of Westfield founder Frank, said Israel felt safer than Australia post-Oct. 7.

Steven Lowy testifies to the Royal Commission on Antosemitism and Social Cohesion in Australia. Screenshot of Commission livestream.

Steven Lowy, former executive director of global shopping centre company Westfield Corporation, says has revealed his family has experienced over 40 years of anti-Semitic threats.

Lowy is now the principal of his family’s investment company founded by his father Frank, and is a prominent philanthropist.

His family maintains its own security team, which reviews online content and escalates material considered to be a credible threat to law enforcement.

He told the Antisemitism Royal Commission that in the 12 months to February 2026, the team reviewed more than 15,000 negative comments about the Lowy family, identified more than 200 persons of interest, and referred around 40 of them to police and security agencies.

Threats have occurred since December 1982 bombing of the Israeli consulate—housed in the same building as Lowy’s company—he said.

Later that day, another bomb went off at the Hakoah Club in Bondi, where Frank Lowy was due to attend a meeting.

“I personally took a phone call at our house threatening the lives of our family on that day,” the younger Lowy said.

“From 1982 to October 7th (2023), there was an ever-increasing amount of anti-Semitism, and our family has been very diligent in taking responsibility for our own security.”

Over that period the family had experienced hate mail “and some physical issues.” Threats weren’t prevalent but were “always hovering,” and his family had been the subject of “the most horrific anti-Semitism.”

“Anti-Semitism in Australia was at a much lower level in those days that you’re referring to, but it was still around,” he said.

Lowy said online attacks against his family spiked at certain times, such as the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre.

“[On the anniversary of] the horrific events in New York, there are particular spikes of blaming my father for killing 3,000 innocent people,” Lowy said.

When his father was reported to have made a submission to the commission, there was another spike. When the head of ASIO gave the Lowy Institute lecture, there was another. He was expecting a spike in abuse as a result of media coverage of his testimony, he said.

Assassination Threat

Counsel assisting the commission, Richard Lancaster, then took Lowy through several examples of the type of social media posts his security team had identified as being of concern, including people encouraging the assassination of his father.

A screenshot of a social media post with the prominent Australian Lowy business family, who founded the Westfield Shopping Centre chain, presented during the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism. Screenshot/The Epoch Times

“There was a webinar event that my wife, Judy, held for the families who support the [Moriah] foundation ... and it ended up on TikTok. Using technical tools it was adjusted and modified, and the headline of that was calling my wife ‘Genocide Judy.’

“That was suddenly a hashtag [after it was] published by somebody with over 230,000 followers. It’s had enormous airplay. I believe it was taken down, as a lot of these things are,” Lowy said.

If people made similar threats in any other way they would be arrested, Lowy said.

“I have a firm belief that these online threats lead to or inspire others to do physical activity and violent physical activity.”

He would like to see social media subject to the same laws as traditional media, he told the commission.

Post-Oct 7 Protests a ‘Glorification’ of Killing: Lowy

After the Oct. 7 attack, Lowy said he visited Israel to see what aid might be needed.

“I personally visited those communities, [and it] was the most horrific thing that I have experienced in my lifetime. I came back to Sydney just a few days later after that, and actually I felt more unsafe here than I did in Israel,” he told the commission.

While people who don’t often travel to Israel would feel it was unsafe because of what they see on TV, people living there do not feel unsafe there in everyday life, he explained.

“But when I came back to Sydney, I felt like I was coming back to a different country.”

He saw television coverage of the pro-Palestinian demonstration outside the Opera House on Oct. 9, which he called “a glorification of the most horrific killing of Jews since the Holocaust.”

“It was a very difficult thing to stomach, seeing your own country, your own compatriots acting in this way,” he said.