As I said earlier, nobody should be abused or attacked, I believe that is wrong. I also believe that it is "more wrong" to abuse or attack someone for being a member of what I consider a protected class - that of their race, gender, sexuality, etc.
Can't help but use a football analogy in Random, so sorry about this. Footballers call each other clams all the time. We've all done it on the pitch and all been on the receiving end too. It shouldn't happen, we'd all prefer it didn't happen but it does. But when John Terry calls Anton Ferdinand a black clam, that's something altogether different.
Now as I've also said in this thread, when someone identifies as Jewish, it's a little different. Because of what has happened in their history, "Jewish" no longer just means someone who subscribes to Judaism as a religion. It can mean someone from that religion, someone of Jewish descent, someone who is a part of the Jewish culture, or often just someone from Israel. Where Islamic and Arabic (as one of many examples) are distinctions along which we can divide religion from genetics, Jewish and Jewish are currently inseparable. If someone attacked your aunt with the intent of insulting her religion then, as distasteful as that is, it's of the lesser category of "badness" in my opinion. If they attacked her religion in an attempt to attack Jewish people as a genetic or cultural group, then what they did was in the bigger bad category.
*There is sill a ginger and scouse exemption from protected groups - nobody want those genes spreading.
