Andrew L. Urban.
“Forensic inquiry or ‘tokenistic’: Will Royal Commission deliver solutions to antisemitism crisis?” That’s the splash headline in The Australian today (17 August, 2026). In another story, under the headline “How Hamas outsmarted the UN and Western media in the Gaza propaganda war” the lies by (a different) Albanese about starving children in Gaza are exposed.
A joint Israel-UNICEF study has found not only are Gazan infants not starving but the incidence of low-weight infants is lower in Gaza than in much of the Middle East, columnist Chris Mitchell reports.
Using World Health Organisation methodology, the survey found acute infant malnutrition rates across Gaza “ranged between 0.2 per cent and 0.8 per cent’’. The Post said: “These levels are comparable to or below those recorded in Gaza prior to the Israel-Hamas war and are significantly lower than those recorded in neighbouring countries, including Egypt, Jordan and Syria.”
In the same paper, James Dowling reports “UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese gave the game away. At a UN press conference last September, Albanese said the death toll in Gaza was 680,000 (it’s 70,000), including 380,000 infants under five. When told there were only 341,790 children under five in Gaza, Albanese said she used the higher figure deliberately because “it had the effect I wanted”. (Are all Albaneses liars?)
“As Matt Field wrote in That Jew on Substack on August 9, in a piece on antisemitism and postcolonialism since October 7: “Hamas planned the attack. The institutions planned the response. Only one of them knew what the other would do.”
“Hamas “had studied Western progressive institutions, their ideological architecture, their frameworks, their reflexes – and they concluded that those institutions would convert Jewish death into Israeli guilt, that the human rights infrastructure would perform against Israel on schedule, and that the aftermath would damage Israel more than the attack damaged Hamas.”
“That piece, now also published on The Future of Jewish website, was originally called “What Hamas understood that we didn’t”. Everyone at the Bondi royal commission should read it.
“Hamas has not only outsmarted most of the Western media, it has out-thought the West’s universities, most social democrat governments and probably our own antisemitism royal commission.
“In Hamas’s thinking, October 7 was an outstanding success. The deaths of up to 70,000 Palestinians bought the terror group exactly the anti-Israel publicity it sought.
“The Harvard declaration by a coalition of student groups the day after the murder of 1200 innocents, taking of 250 hostages and rape of young women at a music festival for peace declared Israel was to blame for all the violence.
Elsewhere in the paper, James Dowling reports how the Royal Commission is facing a loss of confidence.
The survivors and bereaved of the Bondi massacre milled through the function room tucked inside the Bondi Pavilion and found their seats, before newly appointed royal commissioner Virginia Bell strode in to meet them.
The former High Court judge had called the private meeting on February 26, 2026 to explain why she couldn’t call evidence from the attendees as part of a royal commission they had advocated passionately for. Two days earlier, she had given a stony-faced assurance at an introduction to the inquiry that she could confidently deconstruct the December 14 attack’s precursors without examining the day’s events.
She explained this again, in softer terms, to the survivors before her. Then she took questions.
“Do you have enough time?” one attendee asked. “There’s never enough time,” she replied. That reply is revealing; it’s the reply that buries the reality by a meaningless generalisation. It’s a bookend to PM Albanese’s pathetic reply when asked if his government could have done better to stand up against antisemitism: “Governments can always do better.”
As Former Federal Court judge Ronald Sackville says, “It is always possible for a royal commission to seek an extension of time to complete its work and in the early stages Commissioner Bell did not definitively rule out that option. It would seem to be too late for such a request to be made at this stage, at least for the purpose of holding more hearings or conducting further investigations into matters within the terms of reference.” More likely, it is not a request Anthony Albanese’s cabinet would be ready to grant.
With four months left to prepare her final report, some of the commission’s most vocal cheerleaders are questioning why it refuses to flex the unmatched legal powers at its disposal.
Jewish community leaders, senior judicial figures and national security experts have observed gaps in its process: avoiding cross-examination of protest organisers, not calling as witnesses government ministers or key proponents for a royal commission, such as former treasurer Josh Frydenberg, and failing to apply forensic judgment against the perpetrators of antisemitism.
It’s hard, looking at the more than 200 witnesses called before the royal commission, to find anyone who didn’t want to be there. Once seated, the questions delivered to them come in mild tones.
Any early spark of pugnacity – such as when counsel assisting, Richard Lancaster, suggested to NSW police their resourcing of the December 14 Hanukkah event “was obviously too low” – failed to bear out in following hearings.
University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott was questioned whether members of proscribed hate group Hizb ut-Tahrir had hijacked a pro-Palestine student encampment under his nose. By the end of his testimony, the answer was no more clear than at the beginning.
Arguably the most heated exchange of the commission came this month when lawyers for a Palestinian group – not the commission’s own counsel – laid into Jewish community leader David Ossip about Israeli military timelines after October 7.
“It’s been bloodless,” one community figure said. “No one’s really been pinned to the mast.
“There’s a reason (Ossip’s) cross-examination gave rise to so much consternation and has been such a flashpoint in this. Because the only time throughout the process you can point to one very rigorous case of cross-examination, it was him.” That’s telling – and damning.
For some of those same bereaved family members of the Bondi victims to whom Bell promised results, the mood has darkened,
Jenny Roytur’s uncle, Boris Tetleroyd, was one of the 15 victims of the Bondi massacre and she was among the most vocal advocates for a royal commission. Frustrated with how it has “under-utilised” its powers, she now says it “looks like a pacifier”.
“It’s tokenistic to shut us up,” she said. “Bondi happened, people gave their insincere condolences, gave us this royal commission to pacify us, and moved on.”