Andrew L. Urban
Every single witness in the first week of hearings at the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion lamented that since October 7, Australia has changed – changed for the worse. No longer safe for Jews. Several were considering moving to Israel for safety. Australia’s reputation for multicultural tolerance is buggered. Brazen bigotry has won.
In an editorial on the Commission, The Weekend Australian observed: “The most striking testimonies so far were from private citizens, some of whose experiences mirrored those of European Jews in the 1930s and in the Soviet Union after World War II. From AAM’s children on a Melbourne bus, taunted by some young men – “I can smell Jews … If there are any Jews we’re going to burn this bus’’ – to “ABM”, whose boss asked her to change her “Jewish-sounding name” to appease a client with “sensitivities” about Israel, the evidence came thick and fast. NSW Health worker AAV was told to stop wearing a Hebrew necklace and a yellow ribbon in solidarity with the Israeli hostages after October 7, 2023, while pro-Palestinian colleagues were “arriving into work with keffiyehs on”. Highly publicised remarks by two Bankstown nurses, who are before the courts, terrified her because she was facing knee surgery.”
Brazen bigotry seems to be pervasive; from school kids to professionals, from buses to offices. The witnesses were eloquent, calm, reasonable and deeply saddened that they had to report such terrible character flaws they encountered in their daily lives.
I’ve previously expressed my suspicions that the Commission will avoid articulating the harm done by political leaders by their failures from the start to forcefully confront and reject antisemitic protests and virulent hate speech from Muslim clerics. That failure provided the “permission structure” as someone put it, for antisemitic aggression to grow, fester like an infected boil.
From the first day of hearings, witnesses – eg Jeffrey Engelman – also felt let down by “politicians who did nothing,” in the face of Jew-hating protests such as on October 8 at the Opera House. Never mind police intervention, that clearly hateful demonstration should have been followed immediately by strongly worded condemnations and if necessary, changes to laws to reflect the community’s disgust at such behaviour. The massacre was celebrated by an Islamic preacher. We can’t legislate to stop hate, but we can legislate to stop the manifestations of it.
Even the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal AO, referred to leaders failing to confront antisemitic behaviour. (I would have liked her to say so publicly much earlier …)
My submission to the Commission details the history of how that “permission structure” was built. But there are other signs that the Prime Minister has been careful to select a Commissioner who would not turn against him and his colleagues in the final report.
Commissioner Bell was called out by both Rowan Dean in his Friday evening Sky News show The World According to Rowan Dean and the following day in the Weekend Australian, Jewish columnist Julie Szego raised a concern about that view.
Dean said “I don’t hold out all that much hope for it (the Commission), to be frank. Not only did their interim report even mention radical Islam, this week, we got this ridiculous question from the commissioner herself, Virginia Bell…”
Did Jewish leader Jeremy Leibler accept, she asked, that there was a “difficult line” between delegitimising Israel and “the views that may be conscientiously held by non-Jewish Australians of goodwill, who are trenchantly critical of actions of Israel, even against the Hamas attack”?
Leibler replied: “I don’t believe that it is difficult to draw the line. I believe that there are many that have an agenda to make it very difficult, in order to blur the lines.”
Szego targeted the same issue: ” … the source of my unease about the inquiry, or, really, my confusion about what precisely is being inquired into. In his opening remarks, Richard Lancaster SC, the counsel assisting the commission, said: “One aspect of the inquiry into modern antisemitism is to identify when anti-Zionism becomes antisemitism.”
He then goes on to discuss the need to identify when “criticism” of the “polarising” actions of the Israeli government might cross a line into targeting Jews, and Zionists, generally. So are we talking about “criticism” of Israel or criticism of Israel’s very existence, otherwise known as anti-Zionism, a banner under which many a Jew killer, including the alleged gunman at Bondi, purports to act?
If it’s the latter then there is no “line” to cross – the idea has violent racism baked into it.
Also observing the hearings was Chris Merritt, Vice President of the Rule of Law Institute, who made a crucial point about the testimony of Michael Gawenda.
What a week. For those with an interest in freedom of speech, some of the latest evidence at the Royal Commission into anti-semitism must have been deeply depressing.
I’m referring to Thursday’s evidence from Michael Gawenda, a former editor in chief of The Age and one of the greatest journalists this country has produced.
He made two points that should be cause for deep reflection – not just in the media, but in the wider community.
He argued that parts of the media have simply declined to explore the impact of the anti-semitism that has infected this country since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023. Before you ask why this would be, the answer is in his second point.
He also argued that too many journalists now see themselves as activists which is the antithesis of the objectivity that should be their default positio
What Gawenda has identified is an ethical problem that needs to be addressed if parts of the media are to retain – or regain – the trust of the community.
This matters for the simple reason that ethical journalists fulfil a role that is of almost constitutional importance: at their best, journalists hold up a mirror to society, reflecting our strengths and weaknesses.
The great irony of antisemitism and antizionism is that it’s a conjoined hate aimed at the single most democratic and life affirming nation on the planet. Absurd accusations of genocide, not that of Hamas against Jews, are loudly proclaimed, against the evidence and against the Israeli doctrine. In its own way, that is the ugly straw man that gives antisemites the supposedly respectable mask of righteousness. It’s a lie.