07/03/2025
Anti-Semitism- a perspective
6 March 2025
There is currently a rush towards the banning of hate speech and a demand for action on antisemitism, but far less emphasis on Islamophobia.
In Australia, we have been a relatively wealthy country where everyone has had a fair go. With a large number of migrants relative to most counties we have been seen as a relatively tolerant society by world standards.
When I grew up, there were large numbers of ‘displaced persons’ (refugees) who had come from Europe after the war. They were from Greece, Italy, Turkey, the Baltic states, the Balkans and Eastern Europe, as well as ‘ten pound Poms’. Anglo-Australians called them ‘wogs’, ‘wops’, ‘Eyties’, Poms or various other names. There were no anti-discrimination laws, so the migrants mainly copped the abuse and worked hard in their new land so that their children would have all the opportunities.
Australia was welcoming in the sense that behind our tariff barriers everyone had jobs at the level that mostly only the father had to work, though women mostly could if they wanted to. There were few private schools, so most kids went to public schools and grew up together and prejudice mostly died out amongst them because of their common experiences. The government Housing department built whole suburbs of houses and leased them at reasonable rents and later they could buy the houses that they had lived in for years. Some migrants set up ethnic clubs based on their homelands and soccer teams were initially racially based as Australia played cricket or rugby. There was some trouble between Serbs and Croats with a shop in Western Sydney memorably burned down, and Sydney Water knew not to have Serb and Croat gangs in the same depots, but mostly things were peaceful.
Other notable migrant groups have been Vietnamese after the Vietnam war and Chinese after Tiananmen Square, but these were on a lesser scale.
Jews were mostly not noticed, but they set up their own Schools, which sang the national anthem of Israel and hoisted an Israeli flag. They were also quietly active in politics, working against any politician who took a pro-Palestinian line.
I can tell my own story here. I spoke at a refugee rally in Hornsby when I was an Australian Democrat in NSW Parliament and pointed out that terrorism was a political and military technique used generally by the weaker side against the stronger, and who was the terrorist depended on the time and your perspective. The political Zionist movement had grown up in the 1890s and managed to get the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which promised a “national home for the Jewish people” in what was then Ottoman-controlled Palestine. After WW2 there were many displaced Jews and the Zionists did terror raids against the British who had inherited control of Palestine. Famously, they bombed the King David Hotel, killing the British general there and destroying all the records of the Zionists terrorists that were stored there. The war-weary British, having nowhere else to put the Jewish refugees, gave up and let them go to Palestine in 1946, despite the objections of the Palestinians, who did not actually have their own government, having been a colony ceded from Turkey to Britain. The Zionists then organised, and ‘Declared the State of Israel’ in 1948, even though Jews were still only 36% of the population. The surrounding nations declared war on the new state and the UN did not recognise it, but they were well organised, bought some leftover tanks from Romania and repelled their attackers. They also killed some Palestinians causing many others (about 750,000) to flee. This was termed the Nakba in the Arab world and is considered ethnic cleansing and equivalent to the Holocaust. The Israeli government then declared that any unoccupied land belonged to the State and could be given to whomever the State wanted. Palestinian land title was not recognised and land was given for ‘settlements’ to Jews who came to Israel and who were willing to take this land and fight the Palestinians who might resist the loss of land that was formerly theirs. The Palestinians were then termed terrorists, and this nomenclature has persisted in Western political definitions and media ever since, as Israel has progressively taken over land formerly owned by Palestinians.
The Jewish lobby in Australia has been very pro-Zionist. After my speech in Hornsby, at which I said some of the above, I was approached by a person who still posts pro-Israel messages on my FB page. He told me that I was quite wrong, but did not elaborate why.
Some time later, a State by-election was held in Tamworth, a safe National party seat, (rendered even safer by optional preferential voting). A couple of rival local councillors stood as Independents, but without preferences flowing were unlikely to knock off the National. The Democrats had a local candidate, so it was an opportunity to get our name out, so we put her up. We discussed our ‘How to Vote’ card preferences and decided we would put the more favoured of the local rival counsellors, then the other Independents, then the National last. We decided to contact the other 3 independents to decide what order to put them in.
Our ‘How to Votes’ were not going to make much difference, the National was going to get in. We contacted 2 of the independents, but despite our best efforts could not find the third, so we gave up, put him second last and went ahead. The National got in, we got a few percent and the Independent in question got 7 votes.
I was then flabbergasted to see a headline in the Jewish Times, ‘Democrats Support Neo Nazis’. The uncontactable independent had apparently attended an Neo-Nazi rally in Melbourne 20 years before and had not been seen since, and we had put him ahead of the Nationals. But the Jewish lobby had kept track of him as well as my speeches and it was pay-back time.
Another example of their power was in 2003. Both the Sydney Peace Foundation and the Dept of Peace and Conflict studies at the University of Sydney advocated the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign against Israel. The Sydney Peace Foundation awarded the Sydney Peace Prize to Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian who had worked for peace in Israel. The head of the Foundation, Prof Stuart Rees contacted all his sponsoring companies to tell them that he intended to do this to be sure that they did not pull their sponsorship. They all assured him it was up to him to award the prize, they would not interfere. When it was announced the Jewish lobby was very upset and said that he had to withdraw the prize and give it to someone else. Rees refused, saying that Foundation would have no credibility at all if he did this. Bob Carr, the Premier, awarded the Prize, but all the sponsoring companies left. Some apologised, some did not. When Rees stepped down, new Board members ended the BDS campaign. The Dept of Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University was degraded from a Department to a course within the Arts faculty after it also supported Palestine.
The Greens have been relatively pro-Palestine and ran a BDS campaign associated with the local Council elections in Marrickville. The Green candidate for mayor had done quite well and was tipped as quite likely to beat the Labor candidate. They had enough money for a billboard campaign. Zionists defaced all their posters. The vandal was caught, but had a clever lawyer who found some previously unnoticed problem with the billboard and got off on a technicality. Vandalism not terrorism? Labor won narrowly.
The IDF, Israeli ‘Defence Force’ has flattened Gaza to a demolition site and killed an estimated 49,000 Palestinans, and now have been attacking Palestinans on the West Bank. Most recently they are stopping food aid getting into Gaza because the Palestinans want a lasting peace, rather than just a ceasefire extension, which would give the Israeli hostages back, but without a guarantee that the one-sided fighting would not resume.
Hamas fighters are always referred to as Hamas militants; even on the ABC because the Americans have classified Hamas as a terrorist organisation and our government has followed. I wonder if our major political parties would have dared not to. Hamas is the legitimately elected government of Gaza because the Palestinian Authority was justly seen as corrupt and unwilling to stand up to Israel. It seems that the kickbacks from property development in Ramallah were too great a temptation.
Recently we have seen some examples to the Jewish lobby pulling Australian society into line:
Antoinette Lattouf was taken off the air by the ABC 2 days into a 5 day contract because she had done a pro-Palestinian social media post. It seems that there was a tsunami of complaints that went right to the top of the ABC within 2 days! I wonder who coordinated that? The case continues in Court- she will probably win her unjust dismissal case. (ABC News 27/2/25)
The artist selected by Creative Australia for the 2026 Venice Biennale, Khaled Sabsabi was dropped because he had made an artwork in 2006 about the Sept 11 attacks in New York and in 2007 a video about a Hezbollah leader. Artists like to think that they can make political statements as part of their work, rather than Art having a purely decorative function. It seems not. (ABC News 14/2/25)
The Australian Research Council (ARC) has suspended an $870,00 grant to pro-Palestinian academic, Randa Abdel-Fatteh, who was given the money for her study, ’Arab/Muslim Australian Social Movements since 1970’. She had made recent anti-Israel comments. No lesser person than Federal Arts Minister, Jason Clare, contacted the ARC. (SMH 1/2/25)
Two nurses, Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdehon were stood down and charged for allegedly ‘wanting to kill Israeli patients’. It is, of course, not at all in keeping with the medical tradition, which is to treat your enemies the same as you treat your own side. Their social media video came to light and was given publicity by an Israeli ‘social media influencer’, Max Veifer. (SBS News 26/2/25)
The National Gallery of Australia had a display of indigenous art and part of the display including suppressed indigenous peoples had a Palestinian flag. The Palestinian flag was covered after complaints. Some in the arts community were offended by this official censorship. (www.pedestrian.tv/news/nga-covers-palestinian-flags-in-artwork/).
You might ask who kept track of the Independent candidate for theTamworth by-election for 10 years and arranged the story about the Democrats, who pressured the companies to stop sponsoring the Sydney Peace Foundation, who made the phone calls to high places to complain about journalist Lattouf, artist Sabsabi and researcher Abdel-Fatteh, who found the social media post of the nurses and amplified it, and who complained about the Palestinian flag in an indigenous art exhibition at the National Gallery?
Clearly there is a lot of money and effort going into pressuring politicians and civil organisations that dare to take an anti-Israeli perspective, no matter how Israel behaves. There has been not a word from the Jewish establishment in Australia in favour of the Palestinians. Some of my Jewish friends who have urged reconciliation with the Palestinians have been quite outcast from mainstream Jewish society in Australia, and called names like ‘self-hating Jews’. Being a long way from the action, Australian Jewry seems to echo the most militant elements of Zionism, and are quick to play the ‘anti-semitism’ card with politicians, without acknowledging why anti-Israel sentiment might be rising. The Palestinian death toll in Gaza and now the West bank and the International Criminal Court talking of war crimes and genocide seems to make no difference. The Holocaust ended 80 years ago, the Nakba was 77 years ago, but has continued to a lesser extent until this Gaza war which is a real and ongoing problem. Australia’s politicians are very afraid of the Jewish lobby, and as in the US, it may be the case that no party can win without its support. One does not have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that systematic funded interference in the way Australia is governed is likely. Will I be safe after writing this piece? Is a fatal car accident more likely?
Australia’s neoliberalism, which seems determined to keep government interference to a minimum, makes us a relatively low taxing country. So there is not enough money for realistic welfare, unemployment benefits, Gonski’s plan for equality of educational opportunity, universal health care, or building public housing. Yet we subsidise negative gearing for middle class property speculators, private health insurance and private education for those who can afford it, in the land of the supposed ‘fair go for all’. We give tax breaks to religious institutions. Jewish schools raise the Israeli flag and sing the national anthem of Israel. I wonder how a Muslim school would fare if it raised a Palestinian flag? Is there a Palestinian national anthem?
The reason I make the point about our welfare system is because Australia managed to absorb huge numbers of post WW2 migrants because everyone had a job and housing, and nearly all the children went to public schools and had similar early life experiences. There were no anti discrimination laws or commissioners but minimal problems. This assimilation was not merely because we are all nice people and have a nice climate. Social policies promoted inclusion. We have now moved away from inclusive policies to ones that cheerfully tolerate disadvantage and the segregation of society into advantaged and disadvantaged groups, which are likely to be divided by race and religion as well as by economic factors.
There is increasing ghettoisation in western Sydney and pro-Islamic groups are looking at standing Federal election candidates to counteract what they see as pro-Israeli views in the Australian political system. There seems that there is a lot more concern about anti-Semitism than Islamophobia, though this is rising similarly.
It is all very well to pass anti-hate laws and ban Nazi salutes to control extremist political rallies, but to get a harmonious egalitarian society we need to stop subsidising things that divide us, and start paying for things that will lessen division and give equal opportunities for all in a secular society.