In the Media

The failure to confront anti-Zionist sentiment in Australia has enabled the eruptions of hatred against our Jewish community.

Sky News Australia – February 20, 2025

We moved pretty quickly from graffiti, to arson, to a caravan filled with explosives, to nurses threatening to kill Israelis.

Antisemitism has exploded in Australia, but many outside the Jewish community remain confused as to why.

I’m not Jewish, but I have worked for various Jewish individuals and organisations for the last couple of decades.

Here’s my attempt at explaining the sources of anti-Jewish racism, and how our political leadership’s refusal to confront all of them is making the situation worse.

Antisemitism manifests in numerous ways.

There are two “traditional” types – one based on ethnicity, and the other on religion.

Jews, through these prisms, are either hated as inferior or feared as superior (by having control over the world’s media, finances, governments and so on).

Polite society still rejects these kinds of antisemitism.

But there’s another type of antisemitism.

It comes from the left side of politics as well as from parts of the Muslim community.

It’s harder to define and, for many non-Jews, it’s harder to identify.

And it’s this antisemitism that federal and state Labor governments won’t discuss.

It’s the antisemitism that stems from obsessive hatred of Israel.

Before we get into that, let’s get the obvious out of the way.

Israel is involved in a highly complex, decades-long conflict with Palestinians, in which both sides have legitimate claims and legitimate grievances.

Criticism of Israel’s policies is not, in and of itself, an expression of antisemitism.

So, when it comes to Israel, what is antisemitic?

There are people in Australia who blame Israel entirely for the lack of Palestinian statehood.

Among these is a subset who think that Israel is irredeemably flawed, and who subscribe to theories about Israel being guilty of apartheid, genocide and so on.

And, among these, there are those who think that anyone who defends Israel’s right to exist are themselves irredeemably flawed and who should be somehow punished.

That is where anti-Israel antisemitism manifests.

To prevent themselves from being smeared with the antisemitism brush, many of these have taken to use the term “Zionists” instead of “Jews”.

But this is semantics.

Every ethnic minority in Australia has a connection to their cultural homeland and typically supports the well-being and self-determination of their ethnicity in that land.

Hence Italian Australians have a deep connection to Italy and Irish Australians have a deep connection to Ireland, and so on.

To suggest that ‘Zionists’ – that is, the overwhelming majority of Australian Jews – are somehow different or morally beyond the pale for supporting Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is deeply offensive and, frankly, racist.

Still, people aren’t born with a desire to single out, exclude or otherwise harm Jews or Zionists.

They follow a path, which begins with the unwillingness to understand any of the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, that travels through obsessive hatred of Israel and, all too often, ends with the antisemitic desire to punish Jews.

Humanity seeks comfort in binary perceptions of the world – good and evil, right and wrong, black and white.

Despite all human interactions being incredibly complex, too many people – including really smart people – fall victim to dichotomising the Israeli–Palestinian dispute.

For instance, many of the pro-Palestinian marchers blocking our streets each Sunday believe, as their foundational understanding of the Israeli–Palestinian dispute, that Israeli malevolence is the sole reason for the Palestinians not achieving statehood.

By choosing to filter all news they see through that incredibly ignorant lens, they grow more and more convinced that all death and destruction are because of Israel’s perceived lack of humanity.

Further and further into their echo chamber they march.

It is thus of little surprise that they agree with calls for Israel’s dissolution and start chanting the genocidal “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”.

It is of little surprise that they chant “All Zionists are terrorists” while marching alongside people carrying the flags of actual terrorist organisations.

It is of little surprise that they support doxxing Jewish artists or boycotting Jewish-owned businesses because the owners support Israel’s right to exist.

It is of little surprise that they intimidate pro-Israel gatherings, harass visiting Israeli victims of terror in their hotels and protest outside Jewish schools and synagogues.

Given this permissive environment, it is of little surprise that Jewish schools and houses and places of worship are graffitied or burned or bombed, and the murder of Israeli patients is joyfully discussed.

To put it differently: obsessive hatred of Israel is not, in and of itself, antisemitic, but it is a slippery slope to the antisemitic attitudes and actions we are witnessing.

And this is where many in the Jewish community feel that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and others in the Labor Party have been missing in action.

Labor is very quick to condemn right-wing antisemitism, but when people on the left obsess about Israel, leaders of the left should speak up.

“Your obsessive hatred of Israel won’t bring peace”, they should have said.

“Your black and white views are actually part of the problem”, they should have said.

But they didn’t.

They still don’t.

To his credit, the Prime Minister endlessly repeats that “there’s no place in Australia for antisemitism”.

He has appointed an antisemitism envoy and announced an increase in funding for Holocaust education.

These actions are appreciated, but they ultimately won’t stop the problem because they aren’t aimed at its source.

By not confronting the obsessive haters of Israel head-on, he provides them with succour.

And the Labor Government’s periodic attempts to appease this loud minority, such as by changing Australia’s long-held bipartisan positions in the wake of the October 7 attacks, the war it sparked and the controversy it generated here, encourages them to engage in more extreme rhetoric and action.

Ultimately, obsessive hatred of Israel is not just anti-peace – it also leads to eruptions of antisemitism on Australian streets.

It is long past time for our political leaders to call out the causes of antisemitism, not just its symptoms.

Dr Bren Carlill is the special projects director at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. He is a former Labor staffer. His PhD was on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.