Public debate about genocide in Gaza is increasingly dominated by claims of antisemitism. The result is a political climate where outrage at Israel’s actions is recast as prejudice.

In the present circumstances of a genocide, the obvious reason for a tidal wave of panic about antisemitism is that the efforts to deny Israel’s vast crimes is not working. Everyone can see the truth on their mobile phones. Gaza looks like Hiroshima after the atom bomb in 1945. Who in their right mind can believe that this is self-defence, targeting Hamas militants hiding behind “human shields”?

Peter Slezak

Given the devastation, Noam Chomsky’s (1971) remarks on the Vietnam War are relevant today: “With no further information than this, a person who has not lost his senses must realise that the war is an overwhelming atrocity.”

The journalist Mehdi Hasan recently said that if you support what Israel is doing in Gaza, you are a sociopath. But it’s much worse than that. The supporters of Israel in Australia and around the world are not sociopaths, but perfectly ordinary people. This is what the Jewish academic, Hannah Arendt, famously called “the banality of evil.”

We are distracted from the horrors of Gaza by panic about antisemitism and Jewish safety even though it has been exposed as mostly fake. Meanwhile, Palestinians are expected to put aside their grief and pander to Jewish discomfort about a slogan, keffiyeh or a watermelon.

Thus, Director of Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC)  Paul Rubenstein (26 February, 2026) writes of “the explosion of anti-Semitism” that has “afflicted Australia” over the past two and a half years. He repeats a constant theme that the “ancient hatred” has acquired a “new respectability” because “It is increasingly expressed through anti-Israel behaviour and rhetoric.”

However, years ago in an interview, the late Israeli parliamentarian,  Shulamit Aloni, said, “Antisemitism – it’s a trick, we always use it” and “then we bring out the Holocaust” to silence critics of Israel. Indeed, 50 years ago, the distinguished Israeli diplomat Abba Eban said, “One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the … [non-Jewish] world is to prove that … anti-Zionism is merely the new antisemitism.”

Condemnation for what Israel and its supporters do is not about what they are. If they were all Zoroastrians or Buddhists, we would have the same justified outrage.

However, accusing critics of antisemitism backfires because it implicitly identifies Jews with the incontestable evidence of Israel’s crimes. For example, Galit Jones protests that attributing “collective responsibility” to Jews for the actions of a “foreign state” is to dismiss their their “pain and suffering.” However, a few paragraphs later, Jones explains, “For the overwhelming majority of Jews, Zionism is … an indispensable and inextricable part of our Jewish identity.”

In other words, Jews are, after all, collectively, “inextricably” responsible for the sordid history and crimes of Zionism. As if to confirm this identification and collective responsibility, Prime Minister Albanese chose to comfort Australian Jews after the Bondi terror attack by inviting Israeli President Herzog who is charged by the ICC with inciting genocide.

IHRA Definition

Following world-wide trends, Albanese has established an Antisemitism Royal Commission and adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) notorious  working definition of antisemitism. Following suit, Justice Virginia Bell made a grave misstep when opening the Commission, as  Abraham Edwards remarks:

So before hearing any evidence, Bell has adopted the IHRA definition, and claims that the ‘definition itself is uncontroversial’ – a statement that is utterly absurd and shows an incredible lack of understanding of the vast corpus of criticisms of the definition.

Far from being uncontroversial as  Justice Bell says, the IHRA definition has frequently been used to “equate criticisms of Israel with hatred of Jews” and even its author, Kenneth Stern, has expressed concern about the “McCarthy-like” use of the definition which he says is being “weaponised” to suppress political speech. Indeed, when publishing my article on the IHRA definition (ABC Religion & Ethics, 18 December, 2020), the editor judiciously deleted my following sentence:

… crucially, six of the accompanying eleven illustrative examples concern criticism of Israel. JVP [Jewish Voices for Peace] states it believes the primary goal of those promoting the definition is to divert attention from Israel’s crimes and “to ban or criminalise criticism of both Israel and Zionism, along with support for Palestinian rights.”

For example, the IHRA definition declares that it is antisemitic to claim that Israel is a racist endeavour. However, back in 2010, unlikely target of the charge of antisemitism, former director of the American Jewish Congress and the Synagogue Council of America, Henry Siegman wrote “Israel has crossed the threshold from “the only democracy in the Middle East” to the only apartheid regime in the western world."

Nevertheless, Peter Wertheim, Co-director of the most militant pro-Israel lobby group the  Executive Council of Australian Jewry(ECAJ), asserts “All of Israel’s citizens, Jews, Arabs and others, have equal voting, civil and religious rights” which shows that Israel is not “apartheid State.” Wertheim seems not to have noticed that in January 2021, Israel’s own human rights organisation B’Tselem published a paper titled _A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This Is Apartheid_. The Israeli NGO Adalah based in Haifa lists over 50 laws that discriminate against the citizens of Israel who are Palestinians.  Amnesty International and  Human Rights Watch (HRW) have issued similar reports showing that Israel is an ethno-supremacist, apartheid regime under  international law. Indeed, as Wertheim must know, in July 2018 Israel enacted its “Nation-State Law”, which defines Israel as “the nation state of the Jewish People” alone, and stipulates that the “exercise of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish People.”

No credible alternative?

Wertheim has suggested that “ there is no credible alternative” to the IHRA definition. However, the competing  Jerusalem Declaration of Antisemitism (JDA) was drafted in 2021 by 200 Jewish experts on the Holocaust and antisemitism who may be presumed to know something about the question. The JDA doesn’t mention Israel at all. Leading Jewish experts explain its virtues. For example,  Barry Trachtenberg explains why the IHRA definition needs “outright replacement.” Brian Klug explains “Why the oldest hatred needs a new definition” and Professor David Mednicoff who is expert on Jewish studies explains “How the JDA can and cannot advance Palestinian rights.”

Collective responsibility?

In a recent testimony to the US Commission on Civil Rights, Jewish Professor of Law Ben Eidelson explains that anti-Zionism can’t be treated as antisemitism because Zionism as a political project is not a fact about anyone’s identity that should be protected by anti-discrimination laws. Nevertheless,  a recent ruling by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal has found that “Anti-Zionist rhetoric can be racial vilification.” This follows IHRA examples of antisemitism which include “Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.” However, Alex Ryvchin co-Director of ECAJ insists that “Israel is an inseverable part of being Jewish” (Telegraph 11 February, 2026). Similarly, Director of Australia Israel Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) Paul Rubenstein insists (26 February, 2026) Zionism is “A core component of Jewish collective identity.” These are confessions that the crimes of Israel are, indeed, Jewish crimes.

Of course, in principle, we shouldn’t hold all Jews responsible for what Israel is doing in their name just as we understand the scourge of Islamophobia holds all Muslims responsible for ISIS or Hamas. However, we know that most Muslims repudiate these groups whereas the Jewish state claims to be acting on behalf of all Jews and this claim is embraced by mainstream Jewish communities and their leaders.

Despite such self-incrimination by Jews, supporters of the Palestinian cause have been scrupulous and emphatic that they are critical of Israel and not Jews as such. Moreover, the idea that Israel is an inherent part of being Jewish is impossible to reconcile with the existence of tens of thousands of ‘True Torah’ Jews in New York and worldwide who assert, “We are all united as anti-Israel and anti-Zionism.”  They say,

Israel is not our nation-state! The Israeli-Palestinian conflict should not be associated with American Jews. We are united against Zionism because we are Jews! Zionism is the ANTITHESIS of Judaism!

In Australia, too, the charge of antisemitism can’t be reconciled with the emergence of anti-Zionist groups such as the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), Jews Against the Occupation (JAO) and earlier Independent Australian Jewish Voices (IAJV). Wertheim dismisses such groups as not representing the majority in the Jewish community because they are merely a “micro-opinion.” He says “claims of widespread Jewish opposition to Israel were false” but this is a damning confession that the majority of Jews support apartheid, settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing and now genocide.

Making Jews unsafe?

After I spoke at campus rallies at UNSW and UTS, one student complained to the authorities that my words made him feel “unsafe.” I had said Jews – especially that student who was holding the Israeli flag – should feel “uncomfortable.” However, a rabbi said to me afterwards that Jews should not feel uncomfortable, rather they should feel ashamed. Indeed, the American Jewish academic Peter Beinart has said that Israel is guilty of what Jews call a “Chillul Hashem” – the desecration of the name of God, for which there is no atonement and no forgiveness.

My remark echoed the words of the famous New York Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who marched with Martin Luther King. He said in a decent society that is not indifferent to suffering and cruelty, “Few are guilty, but all are responsible.” Of course, this is only what Jews around the world mean when they say, “Not in my name” and “Silence is complicity.” It’s the same sentiment expressed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu who famously said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

Israeli journalist Amira Hass conveys the same sentiment. She writes of her mother’s experience entering the Nazi concentration camp and seeing German housewives who were spectators, bystanders. She refers to their “despicable watching from the side”. My own mother always asked, why did the world look away from the genocide of the Jews and do nothing? Today, we know the answer, because we know what this complicity looks like. Today Jews are not the victims, we are the perpetrators and bystanders. The slogan after the Holocaust “Never Again” should mean “Never again to ANYONE.” Our historical experience of racism and prejudice is the very reason Jews should stand in solidarity with the Palestinians. Indeed, there is nothing more depraved than Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, wearing a yellow star to evoke Nazi antisemitism and play the victim. It is to desecrate the memory of the Holocaust and the victims of real antisemitism when it is weaponised to silence justified criticism of Israel’s crimes.

The Royal Commission and The curious incident of the dog in the night

Anthony Albanese was spooked after the Bondi antisemitic terror into establishing a Royal Commission, but the terms of reference mean that the Commission is building “confirmation bias” into its inquiry, that is, the tendency to seek out only information that supports certain views. Justice Bell said she seeks to assess the “impact of antisemitism on the daily life of Jewish Australians” and called on them to share their experiences because “their accounts may be illustrative of wider patterns.”

Accordingly, I offer my experience as a Jewish Australian which is, indeed, illustrative of a wider pattern. However, this is like Sherlock Holmes’ response to the police inspector who asks whether there is anything to which Holmes would wish to draw attention. Holmes mentions the curious incident of the dog in the night, but the inspector says, “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” Holmes explains, “That was the curious incident.” Like every Australian, I can attest to the fact that prior to October 7, 2023, antisemitism in Australia was so negligible, marginal and invisible that there has been effectively NO “impact of antisemitism on the life of Jewish Australians.”

Even if we ignore the  glaring discrepancy between “what is real and what is not” in recent events, we are left with the need to explain an incontrovertible fact about the “wider pattern”. We must ask why an unprecedented wave of antisemitism appears to have exploded suddenly since October 7, 2023.

In offering an answer to this question, I think I know antisemitism when I see it. Both my parents were survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. My mother and grandmother survived the Auschwitz concentration camp where most of my family were murdered in the gas chambers. I grew up hearing their horrifying stories. However, neither my parents nor I have EVER experienced antisemitism in Australia since our arrival in 1948.

In responding to Justice Bell’s invitation, I am motivated by the words of American historian Norman Finkelstein who is also the son of Holocaust survivors and among the foremost academic historians of Israel.  Finkelstein warns that “the real enemies of the Jews” are “those who debase the memory of Jewish suffering by equating principled opposition to Israel’s illegal and immoral policies with antisemitism.”

What we are seeing today is not antisemitism at all. Rather, campus protests, weekly demonstrations and the Harbour Bridge March are manifestations of political and moral outrage about a genocide by the Jewish state carried out in the name of Jews, openly supported by leading Jewish organisations and large parts of the Jewish community. Thus, the distinguished former Head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and diplomat John Menadue remarks “Criticism of Israeli genocide is not antisemitic.” He suggests that antisemitism in Australia is mostly “the result of the barbaric cruelty inflicted by Israel on the Palestinian people". He asks:

“When will the Zionist lobbyists do some honest soul searching? Has it ever crossed their minds that Jews are less safe because of Gaza and their misuse and abuse of the term antisemitic?”

Jewish political scientist  Robert Manne, too, notes that the sharp rise in antisemitic acts is “self-evidently connected … to the character of Israel’s war in Gaza.”

Since universities have been a particular focus of concern about rampant antisemitism, I can confirm the experience of a colleague who wrote a widely discussed  opinion piece in The Sydney Morning Herald titled As a Jewish academic, I have not experienced antisemitism at Sydney Uni. It is relevant that the student encampments here, as in the United States, always had a prominent presence of Jews including speakers of whom I was one. In light of these facts, US political scientist  John Mearsheimer asks: Why was there was no antisemitism on campuses before October 7, 2023? He says the protests are obviously expressions of outrage at Israel.

The large weekly rallies for over two years have always had a prominent presence of Jews Against the Occupation (JAO) with their large banner, and I have been among Jewish speakers regularly invited. There has never been the slightest hint of antisemitism which is frequently acknowledged with enthusiastic acclaim by the crowd when a speaker says the protest is not about Jews but about Israel.

US Palestinian Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said “a call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence” is not a call for death, destruction or hate. That is, as Dr Lana Tatour points out, we “ought to listen to Palestinians who have been articulating liberation as an inclusive project of equal rights for all”. In the same spirit, Nasser Mashni, President of Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), calls for “a shared political reality beyond Israel’s current brutal colonial apartheid.”

It should not be controversial for Palestinians to reject oppression or to aspire for liberation, to live a life in their own homeland, free from Israel’s racist system of control.

… That’s why we say Palestine will be free from the River to the Sea for everyone. And if you have a problem with everyone being free, because you only want some people to be free, the problem is not the chant, the problem is you.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/03/antisemitism-its-a-trick-we-always-use-it/

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