Segal’s report recasts anti-Zionism as hate — policing schools, agencies and visas while punishing dissent across public life, writes Dr Evan Jones.
THE SEGAL REPORT heralds that all educational institutions, public institutions and the public service be permanently policed for hints of "antisemitism".
Add potential migrants and asylum seekers, who will be blocked from entry for having the wrong experience and opinions. Given that anti-Zionism is made synonymous with antisemitism, it demands a comprehensive mandate in obliterating any criticism of and action against the abomination that is the state of Israel.
Being South African-born, although brought to Australia as a child, Jillian Segal presumably has imbibed the rudiments of what constitutes an apartheid state and society. Segal has not taken the short, obvious step. Can I recommend apartheid Israel for beginners: Uri Davis’ 2003 Apartheid Israel?
Jillian Segal’s ultra-Zionism is well known – her Wikipedia entry notes her attachment prominently:
'She is the immediate past president of the "ardently pro-Israel" Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ). Segal has long been an advocate for Israel in Australia. She has been chair of the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce since 2015.'
She has thus been not merely a fellow traveller but front and centre.
Crikey’s Bernard Keane (as did others) immediately questioned Segal’s appointment as antisemitism envoy on 9 July 2024.
He noted:
'Jillian Segal has criticised ceasefire calls in Gaza and defended bombing hospitals. That, and her record at NAB, makes her a poor choice for a government role.'
Segal was Commissioner then Deputy Chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), 1997-2002, Chair of the Banking and Financial Services Ombudsman Board, 2002-04, and Board Director at the National Australia Bank (NAB), 2004-16. Segal was awarded an AO in January 2019 for ‘distinguished service to the banking and financial regulation sectors …’.
I have long been involved in assisting and writing about victims of banking malpractice, especially small business and farmer borrowers. The financial "regulatory" apparatus, seemingly complicit, has proved comprehensively indifferent to bank malpractice against these borrowers. The NAB, following financial deregulation, has been a major player in malpractice.
During Segal’s tenure on the NAB Board, the NAB had to manage the aftermath of its hubristic imposition of a toxic facility on SME/farmer borrowers from the NAB’s Scottish subsidiary Clydesdale — fixed interest embedded swap facilities, labelled ‘Tailored Business Loans’ (here and here). The NAB was forced to pay compensation for an egregious component of the loans (‘payment protection insurance’) but remained steadfast in its denial of responsibility for the flawed facility itself, leaving many borrowers ruined.
Where was Segal in all this? She was a Member of the NAB’s Advisory Council on Corporate Responsibility. As you do. Segal might have deserved her gong for services to banking, but certainly not for services to banking regulation.
There appears to be a certain charlatanry about Segal’s involvement with the finance sector. A matter of ticking boxes? There is nothing of the charlatan regarding Segal’s full-bodied Zionism. Merely that this attribute disqualifies her from acting as a dispassionate antisemitism envoy.
Segal (with other Israel-firster Vic Alhadeff) led a delegation to the ABC in June 2021 to complain of "a pervasive culture of bias, if not antipathy, towards Israel" on the network’s Q+A program. There must be a second ABC network unknown to me.
In August 2023, the Albanese Government defended its reference to the West Bank and Gaza as "occupied" and Israeli settlements as "illegal" (in line with international law).
As published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 10 August 2023, Segal (then president of ECAJ), with the Zionist Federation’s Jeremy Leibler, claimed that:
‘...the Government's change in language had pre-empted negotiations on a two-state solution, and criticised the move as "inaccurate, ahistorical and counterproductive."’
Shameless.
Segal has organised, via the Trojan Horse Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, and participated many times in Australian group visits to Israel. Segal has vaunted Israel as a hotbed of determination and imagination, ideal for business innovation and "startups". Compulsory military service, she claims, helps with building toughness and resilience. Unmentioned is that a good deal of this "innovation" is in military equipment, surveillance mechanisms and police control techniques, in the export of which Israel has become a major player.
The murder and repression of the Palestinian population (and in neighbouring countries) has become a testing ground for such specialities. Antony Loewenstein’s 2023 book 'The Palestine Laboratory' documents the phenomenon.
Consistently, Segal has claimed that ‘Israel's culture of resilience and innovation, which had helped it prosper in business, would also guide its war effort’ (Australian Financial Review, 11 October 2023). It’s a package deal.
At a Sydney demonstration in solidarity ‘with Israel and the Jewish community’ as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on 12 October 2023, Segal said:
...the actions of Hamas showed once again that its intention is to obliterate Israel and its population [erroneous], and lacked any concept of the sanctity of human life. 'Our world has changed. The barbarians have breached the gates. The butchery and savagery that has unfolded in Israel beggars description … There can be no compromise, no accommodation of these psychopaths. They must be [crushed] and we must brace ourselves for further tragedy.'
At a Sydney vigil on 12 November 2023, Segal is reported in The Australian on 13 November as saying to a cheering crowd:
"We all yearn for peace in the Middle East, but as we all know … one cannot make peace with those who deny one’s right to exist. … There can be no ceasefire until every hostage has been released."
Bloodlust for the imperatives of an unacknowledged apartheid state.
When Foreign Minister Penny Wong called on Israel to stop attacking hospitals, the Zionist Federation’s Jeremy Leibler and ECAJ’s Segal responded:
"The libel that any Israeli attack on Gazan hospitals from which Hamas operates would amount to war crimes only serves to demonise the state of Israel and its supporters. The government of Australia should not be lending any credibility to this false and harmful narrative." (Australian Financial Review, 13 November 2023)
In a late 2024 Society article suitable for casual weekend reading, we find that a Melbourne teacher finds it uncomfortable to visit old haunts like ‘Collingwood or Brunswick or Fitzroy’, because of ‘the stronger anti-Israel sentiment in those neighbourhoods’ (Australian Financial Review Weekend, 30 November 2024).
Notes the teacher:
“That is unpleasant, when you are walking around, and you feel like the walls are screaming at you, or that you don't belong or that your ancestral home is somehow a criminal monster.”
The poor dear is suffering because she can’t proudly wear her Star of David in what is now hostile territory. Why feel estranged, given that it isn’t her ancestral home (and she hasn’t "made Aliyah")? And, yes, Israel is a criminal monster.
The article’s author interviews Jillian Segal:
And I think that's where we have to distinguish between what is going on here, because what we are seeing is demonstrations and insults hurled in a way that is denying the right of Israel and the Jews in Israel to exist, and that is antisemitic.
The Jewish people feel connected to it for thousands of years as their homeland, but it is actually a sovereign democratic country established by the United Nations that exists, and to call for its non-existence is completely unacceptable.
This characterisation is all over the place. The crude and cynical conflation of criticism with actually existing Israel with antisemitism is transparent. It is also transparent that Segal does not understand (or consciously dissimulates) the history of her beloved Israel nor its essence.
Israel is organically committed to ethnic cleansing, regardless of what particular faction holds office. Self-described representative Jewish communities implacably support Israeli barbarism. There has been no mea culpa from these communities for what is now a genocide. Resistance to and criticism of Israel and its diehard supporters is inevitable. Such resistance and criticism cannot be suppressed. Which means that the formal ambition to stamp out so-called antisemitism through ‘education’ and policing cannot be realised, and permanent repression of Israel’s critics is in order. Draconian overseas precedents (defunding elite universities in the U.S., indicting protestors as terrorists in the UK, etc.) highlight what is in store. The Zionist community has no interest in confronting the root cause of this cycle of events.
Thomas Suárez continued his critique of the antisemitism weaponisation industry in the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs (August/September 2021).
There Suárez claims:
'All along, the [Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism] presumes a dangerous falsehood: that Israel wants an end to anti-Semitism. No. No. Let's step back and not be forced to view the world on Israel's terms. The Zionist ideology and the Israeli state are addicted to anti-Semitism, whether real or invented through fraudulent definitions.'
Here is the Segal Report in a nutshell. One can’t criticise or act against Israel’s perfidy — now or ever. This worthless and dangerous report deserves to be thrown in the bin post-haste.
Dr Evan Jones is a political economist and former academic.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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