Frydenberg documentary 'reframes' legitimate protest as antisemitism

Former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s Sky News documentary, ‘Never Again: The Fight Against Antisemitism’, targets anti-genocide protests in Australia and reframes them as Jew-hatred, writes Tom Tanuki.

FORMER TREASURER of Australia and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party Josh Frydenberg’s new Sky News documentary, ‘Never Again: The Fight Against Antisemitism’ begins with the ominous opener:

'WARNING. THE FOLLOWING PROGRAM CONTAINS MATERIAL THAT SOME VIEWERS MAY FIND DISTRESSING.'

But it’s not as though they share anything as horrific as, say, the media of beheaded and burnt children in Rafah that you see daily in your internet feed.

In fact, it is only 43 minutes in that Frydenberg elects to concede:

“... it’s a real tragedy that so many innocent lives have been lost in Gaza.”

That’s the only time in the entire hour he mentions the unfathomable civilian Palestinian death toll.

I know this is a documentary about domestic antisemitism and not about tens of thousands of dead Gazan children. But it’s still a problem when this documentary is so fixated on targeting anti-genocide protests in Australia — as it is.

Because for a whole hour, we see the rallies, the confrontations and the slogans, repeated ad nauseam and reframed very intentionally as Jew-hatred — but not for one second does Frydenberg ever mention what all the rallying is about.

That spooky opening 'WARNING' was, I think, just one of the customary bells and whistles you’d include if you were wanting to adopt the beleaguered mantle of "victim of bigotry".

It’s a little jarring to see content like this hosted on Sky, which spends the rest of its airtime slagging off all the other racism. But their special antisemitism – and Josh’s special antisemitism – is special.

It’s a right-wing-coded racism to which they can attach calls not just for calm, community cohesion or protections as with the other racism, but also – perhaps just under their breath – calls for the continuation of occupation or an unfolding massacre. (And the criminalisation of protest, although centre-leftists and liberals mostly do that kind of thing anyway.)

Unchecked vigilante violence on campus smacks of ambient fascism

Violent attacks by fascist vigilantes on Australian campuses, which echo similar incidents in the U.S., indicate a growing ambient appetite for fascism.

Frydenberg wallows in the muck about how bad things are for a full hour and invites a star-studded cast of Australian power players to do it with him.

Underpinning all the wallowing is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which goes far beyond logical definitions of antisemitism as a form of bigotry – hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group, the dictionary says – in conflating criticism of Jews with criticism of Israel.

The definition has been controversial because it’s opened the door for institutions and governments to dismiss legitimate critique of anything Israel does, right up to and including bombing refugee camps, as antisemitism.

They don’t just have alt-definitions for their special bigotry — they also have alt-statistics.

Frydenberg quotes an Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) "preliminary report" issued late last year by research director Julie Nathan, which asserted there had been a 738 per cent rise in antisemitic incidents from 2022 to 2023, owing to events following 7 October. This report's statistics are being used and quoted everywhere.

Nathan's preliminary report doesn’t release its full data set, but it does list 46 examples, all of which I inspected. Of those, only 23 appear to be legitimate examples of antisemitism as per the dictionary definition of this form of bigotry (for example, graffiti that says ‘KILL JEWS' — a group of people). The other 23 fit the special expanded IHRA alt-definition (for example, ‘F**K ZIONISM’ — a nationalist political ideology).

So even the data Nathan saw fit to include in her report is out by 50 per cent. Why should anyone rely on it to tell the story of increased antisemitism in Australia, then?

I am surprised to tell you that I’ve done the numbers and I have spent more total time in my life fighting organised Australian antisemites than every person who features in this documentary put together.

I refuse to pretend that antisemites don’t exist in Australia when I know that they do and have fought them myself. I will always insist that we have forward conversations about the real deal. It's an act of everyday anti-fascism to die on that hill; we don't need comrades who insist on using "tactical" bigotry to win political battles.

But Frydenberg, like Julie Nathan's report, uses his screentime to ship the fraction of real antisemitic incidents in Australia, with the many, many more examples of principled, completely defensible anti-Zionism happening around Australia. The point is to use the former to criminalise the latter. It’s up to anti-fascists – all anti-genocide activists, really – to deny this spin campaign by separating the two.

At one point in the documentary, we view a montage of antisemitic incidents captured on camera.

The first is graffiti that says ‘KILL JEWS’. Nobody can dispute the antisemitism there. But then we see a 'FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA' placard. That is not antisemitic.

Then there is a 'GLORY TO HAMAS' sign. And you may well find that distasteful, or consider it to condone "terrorism" or violence, but you cannot reasonably argue that it is antisemitic.

Finally, we see an 'EYES ON RAFAH' placard. And I should not have to assert that watching a massacre is not antisemitic. So, if only one of these is antisemitic, it’s important we know about that one — but we must also realise when that one is being used to launder the others for a political end.

Josh Frydenberg turns to the 9 October Sydney Opera House rally, where chants of "F**k the Jews" and "Where’s the Jews?" could be heard.

Nova Peris is wheeled out to the Opera House to be filmed moaning about 9 October:

“It’s something that should never have been tolerated in this country.”

But, crucially, it wasn’t. The rally organisers told them to stop and they did. That was captured on film.

The Australian Jewish Association (AJA), on the other hand, released edited footage of the rally pretending with a combination of subtitles and bad audio that the group was chanting "g*s the Jews". The footage also shifts the chant to imply throughout that the entire rally chanted that way. So we see, one group confronted and rooted out antisemitic sentiment; the other made fake propaganda agitating for criminalisation.

Consider: The first people after 7 October to do genuine work stamping out antisemitism were pro-Palestinian rally organisers. Those organisers should have been offered a part in Frydenberg’s show.

A 2017-era Antipodean Resistance poster saying ‘NAZI YOUTH ORGANISING ON YOUR CAMPUS!’ is briefly displayed.

The dangers of Zionism behind closed doors

Campaigning in private by pro-Zionist parties against Palestinian supporters has intended public outcomes and must be addressed urgently.

Antipodean Resistance hasn’t existed as a neo-Nazi groupuscule for over seven years — they were replaced by what is currently the National Socialist Network. But the utility of this poster to documentary editors was in placing it adjacent to student encampments at universities, to aid in the implication that the students are neo-Nazis. Real neo-Nazis, the ones who really do believe in wholesale Jewish annihilation, are only an inconvenient truth.

Former Prime Minister John Howard has suddenly located some principles, asserting:

“A nation is never strengthened if it gives way to hatred and discrimination.”

We are to forget that his electoral performance was strengthened by lifting from Senator Pauline Hanson’s 1990s race hate campaign.

Former Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove reckons, “Hitler would be giving thumbs up” to “radical elements”. Albanese agrees with former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson’s feeling that "From the river to the sea" is a "violent" thing to say.

Scott Morrison’s murky behind-closed-doors pick for Human Rights Commission (HRC) head, Lorraine Finlay, reckons they should get her (I believe) "useless" agency to do more to criminalise protesters.

Peter Dutton and Richardson both agree that more anti-democratic laws could be introduced to that end. A combination of pig ignorance, sheer opportunity and insipid self-preservation drives this group of powerful people who should know better to undermine both our democratic rights and objective truth for Sky’s cameras.

Co-leader of the ECAJ, Alex Ryvchin, is hauled in to say that he sees no difference between the far-Left and the far-Right in terms of antisemitism.

Ryvchin has never bothered to do any work organising or fighting Australian organised antisemites like neo-Nazis, so he doesn’t know what they’re really about. (Retweeting ill-advised and sketchily arranged annual antisemitism reports assembled by Nathan does not constitute fighting organised antisemitism.) Ryvchin seems not so much interested in defending Jewish people against antisemites as he is interested in defending Israel against bad PR.

Greens MP Jenny Leong’s December commentary about the "tentacles" of the "Jewish lobby" is mentioned — as it should be, because it deployed classically antisemitic and harmful tropes to demonise Jewish people as a bloc, rather than Zionism as an ideology.

But this moment is left adjacent to Senator Mehreen Faruqi saying:

“You are watching the massacre of thousands of people by Israel.”

That is not antisemitic. The two are separate, then.

Australian singer-songwriter Deborah Conway is framed as being attacked for her Jewishness. But Frydenberg neglects to mention that in conversation with the ABC's Patricia Karvelas, Conway questioned whether the mounting death toll of Palestinian children was legitimate because maybe the children aren’t actually children. That abhorrently inhumane and cold thing to say isn’t included, so all we’re left to conclude is that she is under fire for her identity.

Comedian banned after Zionist heckling becomes no laughing matter

The report of one Israeli heckler has been broadcast around the world as “anti-Semitism” after a performance by alternative comedian Paul Currie.

Likewise, musician Joshua Moshe is framed as a victim of doxxing for being a Jew. His activity in a leaked WhatsApp group, where he could be seen offering to conspire to locate private information about pro-Palestinian online activists – ‘doxxing’, I believe the term is – wasn’t considered information relevant to the attention he received after his exposure. Only through obscuring key, public information can this documentary ship people as bystanders attacked for who they are, not what they’ve done or said.

And, yet, some of the abuse Moshe and his wife received afterwards was absolutely antisemitic. Likewise, the documentary touches on the targeting and plastering with stickers featuring the Star of David, of businesses with Jewish owners who a small fringe faction of Melbourne activists deemed to be not sufficiently anti-Zionist for their tastes.

On occasion, that has been antisemitic, too — and I’ve had fallings out with these people over it. Sometimes, on the other hand, companies are stickered because they have been accused of aiding and abetting the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), like Starbucks. That is not antisemitic. We must separate the two. This documentary does not.

On university student encampments, Anthony Albanese says:

“You set up a tent to send a message to the Israeli Government about Gaza. How has that got any prospect of advancing a cause? What we’re seeing isn’t intellectual engagement or discourse.”

I agree with his latter statement because Albanese, like Frydenberg, hasn’t intellectually engaged with what campus protests are about sufficiently even to communicate their intentions. They’re about forcing universities to divest from partnerships and sponsorships with Zionist interests, such as arms manufacturers, not the Israeli Government.

You can watch this entire show and not know a single thing about the actual intent of any anti-genocide campaigner, save for what Josh Frydenberg and his star-studded cast want you to walk away with — that these campaigners all secretly hate Jews. To do this, the documentary makers have to hide all of what we "actually" say and lean on their special alt-statistics and alt-definitions for a guiding narrative that reframes legitimate protest chants and actions as rank antisemitism.

Jews in Australia deserve real data collected on real antisemitism. They deserve factual information on fascist and neo-Nazi threats. How do Jews otherwise inform themselves and keep their communities safe, when self-appointed community leaders offer nothing but bullshit, hyperbole and conflation of anti-genocide protests with antisemitism?

Frydenberg’s documentary – really only an effort in right-wing political rehabilitation for him with some Zionist propaganda thrown in for good measure – ends with a bunch of school kids holding Israeli and Australian flags, singing “I Am Australian”.

It’s a nauseating, muddle-headed hour of nationalism tailored for propagandists and dupes. If only this brand of disinformation wasn’t so popular and so dangerous to our protest freedoms.

Tom Tanuki is a writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist. Tom posts weekly videos on YouTube commenting on the Australian political fringe. You can follow Tom on Twitter @tom_tanuki.