The political uproar around antisemitism in Australia this coming year will hinge on what happens in Gaza and the West Bank, as it did in 2025.
Dr Lee Duffield addresses the question whether danger to Jewish Australians is blameable on the Australian Prime Minister or on the death toll in Gaza.
MORE MILITANT, right-wing activists in the Jewish community became embittered to see a crowd of 90,000 marching in the rain across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on 3 August, beseeching humanity in Gaza.
They saw flags of terror groups in that crowd and said they drew from that that the whole movement stood for violence against the Jewish community, and so called for a shutdown of all such protests.
The vast majority of the 90,000 would insist instead that they were expressing compassion and disgust at the mass killing of civilians and destruction of their homes around them. Present figures are 70,000 Palestinians killed, of whom 20,000 were Hamas fighters (according to Israel, which has lost nearly 1,000 soldiers in Gaza) — and over 20,000 were children.
All-out warfare
The question was raised: Do the aggressors against these civilians in Gaza understand them to be human beings? In millions, they would be facing bouts of starvation, amid filth, without shelter from desert heat or bitter cold and flooding rain, lacking clean water, suffering disease and serious injury without medical help, and still subject to bombardment from tanks and aircraft.
The all-out attack on Gaza was brought on by the Islamist terrorist attack on Israel’s border on 7 October 2023, a barbaric incursion costing 1,200 lives, some 400 being Israeli security personnel, the others wholly defenceless civilians.
Where bombardments and “punitive” incursions into Gaza had been going on for over a decade, the occupation ordered by the Netanyahu Government after 7 October was full-scale war, with the intention of obliterating the Hamas political movement along with its combat force, around 30,000 strong.
Two Prime Ministers
The savagery and devastation of that operation, relentless over two years bar one short ceasefire, has left the Jewish community in all countries newly exposed to calumny and danger — because of mental associations of Judaism with Israel and with policies of the Israeli Government.
It is a simple hooking-up of ideas: the Israeli army, is the government of Israel, is the state of Israel, is the people of Israel, is Jews.
Very strangely, that association is shared by militants on both sides: On one hand, those in Jewish politics, like the governing Likud party and its allies, within the diaspora, people experiencing fealty to two Prime Ministers — the Australian one they want to bring down, the Israeli one they would follow; and on the other hand, active antisemites who would blame all Jews anywhere for what that government does.
Sidestepping radical ideologies
Getting back to the political confrontations in Australia and leaving the extremities, reasonable persons across the spectrum of opinion have demonstrated some consensus around main points:
- they uphold Israel’s sovereignty, its right to exist within secure borders, (as even affirmed by the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1988);
- they deplore in shock and despair the attack on 7 October 2023 and repeated terrorist attacks on Jewish people, not least at Bondi on 14 December — wanting action to prevent and punish such happenings;
- they revile the massacre, psychological agony and demolitions in Gaza by the Israeli armed forces, and would sympathise with Palestinians on the West Bank, against evidently state-sponsored incursions, land theft, bullying and intimidation by Israeli “settlers”;
- they will not give up rights of free speech, liberal standards within the Australian universities and diversity of views covered in Australian news media.
That “free speech” means, on one hand, tolerance of Likud and Liberal supporters trying to heap blame and insult on the Prime Minister, but on the other hand, rejection of demands from those quarters to themselves be dealt into some kind of policing of education and media.
Action by the Australian Government
What form do such responses of the Australian community take?
In September, the Australian Government joined Canada and the United Kingdom in recognising the state of Palestine – 150 countries now taking that position – and affirmed support for self-determination on the part of Palestinians under a “two-state solution” — Palestine and Israel. That was seen as urgent in attempts to stop an Israeli seizure of the West Bank and to give standing to those in Palestine mounting political defiance against the armed occupation.
The resolutions were conditional on Hamas forfeiting political authority, a grave dilemma: Hamas has demonstrated embeddedness in the community; it has been determined to keep a dictatorial and murderous grip on power in Gaza, attacking any opposition; and it has survived, if battered and very diminished, over two years of attempts by Israeli forces to destroy it.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took action after October 2023: The security patrols at synagogues and Jewish schools, regretted by Jewish spokespersons as a dreadful necessity, got major federal funding; the security services through the Australian Federal Police (AFP) set up special operations against antisemitism; hate speech laws were stiffened, and bans imposed on extremist sloganising and symbols, like the Nazi salute in parades; for education more funding went to Jewish cultural institutions including the Holocaust museums.
Albanese was stuck on two demands made by Jillian Segal, whom he had appointed as Special Envoy against Antisemitism, as part of a rapidly produced log of claims, a “report” with “recommendations”. On a reading, the Envoy appears to overstep or misunderstand her remit, wanting authority to oversee new government controls on the ABC and SBS, and on university policy towards antisemitism and protests on campus — backed up with heavy sanctions against those institutions.
Ambitions bound to meet intractable opposition. The Government had already worked out an arrangement with universities to refine and publish their own programs for handling antisemitism.
Blaming “Albo”
For his trouble, the Prime Minister has been subject to a vindictive campaign of abuse, attempting to blame him for somehow causing the Hanukkah attack at Bondi. It was led off the day after the attack by the other Prime Minister in this affair, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who accused him of it and even tinkered with running his own “investigation” of the Australian event.
Netanyahu was seconded by the Liberal Opposition Leader in Australia, Sussan Ley, the News Corp press and Sky News, and right-wing figures in the Jewish community purporting to speak for all Australian Jews.
All efforts can be expected to keep up this highly personal and partisan tirade; expect shouting-down of Ministers, rowdies getting tossed out, displays of moral panic and confected hysterics in the Federal Parliament.
Watch out for the interloper
An issue will build around the proposed visit of Isaac Herzog, President of Israel, at the invitation of the Prime Minister. It will attract opposition from the Palestinian side — and what if Netanyahu wants to visit, too?
Netanyahu has shown he wants to take sides and interfere in Australian party politics. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court to face charges over Gaza — the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.
Australia is one of 124 signatories to the ICC, but not among over 20 that have indicated he would be arrested if entering their territory. (The ICC can try individuals, but there would be legal arguments about prosecuting the Head of Government of Israel, which is not a signatory.)
“Royal commission! Royal commission! Royal commission!”
A subsidiary and well-orchestrated campaign on the Right wing set up the mantra of a “royal commission” into the outrage at Bondi, the kind of inquiry used to uncover intractable social problems, like organised crime, often to find offenders.
The campaign has hallmarks of the communication departments of the Likud and Liberal parties. The insinuation is that this royal commission would pin the blame on Albanese for not protecting the victims. Apart from a New South Wales royal commission and federal security review already being set up, an additional grand-scale federal inquiry, with broad enough terms of reference, would get to grievances within Arab or Islamic communities as well. It could turn around and bite those sent in to bay after it.
The Government at year’s end was ruling out a new royal commission and in the end, elected governments in Australia do govern, not the Prime Minister of a foreign country, nor the Opposition, nor any of the interest groups.
Worse to come?
Yet the biggest potential for growing trouble and danger within Australia lies outside of it, if the current uneasy ceasefire in Gaza breaks down and the war against Gaza starts up once more. The ceasefire and exchange of hostages and prisoners in January-March 2025 collapsed as the international community began sponsoring a rapid restoration of services and supplies. Israel did not like it; strong elements in Hamas, mounting a provocative show of bravado, wanted to keep fighting.
Will there be such a relapse in 2026 to make the tragedy even worse?
Amongst Dr Lee Duffield’s vast journalistic experience, he has served as ABC's European correspondent. He is also an esteemed academic and member of the editorial advisory board of Pacific Journalism Review, and an elected member of the University of Queensland Senate.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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