The appointment of a special envoy to combat antisemitism is welcome as a response to the outbreak of racial hatred aimed at Jewish people and Jewish institutions, but the envoy’s plan which was published on July 10 is marked by authoritarian overreach.
It proposes a series of measures which, taken together, represent an anti-democratic assault on freedom of the press and freedom of expression generally. Segal proposes to set herself up as the arbiter of whether the public sector broadcasters – the ABC and SBS – do enough to combat antisemitism and whether their editorial standards are sufficient for the job.
Not only are the media to be subject to an oppressive regime of monitoring and reporting, but arts festivals, galleries and universities are too, backed up with threats to their funding.
A metric mile
In the section headed “Culture, Arts and Public Broadcasting”, the report says all public funding agreements or enabling legislation should allow for funds to be cut where the institution does not “effectively deal” with hate or antisemitism. Performance metrics would be established. Data would be drawn from multiple sources, including formal reporting mechanisms. What metrics? What sources? What formal reporting mechanisms?
And who would decide whether the institutions effectively deal with these wrongs? Why Segal would, using a system of monitoring and reporting yet to be devised.
What standards are proposed? How would the monitoring mechanism work? What are the qualifications of the monitors to do this work?
Public enemies
Segal’s plan is tissue-thin. Only 13 pages of text, including the contents page, remain after illustrations and dressing-up are removed, a slightness in inverse proportion to its capacity to damage Australian democracy.
Curiously, among the media it is only the public sector broadcasters in the firing line. Why? There is a hint early in the plan where it insinuates that they perpetrate incorrect or distorted narratives or representations of Jews. There is not a shred of evidence in the report to support this. When she was challenged on it by Sarah Ferguson on the ABC’s 7.30, Segal could not name a single example.
Challenged again on air by Steve Cannane on the ABC’s Radio National Breakfast, she referred to a 20-month-old ABC report about an attack on a hospital in Gaza. The report had come from Reuters, and wrongly attributed the attack to the Israeli Defence Force. In fact it was caused by a misfiring Hamas rocket. The ABC said it corrected the report within 25 minutes, took down a post on Twitter (now known as X) and continued to report on claims and counter-claims as the story unfolded.
Sitting duck
No explanation is given for the omission of commercial media from the plan, but two possible reasons come to mind. One is that the country’s biggest commercial media organisation, News Corporation, has been stridently pro-Israel during the present conflict.
For example, its flagship newspaper The Australian played a critical role in panicking the ABC into sacking the Lebanese-Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf after she posted on her personal Instagram account a Human Rights Watch report which accused the IDF of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza. We know this from the Federal Court judgment in the case she successfully brought against the ABC for unlawful dismissal.
The second, not entirely unrelated, reason may be that the ABC has shown itself to be a soft target for external pressure-mongerers, whereas News Corp and the Nine Entertainment Company fight their corner hard, and any blowback from them would be likely to be severe and unrelenting.
Drive chain
There is also no discussion in the report about what is obviously one of the biggest drivers of antisemitism. Ben Saul, Challis Professor of International Law at Sydney University, wrote in Guardian Australia that these drivers didn’t appear out of thin air. People didn’t just inexplicably and without context decide to become antisemitic. The upsurge correlated with the 21 months of violence since the atrocious attacks by Hamas in October 2023.
Nothing excuses antisemitic attitudes, speech or actions, and for centuries it has lain just under the surface in many countries, including Australia. It takes little provocation to bring it out, and the impact nowadays is magnified by the hate machinery called social media.
Here, of course, Segal runs into the trouble all democratic societies and governments run into: how to impose meaningful accountability or control on the global platforms. So she proposes advocating for best practice regulation, look at content moderation and harm-prevention frameworks, try to counter the effects of algorithms, AI and bots that incite hate. Nothing here about monitoring, metrics or reporting mechanisms.
New for old
Australia’s race commissioner, Giridharan Sivaraman, has expressed veiled concern about the plan. He says he would work with Segal to ensure that it does not restrict fundamental rights and freedoms.
That would mean pulping this one and starting again.
Denis Muller has a distinguished career as a senior journalist on leading national and international mastheads. He is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne, and co-host of the Truth, Lies and Media podcast.
Several months ago a bus belonging to an Islamic college in Adelaide was set on fire but the story was taken down almost immediately.
Media bias? Of course not- it just wasn’t newsworthy.
The definition of who and what constitutes a Semite has been misappropriated by non-Semitic Israeli (non) Jews to exclude all other Semitic people, including Palestinians… imagine that!
Indeed, which means that the Semites bombing and murdering Semitic children are evil Semites.
If Israel is arguing for the right of nations of semites to exist, then surely it is arguing for the right of Arab semites to have their nation too.
In fact, since Israel was established for the safety of global Jews after the trauma of the Holocaust, then surely Palestine should be established for the safety of Muslim Arabs, who are also traditional inhabitants of the land, after the trauma they have suffered over the last 20 months.
I agree wholeheartedly!
Frosty, this woman must go. If Albo keeps her in this role, I want to know how much he is being paid by the IDF. He is speaking out now about this abuse of innocent human beings. All she is talking about & promoting is keeping our real journalists from reporting the truth. That is the way of capitalist societies. Don’t inform or educate the populace, treat them as mushrooms.
But that’s why many people distinguish between ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘antisemitism’ and define ‘antisemitism’ as the hate of Jews as people of Jewish religion and culture who are not necessarily Semites. ‘Anti-Semitism’ is directed at Semitic people. Most of what is being defined nowadays by the supporters of the state of Israel and its genocidal policies and behaviour as ‘antisemitism’ is neither. Israel, the majority of its society, US evangelical Zionists as well as those Western regimes supplying it with whatever it needs to survive and continue its rampage across the Levant on the other hand are very obviously anti-Semites.
I am not sure I agree there was a need for a special envoy for anti-semitidm, with or without the hyphen, many of the sudden explosion in so call anyi demotion are questionable. Certainly there has been a huge increase in examples of antI Israelism but these are not necessarily against Jews or the Jewish people. Jillian Segal appears to have scraped the bottom of the barrel to conflate such acts as. Nit-demotion to thus justify her ovrrreach.
Corrections to the above. Anti-Semitism; sudden explosion of anti-semitic acts are questionable;and conflate such acts as anti-Semitism to thus justify.
I will do better in the meantime I maintain my belief there is no need for the position she should no longer occupy.
Well said.
Yes you are right, arabs, jews, phoenicians and arcadians were all semite people, the so called anti semitism was coined in 1879 by a german to mean Jews only with no regard to the semite people.
This is a brave and much-needed piece. Muller is right to call it what it is: an anti-democratic attempt to control public discourse, with no serious engagement with the real drivers of antisemitism. That this plan singles out the ABC while giving commercial media a free pass speaks volumes. This report should be pulped—and quickly.
It was good to hear that the PM has started to distance himself from this nasty piece of divisive reporting.
It took me a little time to phone my 42 cousins to check how they felt about Jillian Segal’s assault on our rights as Australians.
Our grandfather, “Harry” was saved from the pogrom of 1908/09 in Cologne by being shoved on a ship as a cabin boy, his mother was killed.
He jumped ship in Australia.
He assisted the harbourmaster of Townsville to arrest the German ships servicing German PNG, sailing off Townsville, once WW1 started.
In WW11 he was saved from being interned by the Yanks by the Waterside Workers Union, as everybody knew “Harry” wasn’t a real German and anyway he was the sole crane driver. Although some of the uneducated threw rocks on my grandparent’s roof at night yelling “Krauts”, which was preferable to being identified as a Jew, at the time.
As an Orthodox Jew he was opposed to the theory of Zionism. The establishment of Israel in 1947 was also an anathema. He was alive when the state of Israel expanded its borders for the first time and considered that they had broken the covenant with god. Making Israel a godless state.
The definition being pushed by the Holocaust museum makes his and our general opinions, antisemitic. I am offended, as are my cousin’s by this categorization. I believe that it is a divisive doctrine being pushed by Zionists and unacceptable to the Australian population at large.
The Jewish community are already protected by the laws of Australia, just like everyone else. We do not need Segal’s plan. Sarah Ferguson’s interview clearly demonstrated that Australia already offers equality. Every community group is protected by and subject to the laws of the land. Our law includes freedom of speech.
There is a massive difference between anti-semitism and anti-genocide.
I have been accused of the former when I am actually in the latter camp.
I make no excuse for Hamas’s attack – it was stupid in the extreme, but the response is obscene.
Three lines, three sentences and you have said more than all the other contributors put together. I am jewish. I came to Australia in 1957 and it didn’t take too long to realise that there was a fair dose of anti semitism in Australia. It was, most of the time, covert but it was there. The regular target was “the jews” who were deemed to be responsible for all the problems of the world. The jews were accused of everything from controlling Hollywood to controlling the Australian banking system. At a dinner party I attended a woman, whose husband was in jail for stealing money from a bank (he was working there) blaimed it on the jews. I was stunned as I didn’t realise that every bank’s board of directors had a majority of jews. The ignorance was industrial strength. But somewhere along the way antisemitism became overt. Remember the BDS movement and the poor cafe owner, in Newtown, who had to close his business simply because he was jewish? Israel became the whipping boy of all those who, at best, could be called “rent a crowd”. They didn’t have any idea about the issues they just followed a fashionable trend. They were very conspicuous by their absence in demonstrating for the Uyghurs, the South Sudanese etc. etc. I am very conflicted: on the one hand I totally support Israel and its right to defend itself (as any sovereign state would do) but I abhor the means by which they are doing it. There must be a better way to attack Hamas (even though they use the population as human shields) than what Israel is doing right now. We used to say that anything will be possible when the catholics and protestants in Ireland will have peace: well guess what? they have peace. I hope the readers know that the majority of the citizens of Israel want the government to do whatever is necessary to make peace but the combination of politics and religion is frustrating those demands. It used to be said that a cataract is the third biggest cause of blindness. Politics and religion remain the first two. It seems that there aren’t enough men and women in the world, on all sides everywhere, who want peace badly enough to do everything and anything to achieve that outcome. The words and music of John Lennon’s “Imagine” are ringing in my head.
One of the major reasons the protestants and the catholics made their peace in Ireland, is that the Catholic church lost its power over the people Eire. Join the dots between Iran and Isreal. For good measure you could add Evangelic America to that template., as well.
If the brits had not “given ” the zionists land which did not belong to them this would not be happening
Zionism is a fascist movement and has both Christian and Jewish zealots supporting the behaviours of the Israeli state. If Israel was on its original borders, rather than expanding by theft, they may have the right to defend themselves.
Israel slaughtering indiscriminately the population of a land it has been occupying for decades is not self-defence. Please consult international law on this. As the occupying force you have no right to self-defence. But the people you occupy have a right to resist and that includes armed resistance. Also, ‘pre-emptive’ strikes on its neighbours it has attacked and occupied before (Lebanon) is not self-defence’. Continuing to bomb a place during supposed ceasefire (in Lebanon, in Gaza) is not ‘self-defence’. Bombing the Syrian Ministry of Defence building in the middle of the day when you can be sure it’s full of people is not ‘self-defence’. Bombing civilian infrastructure including apartment buildings in Iran is not ‘self-defence’.
No-one denies that antisemitism exists. It has been a European problem for centuries and it still is. Why do the people in the Levant have to pay for the sins of the Europeans? The establishment of Israel has nothing to do with the Holocaust – it’s been planned long before that crime was committed. And btw – during the reign of Hitler, from the 1930s to early 1940s, about 60% of all investments in the Zionist project came from Germany.
Yes, antisemitism exists and it seems Israel and its supporters do their best to ensure that it continues to do so. Because they need the fear that it instills into jewish people to justify Israel’s existence. Without a threat to their safety – why would Jews need special safety measures like their own country? The fact is that what Israel is doing turn people against Israel. Yes, Israel, not Jews.
Frankly, the insistence of Israel and our own Western ‘leaders’ that one must support Israel no matter what and the punishing of Jews who dissent by non-Jews (see Germany) is deeply, disturbingly antisemitic.
Most of us can distinguish between a Jew and someone who supports genocide. We don’t care if someone is Jewish or not. It’s the utter inhumanity of supporting or even cheering on the mass slaughter of children, women, men of all ages. The total lack of compassion or remorse that gets us. The claim that they’re frightened of scarves and flags while completely disregarding the massacres done in their name. The demand to be seen as victims while claiming the right to kill, torture and maim; while cursing and assaulting anyone (especially women) who dare to speak up against the horrors.
“I hope the readers know that the majority of the citizens of Israel want the government to do whatever is necessary to make peace(…)”
How would we know if the surveys and interviews show that most want Palestinians gone and if that means killing all of them – so be it. They dream of Gaza without Palestinians. (They dream of Lebanon and Jordan, too.) Majority thinks that there are no innocents in Gaza and kids are fair game lest they grow up to become ‘terrorists’ because their entire family has been wiped out by Israel and their limbs had been amputated without anaesthesia. Disturbingly, many express the view that Palestinians are subhuman.
This has nothing to do with religion. These are supremacist ideas.
It’s the government that refuses to do anything let alone ‘whatever it takes’ to make peace. They don’t want to agree to troops withdrawal and refuse to guarantee a ceasefire after getting the hostages back. Netanyahu wants to have the right to continue the onslaught. And he wants Hamas to disarm. Why would Hamas agree to any of that? No-one would.
Good points to clarify the historical perspective and expose the real basis for what really is an inexcusable, horrifying crime against defenseless people.
I wonder what was the consultation process in this initiative to distort social reality in such a biased way. This so called “antisemitic plan” has no validity and will only cause division and negative reactions.
Damnation Alley by Hawkwind (based on the Roger Zelasny novel) would be a more appropriate song. No nuclear war, no road trip, but the images resemble Israel’s gift to Palestine. Desolate unliveable horror. I do not understand how people even try to justify this.
You mostly can’t choose your neighbours, but over 70 years ago, I had a pleasant Jewish family as neighbours. Our families were not close but no less distant than we were from other families of different Christian backgrounds.
One of my best friends in childhood was their son who excelled at almost everything. His father, and this was in the early 50s, was a language teacher at my selective state high school and was my German language teacher, delivered nothing like a biassed anti-anti-sematic course.
The October 7 events by Hamas should appall us all, and the responses since that time by the IDF are also, even moreso, appalling and nothing should excuse the grotesque slaughter which has been inflicted on the Gaza and West Bank communities.
I have a good friend who happens to be Jewish, I play golf with him regularly. It’s clear to me that there is antisemitic views in this country although I’ve never personally come across it very much. He tells me that when he first came here from South Africa many years ago his first experience was to be told ‘don’t Jew me’. I’d never heard it before but I can assume it’s meaning has something to do with money. We discuss the situation at times but we both agree on one thing that the ‘settlers’ on the West Bank is totally wrong. Perpetuated by the Israeli government. He of course supports the right of of Israel to defend itself, I understand that.
But there is one thing I know in my heart, that killing innocent people, be they Palestinians or Israelis and now, mostly starving women and children will only beget hate, and perpetuate it for decades to come.
So correct
Your words fully mirror my own. Further, I do not believe we should have a Jewish person controlling what we see and hear in Australia.
Wasn’t a surprise?
For a nation which could eavesdrop Angela Merkle’s (?) private phone and has Pegasus listening in on everything else, has facial recognition cameras everywhere in the West Bank and a copy of Hamas’ plans for a year, plus reports from the border watchers it must have been meant to be surprise to the victims.
And this was the excuse for Bibi to remain in office and the Zionists to commit genocide with the blessing of the US president’s.
I am anti-Zionist and anti- genocide.
Shades of McCarthyism in the US in the 1950s, just about anything that happens these days is labelled ‘antisemitism’ even without adoption of the proposed ridiculous expanded definition supported by the Segal report. The wave of antisemitic attacks in NSW was found not to be antisemitic at all but done for other criminal purposes. This information was hidden from the public to allow NSW to introduce draconian anti-protest laws. Even the ABC cites the recent disturbance outside the Melbourne Israeli restaurant as antisemitic, when quite clearly it was not. https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/protesters-outside-melbourne-restaurant-are-antigenocide-not-antisemitic/ If we exaggerate the extent of the ‘problem’ it is no wonder we come up with extreme solutions.
I saw a comment over a year ago which said that anti-semites used to be people who didn’t like Jews, but now anti-semites are people that Jews don’t like.
Brilliant, uncle Leo is alive and well
Yep.
In the Middle East, it is Israeli government which is murdering and civilians in Gaza, West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, Yeman and Iran.
I must be an antisemite?
Comment appointment. I can think of more than a dozen former Human Rights Commissioners and former Judges who would have done a much better job. Shred the report and start gain is the only sensible way out of this mess. Oh, and don’t pay the fees. if they have been paid, claw them back for poor performance.
Special envoy Segal should have been interviewed by an independent special envoy, perhaps?
Even-handed, carefully considered recommendations about how to manage incidents of hatred would be a good idea. But this is not that. I suspect that it is impossible to be even-handed but it is possible to be better than this. It would require a report that is not written by an advocate for one side or another–not a committed Jew, nor a committed non-Jew. The report should consider actions by both sides which affect the behaviour of the other. Would it help, for example, if the Israelis did not just demand that Palestinians recognise the right of Israel to exist, but also recognised the right of Palestine to exist. That sort of equality has hardly ever been tried. The governing party in Israel has “from the river to the sea” in its charter, yet claims that the same words are antisemitic when uttered in defence of Palestine.
Your comments mirror my own thoughts Iain
The people who I think are subjected to the most racial hatred in Australia are the indigenous people, aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders. I don’t see this much effort aimed at dealing with their problems.
Best idea would be to treat the Segal report the same way the Closing The Gap report is dealt with.
I agree. Many who support anything to do with Israel or seem to think Jewish people have a right to special treatment because of the holocaust ( which was a truly dreadful event) don’t seem to think our indigenous brothers and sisters have any rights to reparation. They are supposed to get over the events since colonisation and the many injustices that occurred since then and which have dire consequences even now.
yep
They tried but 60/40 NO. I personally think racism in this country is a much bigger problem.
There is some very useful guidance on the IHRA definition of antisemitism, I strongly recommend the decison of Chamberlain J in Husain v Solicitors Regulation Authority [2025] EWHC 1170, esp pars 100-110 on the problematic examples in dot points 7 and 8 of the IHRA definition.
Imagine if they had a special envoy for first nations people with the same proposed powers and political influence!
How indignant the right wing would be……including the Advance organisation where her husband is quite involved and a large donor.
Imagine if the Islamic envoy got the same exposure in the media too or the race commissioner who is regularly ignored and derided as woke or whatever.
Seems like a bit of a Pandora’s Box to me.
I thought that was why we have Anti-discrimination and other legislation here in Australia to protect those rights for religious and ethnic groups et al.
we need protection FROM religious groups!
Apart from everything else said (much of which I would agree with), I think one effect of the Segal document–implemented or not–must be to increase antisemitism. That one particular ethnic group are proposed to have special recourse to constrain public speech can only generate resentment against that group, from others. As has been alluded to in earlier comments, other maligned groups (indigenous people, Muslims, …) cop very considerable public denigration and attacks.
How about pulping Jillian Segal along with it, (oh and her old man while we are about it)
Why not pulp Tony while you are at it!
The establishment of an Anti-Semitism envoy position was always a dumb idea, made even more inept by selecting someone with known ties to groups such as Advance Australia. That’s why we have Human Rights Commissioners.
The behaviour of the Israeli government in Gaza should have been firmly condemned by the Albanese government, and all thinking Australians, as they did to the actions of Hamas on 7 October.
It is clear that the Israeli government really does want to get the Palestinians out of Gaza, and probably the West Bank, so that Israel can occupy the whole territory. It’s a tragedy in the making.
“The appointment of a special envoy to combat antisemitism is welcome as a response to the outbreak of racial hatred aimed at Jewish people and Jewish institutions,….” I TOTALLY disagree with this assertion. It was an unnecessary reaction to a phenomenon that has occurred since the genocide started in Gaza and the failure of the Labor Government to be clear on its stance on Zionism. And the failure of due diligence in choosing this appoontment defies any reasonable principle of good government – the position and the report should be binned immediately. And the Government should get much more clever on its reaction to lobbying.
The government is neither smart enough or has the balls..we’ve had three and a bit years of evidence.We should be all thinking about who not to vote for in three years time.And we’re already out of time.
It’s like pissing into the wind.
Sledgehammer. Crack. Nut.
I abhor the violence committed by Hamas on October 7 2023 and all the hideous and vile hate directed at Jewish people in Israel, in this country and around the world. Sadly though, any commentary contrary to the narratives given by the Israeli government or many strident Jewish organisations in this country means the commentator is subjected to cries of anti semitism and faces a barrage of outrage and criticism. Jillian Segal’s report harvests the worst grabbag of right wing repressive ideas to solve a problem that is fundamentally reflected in a tiny proportion of our population.
If you type ‘Who are the Semitic peoples?’ into Google or flick through the pages of an old Encyclopaedia Britannica asking the same question and you find they are the people who dwell in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East who spoke Semitic languages. Not only Hebrews and Israelites but populations of Arabs, Arameans, Assyrians, Phoenician and populations in Ethiopia to name a few. All speak Semitic languages and are thus Semitic peoples.
Presumably Jillian Segal is vowing to protect all these peoples from hate, violence and racism? Or has she been racist herself and declared that the only Semitic peoples worthy of protection are Hebrews and Israelis who follow the Jewish religion, excluding protections to all those other groups?
Amongst all the above criticisms of Segal’s obtuse and dangerous plan to make herself the arbiter of what is correct language, political thought, commentary or opinion here are a couple of other things to consider.
Where are her demands that the many West Bank settlers who are involved in crimes against Palestinian Arabs are refused entry visas to Australia? Where are her demands that media who aren’t supportive of Palestinian people and rail against opponents to Israel actions in Gaza and fawn to the right wing government of Netanyahu be penalised? When will she demand the IDF protect starving people seeking food rather than allegedly killing them? When will, as an eminent lawyer, she demand an investigation into possible multiple alleged war crimes in Gaza and rail against alleged Israeli government proposals to ethnically cleanse Gaza and allow illegal settlements to propagate in the West Bank?
If Segal want to be believed, she must get Fair Dinkum because her report fails our freedoms, democracy, education systems, media and the rights of people living in a free country? Nothing in her report passes the ‘Pub Test’.
I Definitely don’t want ‘people’ like Jillian Segal representing me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Flowing from this, it now seems that Israel and the Israel lobby (or should it be more correctly labelled the Israel puppet support industry, which is a new form of McCarthyism?), not content with having almost total control over American and puppet regime politicians, including Australian, British, Canadian, French and German, etc., politicians, educational institutions, and media outlets, but even now to our cultural institutions, and welfare and charity organisations, such as the cinema, MSO, the Sacred Heart Mission and many others, so that people who dare to even whisper even the slightest criticism of Israel have Israel and its supporters, stooges, and apologists screaming ‘ANTISEMITISM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’, completely ignoring those courageous progressive, tolerant Jewish people such as The Jewish Council of Australia, Anthony Lowenstein, Daniel Barenboim (himself an Argentinian born joint Israeli/ Palestinian citizen, out of sympathy for the Palestinians), Noam Chomsky, Miriam Margolyes, Naomi Klein, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, and countless other humane, tolerant and progressive Jewish people, etc., who also criticise, rather passionately, the repressive. War crimes and genocidal ethnic cleansing are being committed by the apartheid regime that is Israel today.
Interestingly, those hypocritical idiots, SUCH AS SIMPLE SUPERSTITIOUS SUS(S)AN AND HER CHEER SQUAD, AND OF COURSE, INCLUDING MOST OF THE RANKS OF THE LITTLE GREY DORMOUSE CANARY COLOURED LABOUR JELLYFISH. WE ALL KNOW WHO THEY ARE WHEN THEY REVEAL THEMSELVES, and the rest of her toxic totalitarian LNP Mobsters, who bleat about Anti-Semitism being out of control and on the rise, have nothing to say about the underreported but increasing incidents of Islamophobia and racist attacks on ethnic minorities, including Indigenous Australians. Anti-Semitism is just as revolting and despicable as Islamophobia, Homophobia, Racism, and all other forms of hateful thoughts, bigotries, and hate crimes, and are equally unwelcome and have no place anywhere in the world, let alone Australia. Yet to accuse those of us, who have genuine concerns regarding the shockingly genocidal Israeli abuse of the Palestinians’ human rights, which more and more Jewish people, including Israelis, are speaking out and demonstrating against (as we have concerns regarding human rights breaches of the Rohingyas, Uighurs, Jewish minorities in Egypt and Iran and other persecuted nations and peoples too) as being anti-Semitic, is revolting, despicable and an insult to the nearly 6 million Jewish people, along with the 2.5 million Romany and 10s of millions of others, who were slaughtered at the hands of the Nazis.
I have been reading Antony Loewenstein’s The Palestine Laboratory (Scribe 2023) and from what I have read of Segal’s report it appears to have been written by the Israeli government backed companies that sell weapons of occupation and brutal repression to some of the most violent regimes in our world.
Segal’s report appears to be an extreme, over reaction, as is the Zionist, Israeli genocidal reaction to the Hama’s attack.
Please, we do not need to have Israeli interference in our government or our police forces.
Loewenstein has been reporting or observing , as one of some 16 million Jews on our planet what is happening in what we call the middle east for some 20 years or more.
His observations and considerations make far more sense to me than threats to cut funding, kangaroo court like, to institutions who may be considered antisemitic perhaps because they support free speech.
I am an old pensioner who supports the rights of Palestine, and the children of Palestine to at the very least live.
Should I be concerned that my funding be ceased.
We have the Human Rights Commission to protect all Australians from racism, including against Jewish people. So why we paid a large sum to Jillian Segal to produce a 20-page report that, apart from its ridiculous over-reach and blatant agenda, could have been produced by almost anyone with an axe to grind who has access to google and a reasonably literate AI bot.