In late October last year, the NSW Police conceded that they had wrongly categorised a significant number of incidents as anti-Semitic. Such an admission does not override the fact that an increase in anti-Semitic incidents has taken place, not only in Australia, particularly after 7 October 2023. This is a fact that my like-minded colleagues in the anti-Zionist camp must acknowledge. I’m not sure whether to blame the NSW Police for the exaggeration or to see it as yet another consequence of the politically driven blurring of the distinction between Jewish people as a collectivity and Israel as a sovereign state claiming to represent the former.
The question that must be asked is what are the impacts on pre-existing and emerging forms of anti-Semitism of International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)–motivated legislation together with Australia’s appointment of the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism and the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. A good answer should attempt a reasonable explanation of the relations between the nature of the ‘fighting anti-Semitism’ laws and policies and a measurable increase in reported acts of anti-Semitism. This is not to dismiss the mediation of other factors in the actualisation of acts of anti-Semitism. Certainly, the European-invented old-fashioned hatred of Jews has never vanished. Other causes such as the normalisation of hatred in the West and the amplificatory force of social media may well be in the mix, but their explanatory force is limited in this context because these phenomena do not focus on the issue of anti-Semitism. Let me start with the source of evil, the infamous 2016 IHRA definition.
First step: the controversy around the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which is well-known. The dispute relates to the examples given in the definition that shields Israel from critique. In doing this, the definition conflates Israel and Zionism on the one hand and all things Jewish on the other hand. This ratifies Israel’s pretension to speak on behalf of the world’s Jewry at the same time as the conflation vests in Jewish communities around the world a proxy capacity, which today many fundamentally reject. Perhaps it is worth clarifying: not all Jewish persons are Zionists, that is, supportive of the idea and practice of the state of Israel as a settler-colonial polity, a polity erected in a process of displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian people and which still functions as such. At the same time, many Zionists are not Jewish. At these two boundaries the conflation logically collapses. But reason aside, this has not prevented the IHRA, and Israel and its allies from promoting it.
Second step: whether explicitly or implicitly, the new Australian ‘fighting anti-Semitism’ laws and policies contain the conflation asserted in the IHRA definition. The extreme example is section 52DA of the Fighting Antisemitism and Keeping Guns out of the Hands of Terrorists and Criminals Amendment Act 2026 in Queensland. This provision creates a new criminal offence for publicly reciting, distributing, publishing or displaying ‘prohibited expressions’ that may cause a person to feel menaced, harassed or offended. It specifically targets two pro-Palestinian slogans, ‘from the river to the sea’ and ‘globalise the intifada’. The penalty is up to two years imprisonment. The ignorance of David Crisafulli’s government in restricting freedom of expression and legitimate political debate by outlawing expressions widely and globally used in protest, academic research and popular discourse cannot be overstated. To make matters worse, the Queensland Act adopts an objective standard whereby the prosecution is not required to establish that any person actually heard or was offended by the expression; it is sufficient that the conduct is of a kind that would be regarded as offensive by a reasonable person in the circumstances.
Third step: what the conflation between the two nouns ‘Israel’ and ‘Jewish’ does in terms of reworking political debate. In principle, Israel is a state actor while Jews are a community of people. Clear separation of referents. The moment the controversial aspects of the IHRA definition are adopted into legislation and policy and these circulate as norms to be upheld, the boundary between the two referents becomes porous and negotiable. A new interpretative procedure is now at work: the category ‘anti-Semitism’ expands to include not just the hatred of the Jews, which is the common definition, but also certain statements about Israel. To wit, a critical comment on Israel’s policies now attracts the adjectival classification ‘anti-Semitic’. Thus, when an expression such as ‘Israel is violent’ is uttered it can now be read as either a pure political critique of Israel’s actions or also as something implicit about the Jews. Meanings are no longer fixed but rather slide across domains. Therefore, the discursive licensing of the conflation creates interpretative indeterminacy. Whereas in the past we could differentiate between the critique of Israel as a state with a particular societal orientation on one hand and the hatred of the Jewish people on the other, now the boundary between the two becomes contestable and unstable, thus creating a structured zone of ambiguity. This discursive licensing reworks public discourse by altering not what is said, but what statements are taken to mean and how they are to be judged.
Fourth step: the destabilisation of the boundary between legitimate political critique and illegitimate group hatred gives rise to two further processes. First, it allows for anti-Semitic rearticulation; and second, it enables the suppression of public discourse. As for the first consequence, semantic ambiguity invites the traditional moral prohibition on anti-Semitic speech and discursively relocates alongside critique of Israel. This discursive and affective relocation becomes a node of expansion of anti-Semitism from two different fronts, in a pincer-like capture.
Firstly, from a Siberian-type solitude, exclusion and ostracism, pre-existing anti-Semitic discourse and dispositions acquire a new linguistic vehicle—the semantic conflation—allowing their expression in forms that are less readily excluded or sanctionable. And secondly, individuals whose critical attitudes towards Israel are only loosely formed, and who lack sustained engagement with the political and historical complexities of Palestine–Israel, may encounter the effects of this conflation as an erosion of conceptual distinctions. The categories of ‘Israel’, ‘Jews’,” and the attribution of political positions to Jews as a group, begin to collapse into one another, such that criticism of state policy becomes difficult to disentangle from generalisations about Jewish people or from hostility towards their perceived positions. In this way, critical discourse itself can become a medium through which anti-Semitic associations are extended and normalised.
This does not mean that anti-Semitism becomes acceptable, or that the conflation generates anti-Semitism ex nihilo. Rather, its displacement into an area of contestable prohibition enables its increased expression, circulation and political mobilisation, thereby contributing to the very conditions that later justify its regulation.
As for the second consequence of the destabilisation of the boundary between legitimate political critique and illegitimate group hatred, it is now clear to all that the new interpretative mechanism justifies the restriction of political speech and of political association. In a weak democratic culture such as Australia’s, with no Bills of Rights, the only semi-Constitutional protection given in the ‘implied freedom of political communication’ might not suffice in a High Court challenge.
Fifth step: we must reiterate. This argument does not explain all the mechanisms that account for the increase in anti-Semitism, but the outcome of the ‘fighting anti-Semitism’ laws and policies is that pre-existing and emerging anti-Semitic discourse becomes re-describable within the contestable new prohibitions, thus opening the door for many to express their hatred of Jewish people dressed up as critique of Israel. After all, it is our public institutions, swayed by current political trends, that effect the harmonisation of ‘Israel’ and ‘Jewish’. If NSW Police were treating pro-Palestinian protest as an incident of anti-Semitism, they were just following the script. And if Jew-hating individuals, whatever their background, were uninvitedly merging their voices with those criticising Israel for the atrocities it commits, they were just following the script, as the conflation opened that space for them.
Sixth Step: we started with a lie, that Israel and the Jewish people are the same. Australia is putting that lie into law. The lie circulates, creates confusion and ambiguity, and sanctions a new semantic zone where old-fashioned actual anti-Semites can dwell. Within this ambiguity, anti-Semitic discourse does not arise anew but becomes more readily expressible and able to be circulated under the guise of a critique, as such critique is increasingly subject to repression. Acts and expressions of anti-Semitic discourse are on the rise. In turn, this justifies the existence of laws and policies ostensibly fighting anti-Semitism. The outcome justifies the presumption.
Recommendation 4 of the federal government’s response to the recommendations of Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism addresses the university sector. Special emphasis is placed on compulsory anti-Semitism training for university staff, as well as a system of ‘University Report Cards’ designed to hold tertiary institutions accountable for their adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and its implementation in policy. The enforcement mechanism is the threat of a reduction in federal funding for non-compliant universities. Critical responses from staff at the University of Sydney have reportedly been removed from the university’s internal staff platform. The proposed ‘report cards’ recall the policy of the Israeli Ministry of Education including student enlistment rates (IDF or national service) as a factor within a broader ‘differential reward’ system for high schools, allocating financial bonuses to teaching staff. In both cases loyalty to Zionism is attached to a system of financial carrot and stick. Australians should ask why the taxpayer is burdened with such a twisted value system.
One can only wonder about the content of the proposed compulsory anti-Semitism training for university staff. Will it focus on framing anti-Semitism in ways that function as a defence against critique of Israel’s policies? I cannot wait to experience it, although my personal preference is to resist such a mandatory requirement. Plain disobedience. Should the university sector acquiesce to such policies, it would become another link in an institutional chain producing semantic ambiguity and confusion about what anti-Semitism actually is, thereby implicating tertiary education in the spread of actual anti-Semitism.
On 27 March 2026, the Hebrew edition of Haaretz reported on an ‘antisemitic tsunami’ spreading across North America and Europe. The article quotes several Jewish leaders expressing deep concern, all pointing to Iran and the amplificatory effects of social media as the causes. No voice mentions Israel’s conduct as a contributing factor. These leaders and their communities face a choice: they may continue to bind their fate to that of Israel, in what is beginning to appear as a colossal civilisational fall, or they may seek to interrupt this trajectory by articulating a form of Judaism that refuses alignment with Israel’s policies and decisively distances itself from Zionism—thereby also saving their communities from the violent and undeserved consequences of their loyalty to a wrong cause.
Comments
Could it possibly say anything about race, class-status and cultural capital that in quick order Australia now has a ‘Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism’ and a Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. Yet wasn’t the last Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody back in 1987–1991? And, despite this do not First Nations people have continued to die in police custody. Some sources suggest though only 3.8 per cent of the population, First Nations people constitute 33 per cent of the daily prison population. Their youth are 22 times more likely to be imprisoned than their peers. Now, 63–68 per cent of young Native Australians report racial prejudice. They face higher poverty rates, with 30 per cent living in the lowest 10 per cent of socioeconomic areas, compared to 8 per cent of non-Indigenous Australians.
Exactly. Yet note that the government’s new mandate that universities adopt definitions of racism that cynically tether antisemitism definitions to those against anti-Indigenous racism and Islamophobia. These definitions must be resisted and exposed as a perverse ploy to install what Ihab Shalbak terms ‘mandatory Zionism’ across the board. I will be coming out with an article in Mondoweiss explaining this in greater detail next week.