Antinuclear

Australia’s “Antisemitism Envoy” Makes It Clear That Israel’s Critics Are The Real Target

Caitlin Johnstone, Apr 26, 2026

Australia’s “antisemitism envoy” Jillian Segal has published a handbook which unequivocally clarifies that her office exists not to protect Australian Jews from discrimination, but to stomp out criticism of the state of Israel.

However bad you’re imagining it is, it’s worse. The handbook, set to be formally launched later this week under the title “Understanding Antisemitism in Australia,” explicitly conflates antisemitism and antizionism with statements like “Antisemitism and antizionism are both expressions of hatred towards Jews” and asserting that it is antisemitic to accuse Israel of “apartheid, oppression, racism and genocide.”

It is therefore unambiguously the official position of the Australian government’s appointed authority on antisemitism that it is hateful and abusive toward Jews and their religion to oppose the racist political ideology underpinning the modern state of Israel.

So when Australians hear Jillian Segal and government officials talking about how there’s been an increase in “antisemitism” in our country and saying extreme measures must be taken to stop it, it’s important to be clear that this is the “antisemitism” they are talking about. They are talking about criticism of Israel.

Let’s go through the handbook together and highlight some revealing excerpts, shall we?

The forward in the handbook stresses the importance of the Australian government’s endorsement of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which has been opposed around the world for its conflation of criticism of Israel with hateful actions toward Jews. Under the IHRA definition it is considered antisemitic to claim that Israel is a racist endeavor, or to compare Israel’s abuses to those of Nazi Germany — both of which are entirely legitimate criticisms which should be put forward far more often than they are. Much of the handbook follows from the premises of the IHRA definition.

Segal’s office states that the handbook “is intended as a practical resource for schools, universities, public servants, community organisations and anyone seeking to understand antisemitism today.”

Segal’s office says that antisemitism “morphs” over the ages, from the blood libels and “Christ-killer” accusations of the Middle Ages to the racism of Nazi Germany, and has now morphed so that “antisemitic tropes are conveyed and justified in the language of human rights and international legal arguments.”

“For example, sometimes Jews are labelled and libelled as ‘settler-colonialists’, ‘oppressors’, and a symbol of a global system of domination that ‘can seemingly accommodate even the murder of Jews as Jews’,” the envoy proclaims.

Do you see how the subject was moved to lump medieval superstitions about Jews in with entirely legitimate criticisms of the modern state of Israel? According to Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, criticising Israel using “language of human rights and international legal arguments” is not meaningfully different from saying that Jews drink the blood of Christian children.

This, clearly, is stark raving insanity.

“Legitimate criticism of Israel is not antisemitic,” the envoy concedes, then proceeds to completely negate this concession with everything that follows. “However, there are many examples of antisemitic imagery, tropes, conspiracy theories and propaganda (echoing medieval myths) that have found their way into anti-Israel discourse. It is also increasingly common for the word ‘Zionist’ (or iterations of it) to be used as cover or proxy for ‘Jew ’.”

This is completely made up. The claim that critics of Israel’s abuses use the word “Zionist” when they really mean “Jew” is just something Israel apologists started asserting with no substantiation whatsoever a few years ago. They have no evidence for this assertion apart from the frequency and forcefulness which with they assert it.

The envoy defines Zionism as “the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination within their ancestral homeland,” which is misleading at best. That’s not what Zionism is. Zionism is what we see before us today. The genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and nonstop war and abuse. That’s what Zionism is, as evidenced by material reality. The best definition of Zionism is its real-world manifestations. Zionism is what it looks like when you give the Zionists everything they want.

“A new variant of antisemitic atrocity denial emerged in the wake of the 7 October 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks — the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust,” the envoy writes. “Disturbingly, these atrocities have been met by some with denial, minimisation, justification and distortion — echoing Holocaust denial, minimisation, and distortion.”

Segal’s office is here telling us that it is antisemitic to talk about the glaring plot holes in the narratives about mass rapes, beheaded babies and babies cooked in ovens on October 7, or to talk about the large number of Israelis who were killed by IDF fire under the Hannibal Directive, or to “justify” the attack by pointing out the monstrous Israeli abuses which gave rise to it.

The envoy writes of the importance of “Standing firm against antisemitism parading as ‘anti-racism’,” stressing the IHRA position that framing Israel as a racist endeavor is hateful toward Jews. A flyer saying “We don’t want your two states. We want all of 48” is labeled “antisemitic, because there is only one Jewish country.”

Segal’s office warns of the dangers of “Holocaust inversion,” which is when “Israel and Jews are portrayed as Nazi-like perpetrators of mass atrocities and genocide,” which is bad because it “serves to demonise and delegitimise Israel, Israelis and Jews.”

To be clear, every relevant humanitarian institution on earth has said that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza. These groups include:

1. The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory

2. The International Association of Genocide Scholars

3. B’Tselem (an Israeli organization)

4. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (another Israeli organization)

5. Amnesty International

6. Doctors Without Borders

7. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights

8. Human Rights Watch

9. The International Federation for Human Rights

10. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention

The list of humanitarian institutions who say Israel is NOT committing genocide in Gaza includes:

1. Nobody

2. No one

3. Zero

4. Nothing

5. Nada

6. Zilch

7. Sweet damn all

8. A complete absence

9. Diddly squat

10. Bupkis

This is not some fringe conspiracy theory. It is a thoroughly established and entirely indisputable fact. Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism is saying that facts are antisemitic…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Throughout the handbook, the feelings of Australian Jews are cited over and over again as supremely important and of far more urgent a concern than genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and wars of immense geopolitical consequence…………………………………………………………………………………………

Virtually nothing is said about the real victims. The murdered, displaced and terrorized targets of Israeli atrocities in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran. The war orphans. The child amputees and burn victims who were operated on without anesthesia. The Palestinians being raped and tortured in Israeli prisons. The people who will carry the physical and psychological wounds from their holocaust with them for the rest of their lives.

They are not regarded as important by Jillian Segal. The real crisis, in her mind, is people talking about these things and making Jewish Australians feel upset.

Absolutely psychotic. We cannot allow our country to continue to be dragged in this direction.https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/australias-antisemitism-envoy-makes?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=195493800&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

April 29, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets and lies | Leave a comment

Built to fail? The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC): the integrity body undermined from within

The NACC Commissioner’s recusal from all defence matters has shifted greater responsibility for NACC investigations onto its three deputy commissioners. They’ve received almost no scrutiny. Until now.

Michelle Fahy and Elizabeth Minter, Apr 25, 2026, https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/built-to-fail-nacc-the-integrity?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=195408717&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

This is a short extract from our latest investigation, undertaken in collaboration with journalist Nick Feik, which was published today by The Australia Institute’s The Point. Click link below to read the full story now. We will publish and email the full text in a week or so.

The National Anti-Corruption Commission’s performance since its inception has been widely condemned. The leadership of Commissioner Paul Brereton, in particular, has drawn heavy criticism

The mismanagement of his conflicts of interest, firstly in relation to Robodebt and then his potential conflict arising from defence-related investigations, has undermined the reputation of an institution whose success relies on its transparency and accountability, as have the NACC’s inordinate secrecy and its refusal to hold any public hearings to date.

As a result, greater responsibility for NACC investigations has been placed in the hands of its three deputy commissioners. However none of these deputies has been a judge or senior legal professional. By comparison, the dozens of assistant commissioners who’ve served the NSW ICAC, for example, have overwhelmingly been SC or KC, and many were also judges.

Indeed, the NACC’s three current deputy commissioners as a group represent the least qualified combination of deputies permitted under the NACC Act.

This months-long investigation raises major concerns about the suitability of all three deputy commissioners, casting serious new doubt on the legitimacy of the NACC as currently constituted…

Two current NACC Deputy Commissioners were appointed to the NACC straight from jobs into which they had been parachuted by Coalition governments: Nicole Rose and Ben Gauntlett were both “captain’s picks” into public roles that ordinarily required the use of a transparent merit-based selection process. In neither case did the Coalition do this.

Deputy Commissioner Rose, the delegated decision maker who decided not to investigate the Robodebt Six, has a diploma of hotel management as her highest academic qualification. She was handed two CEO roles, at AUSTRAC and CrimTrac, by then Justice Minister Michael Keenan, ahead of vastly more experienced candidates, including a judge, barristers, and a former police commissioner.

Deputy Commissioner Gauntlett, meanwhile, was handpicked by Scott Morrison’s Coalition Government as Disability Discrimination Commissioner, a move that was condemned by numerous human rights legal experts at the time for not being an open merit-based selection process as required.

Until the Government delivers “a powerful, transparent and independent NACC – one with teeth”, as promised by Prime Minister Albanese – the NACC will continue to be a running sore in the nation’s integrity framework, mistrusted and maligned by the public. It could be argued that the NACC was set up to fail.

Read the full story at The Point.

April 29, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets and lies | Leave a comment