Antinuclear

Antisemitism. The Royal Conflation Commission is in session

by Stephanie Tran | May 6, 2026 https://michaelwest.com.au/antisemitism-the-royal-conflation-commission-is-in-session/

The Bondi Royal Commission started its public hearings this week, and the mainstream media is lapping up the antisemitism narrative while ignoring other Jewish voices. Stephanie Tran reports.

The first block of public hearings for the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion began this week, focusing on the prevalence and key drivers of antisemitism in Australia.

Questions about representation and balance have already emerged, with critics arguing that the hearings are dominated by established, pro-Israel Jewish organisations, while progressive and non-Zionist voices remain marginal.

A number of peak Jewish bodies giving evidence, including the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, Jewish Community Council of Victoria, Zionist Federation of Australia, National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council and the Dor Foundation, are being represented by the same barristers and solicitors, Arnold Bloch Leibler.

In her opening remarks on Monday, Royal Commissioner Virginia Bell said she was “satisfied that these organisations represent the majority of Australian Jews”.

The hearings will also include evidence from senior community figures, with counsel assisting Zelie Heger noting that they will provide a “bird’s-eye overview” of antisemitism in Australia.

They include Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal and Jeremy Leibler, partner at Arnold Bloch Leibler and president of the Zionist Federation of Australia.

Conflating Jewish identity with Israel

Peter Wertheim, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told the Royal Commission on Tuesday that the pro-Palestine protests in the wake of October 7 were “shocking” and called the “endless repetition of the genocide charge” an attempt to “re-stigmatise Jews collectively”.

Bell granted limited leave to the Jewish Council of Australia to examine expert witnesses on the IHRA definition and survey data relating to antisemitic attitudes, describing it as representing “a distinct but much smaller section of the Jewish community”.

That characterisation has been contested by some Jewish academics and advocates, who argue that the Jewish community is far more politically and ideologically diverse.

Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist, film-maker and author of The Palestine Laboratory, and an advisory committee member of the Jewish Council of Australia, said it was “highly questionable” whether the organisations appearing before the commission reflect the breadth of Jewish opinion in Australia.

“The Australian Jewish community is culturally, politically and religiously diverse, and

“it’s highly questionable if the most pro-Netanyahu, pro-Israel lobby groups represent the majority of Jews in the country”.

“Conflating Israel and Judaism, pursued by the so-called mainstream Jewish groups in Australia, is both historically inaccurate and dangerous, tying Jews to the actions of a genocidal Jewish state.”

Professor Linda Briskman, the Margaret Whitlam Chair of Social Work at Western Sydney University and also on the advisory committee of the Jewish Council of Australia, said her research into Jewish Australians critical of Israeli government policies pointed to a different picture from that presented by peak bodies.

Briskman co-authored Not in Our Name: Jewish Australians Speak Out, a report examining the experiences of Australian Jews who oppose Israeli policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

“What we’ve found is that opposition to Israel’s actions is grounded not in the rejection of Jewish identity but in deeply held ethical commitments rooted in Jewish traditions of justice,” she said.

She added that Jews expressing dissenting views often face “significant personal and social consequences”, and said that

“antisemitism should be addressed alongside other forms of racism.”

“We should be concerned about all forms of racism,” she said. “Racism against Jewish people shouldn’t be treated as the exception. We know that Islamophobia has risen greatly since October 7, but that doesn’t get nearly as much publicity or attention.”

Jewish Council of Australia

The Jewish Council of Australia, which represents Jewish Australians and supports Palestinian rights while opposing antisemitism and racism, was granted leave on Friday to cross-examine expert witnesses on the IHRA definition and data relating to antisemitism. 

In a letter to supporters, executive director Sarah Schwartz said the group was seeking to raise funds to cover legal representation at the hearing.

“Pro-Israel legacy organisations, who receive significant public funding, have already formed a conglomerate and briefed a large team of barristers and lawyers,” she wrote.

Schwartz said the balance of representation would shape how the hearings are understood publicly, telling MWM,

“If the only Jewish groups represented in these hearings are Israel-aligned, it will have a significant impact on the narrative.”

IHRA definition

The hearings will scrutinise the use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

In opening remarks, Bell acknowledged divisions within the Jewish community over the definition, noting concerns that it could be used to suppress criticism of Israel. 

“The Jewish community is not monolithic, and there exist divisions of view amongst them about matters that include the politics of the Middle East,” she said. “I’m conscious that some Jews and other members of the Australian community believe that the IHRA working definition of antisemitism can be weaponised in order to suppress criticism of Israel.”

However, Bell defended its use, arguing that conduct must be assessed in context.

“I consider that some of the criticisms of the IHRA definition proceed on a misconception,” she said. “The examples of conduct under that working definition that may constitute antisemitism are just that. In every case, the question of whether the conduct is to be assessed as antisemitic is considered in its overall context. 

“I expect the application of the IHRA definition will be fleshed out in the course of the evidence of witnesses in this first block of hearings by witnesses who have appropriate expertise.”

“When anti-Zionism becomes antisemitism”

Counsel assisting the Royal Commission, Richard Lancaster SC, said a key task for the inquiry “is to identify when anti-Zionism becomes antisemitism”. 

He described Zionism as “the belief in the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral and biblical homeland of Israel”, which he said is a “core value” for many Australian Jews.

Lancaster said that some examples within the IHRA definition suggest that, depending on context, “it could be antisemitic to deny that right to self-determination,” attribute collective responsibility to Jews for the actions of the Israeli state, or express hatred on the basis of perceived loyalty to Israel.

“A further aspect of this is that current Australian political and social commentary undoubtedly displays many instances of very strongly expressed criticism of the polarising actions of Israel’s current government,” he added, stating that expert witnesses would be asked to help distinguish between legitimate political criticism and antisemitic rhetoric. 

“One of the experts to be called is Dr Dave Rich, who is the director of policy at the Community Security Trust in London, as research fellow at the London Center for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism,” Lancaster said.

Rich is a “is a leading expert on left-wing antisemitism”. He has rejected the UN’s finding that Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza, stating that UN’s finding “has put the final nail in the coffin of Israel’s reputation, but it is as shoddy and partisan as every other attempt to pin the genocide label onto the Jewish State”.

In March, Rich delivered a keynote at a conference launching a new national approach to addressing antisemitism in Australian schools, developed by UNESCO and implemented by the Office of the Special Envoy on Combating Antisemitism.

Stephanie Tran

Stephanie is a journalist with a background in both law and journalism. She has worked at The Guardian and as a paralegal, where she assisted Crikey’s defence team in the high-profile defamation case brought by Lachlan Murdoch. Her reporting has been recognised nationally, earning her the 2021 Democracy’s Watchdogs Award for Student Investigative Reporting and a nomination for the 2021 Walkley Student Journalist of the Year Award.

May 8, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Bondi Royal Commission. What this report refuses to see

by Andrew Brown | May 1, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/bondi-royal-commission-what-this-report-refuses-to-see/

“This report was designed to produce conclusions rather than find them.” A response to the interim findings of the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion by Andrew Brown.

As an ordinary Australian who has read this interim report, I am left with one overriding feeling. Something essential is being sidestepped. Not accidentally. Deliberately.

I say that as the godson of two Hungarian Holocaust survivors. I know what antisemitism looks like. I know what it costs. I know where it leads when good people stay silent. That history lives in my family, and it is not abstract to me.

That is precisely why I will not allow the word to be weaponised. Antisemitism is too loaded with real historical horror to be deployed as a conversation stopper every time someone raises the death toll in Gaza. When that happens, it does not protect Jewish people. It uses their suffering as a shield for a government committing atrocities. That is its own kind of desecration.

Antisemitism is real and must be confronted without equivocation. That is not what this is about. This is about a commission that had the opportunity to honestly examine the social fractures in this country and chose, from the very beginning, to look away from half the picture.

A predetermined exercise

The Royal Commission was announced less than four weeks after the Bondi massacre, stood up under acute political pressure, with terms of reference drafted in trauma and shaped by the loudest voices in the room. The result was an inquiry whose outcome was visible from the day the Letters Patent were issued.

The terms cover four areas. Antisemitism. Law enforcement recommendations. The Bondi attack. Broader social cohesion. That is the entire scope.

There is no mention of Israeli government conduct.

“No mention of Gaza.“

No mandate to examine Islamophobia. No instruction to ask why social tensions rose so sharply or what role political decision-making played.

When it was suggested the Commission also examine discrimination against Muslims and Indigenous Australians, Commissioner Bell made clear the focus would remain on antisemitism.

A commission into social cohesion that cannot examine what broke it is not an inquiry.

“It is a performance.“

The conclusion preceded the evidence. The Commission was built around it.

What Australians have been watching

This commission speaks about social tensions as though they formed in the abstract. They did not. They formed in the palm of every Australian’s hand.

For two years, social media feeds have carried footage no broadcaster would air unedited. Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl trapped in a car in Gaza, surrounded by her family’s bodies, calling for help on a phone. Then the two paramedics sent to rescue her. All of them killed.

Children pulled from rubble. Doctors dragged from wards. Journalists killed in targeted strikes, cameras still rolling. More than twenty thousand children dead. Australians have not read that number.

“They have seen those children’s faces.”

They watched Zomi Frankcom, an Australian aid worker delivering food in Gaza, killed when Israeli drones struck her clearly marked World Central Kitchen convoy in three sequential strikes. The IDF had her coordinates. Israel withheld drone audio from Australian investigators. Two officers were dismissed. Nobody was prosecuted.

The government accepted that and moved on. Most Australians did not.

That accumulation does not leave you. It builds. And then those same Australians were told by their political class that the primary concern is the feelings of the perpetrating state’s supporters. A Royal Commission is underway. Its terms of reference do not contain the word Gaza. Do not contain the word Palestine. That is not governance.

“That is gaslighting at a national scale.”

Whose voices this commission chose

Organisations like the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council and the Zionist Federation of Australia have spent two years defending Israeli conduct without qualification while saying nothing meaningful about Palestinian civilian deaths.

This commission has amplified those voices as though they represent all Australian Jews. They do not.

“A significant number of Jewish Australians have marched, spoken out, and refused the script.“

Their voices carry particular moral weight. They have been systematically drowned out by the loudest and most politically connected faction, one that deploys the language of antisemitism against anyone who pushes back. This commission should have made space for the full spectrum.

That it did not tells you everything about whose interests it was built to serve.

The indefensible conflation

Any attempt to connect pro-Palestinian protest with the Bondi massacre is not analysis. It is a smear. The attack was carried out by ISIS-radicalised individuals. The hundreds of thousands who marched were exercising democratic expression.

Conflating them insults the Bondi victims and criminalises a community of conscience.

And while the Commission examines the ideological conditions that produced the Bondi attack, it has shown no appetite for examining the structural ones.

The father allegedly owned six firearms, all legally held under the old rules. Under the new NSW regime, that likely would not stand as the new maximum is four. So the question is unavoidable:.

“Did gaps in licensing and limits help create the conditions for this attack?“

A credible inquiry should be examining that directly.

The political will summoned to stand up this Royal Commission at speed was apparently unavailable for the harder conversation about legally acquired weapons in suburban Sydney.

A UN Commission of Inquiry found in March 2025 that Israel’s use of sexual violence against Palestinian detainees was systemic, committed under explicit orders or with the encouragement of Israel’s military and civilian leadership. B’Tselem called the prison system a network of torture camps.

“Australian media buried it.”

This commission has proceeded as though it never happened.

This commission must state plainly that opposition to Israeli government policy is not terrorism. That grief for Palestinian civilians is not radicalisation. That the people who marched are not the people who killed. Anything less is not a finding. It is a cover.

“This report was designed to produce conclusions rather than find them.“

Australians who came to this process in good faith deserved better. They are watching. And they are not going away.

May 8, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment