Israelis mislead Royal Commission into Antisemitism
by Wendy Bacon | Oct 19, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/israelis-mislead-royal-commission-into-antisemitism/
investigates the Israel lobbyists, PR people and astroturfers behind the Combat Antisemitism Movement targeting local councils and the Royal Commission.
The Commonwealth and NSW governments are supporting a national local government conference organised by the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), whose Israel-based CEO was head of the IDF’s social media unit.
The IDF is widely accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by international bodies such as the United Nations, human rights organisations, and legal investigators.
The key goal of CAM, which operates in 40 countries, is to enforce the IHRA definition of antisemitism across all fields and levels of government;
“a definition which restricts criticism of Israel.”
CAM’s global headquarters are in Kansas, with CEO Sacha Roytman running the show from Tel Aviv. Chairman of its Board of Advisors, Natan Sharansky, was Deputy Prime Minister of Israel.
In a submission to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, Roytman accused this publication of attacks on the CAM Summit and its organisers, among other unsubstantiated claims and imputations of antisemitism.
The submission went on to claim that “the publications that attacked the event” did not contact CAM beforehand.
This is false. In line with standard journalistic procedure, MWM tried to contact CAM on multiple occasions and sent questions prior to publication of the story to its chief executive, Sacha Roytman, which received no response. Here are the questions:
MWM also tried to contact CAM organiser Justine Williams by LinkedIn and another organiser by phone on more than one occasion.
Further, we also endeavoured to contact chairman of the board of advisers, David Gonski, who is co-chairing this year’s conference. Having been directed to UNSW Media for a response, we sent questions to UNSW Media and UNSW Media did not respond.
The lead author of CAM’s submission to the Royal Commission is Sacha Roytman – a Belgian communications expert who made Aliyah to Israel in 2004.
The second author is Israeli Yigal Nissel, who is currently CAM’s executive director in Australia. In 2015, he was sent to Australia as an ’emissary’ for the Jewish National Fund (JNF Australia). He returned to Israel and has been working for the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Antisemitism’s Mosaic Project until he returned to Australia to work for CAM.
Planning for the last Australian CAM conference became public in January 2025 when the then Deputy CEO of CAM, Yigal Nissel, published a story, “From Paradise to Peril,” in the Jerusalem Post, stating,
“Thousands of [Australian] extremists, spanning the radical left, the far right, and parts of the Muslim community, seized on the conflict in the Middle East as a pretext to unleash their latent antisemitism.”
As reported here last year, Nissel, who was based in Israel, announced that a CAM conference of hundreds of Mayors would address the problem. Previously, Nissel was the Israeli ‘emissary’ to the Australian branch of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).
Envoy Jillian Segal to co-host
The conference will kick off with messages of support from the Commonwealth and NSW governments. The first speaker is Alex Ryvchin, Co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australia Jewry (ECAJ), who labelled thousands of Australians who marched for Palestine last weekend as “obsessive, extreme and hateful”.
The conference follows the initial CAM Local Mayors’ Summit held on the Gold Coast last September. This year’s event will be held in Sydney on November 26 and 27 at a location that has not been publicised.
It will be co-hosted by the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal and delivered in partnership with Waverley Council.
This week Segal addressed a meeting of the global network of Special Envoys supported by the World Jewish Congress calling for the enforcement of her National Plan at an international legal. CAM is a “trusted US State Department partner” within the Special Envoy network.
Pro-Israel conference sponsors include ECAJ, the Dor Foundation and the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, which last week received a grant of $100,000 from the NSW government to contribute to the conference.
Sheina Gutnick, whose father died in the Bondi massacre, was appointed CAM’s public affairs officer in March and since then has been the public face of CAM. She told the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion that she has been the victim of many antisemitic attacks since then.
Labor backing council campaign
Recently, she has been collecting supportive videos from Councillors and MPs, including the federal Minister for Local Government Kirsty McBain, who urged CAM to “take back Bondi”. McBain is not attending the conference.
Two Labor Mayors, the Inner West’s Darcy Byrne and Bayside’s Christina Curry, are speaking at the conference. Lord Mayor Clover Moore will not attend, which is scarcely surprising given that CAM organised a rally at which Moore was attacked as a terrorist sympathiser because she joined last year’s March for Humanity.
The City of Sydney told MWM that the Labor Deputy Mayor Ollie Arkins will attend. While it presents a bipartisan image, CAM is being driven, both internationally and in Australia, by some influential conservative Zionists with a right wing agenda.
The players behind CAM
CAM Australia claims that its activities are funded by its Australian partners but MWM has been unable to find any business name, company or charity which accounts for its finances. There is a Board of CAM Australia which is chaired by the hugely influential businessman David Gonski.
We sent questions to CAM including asking which entity the Board governed but got no acknowledgement or reply.
Gonski is close to Jillian Segal and heads the Special Envoy’s Education task-force. He was recruited to CAM by Yigal Nissel who was moved to CAM from his job at the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Antisemitism and sent to Australia to help organise CAM’s first conference. He was dispatched back to Australia this year to head CAM in Australia.
Alex Polson is CAM’s senior advisor. He was originally a national officer of the Australasian Union of Jewish students. After that for eight years he was an advisor to Liberal Ministers and MPs.
PRs, astroturfers and lobbyists
In early 2024, Polson established his boutique advisory and investment company DBK. DBK registered the name Better Councils and Polson was the key Liberal organiser of the major parties’ ‘Put the Greens’ Last’ astroturfing campaign for ‘Better Councils’, and its successor for the Federal election ‘Better Australia’. (ALP member Sophie Calland was the Labor end of Better Australia.)
Bipartisan Better Australia raised at least $1.3 million (with no donors disclosed) much of which must have been spent on its slick electoral materials. For this, Better Australia partnered with strategic communications company Agenda C.
Agenda C was established by strategist Carrington Brigham in 2019. Earlier, Brigham developed his skills working under Yaron Finkelstein at Crosby Textor, known for its role in conservative electoral wins in Australia and the United Kingdom.
Finkelstein was a founding member of NSW Liberal friends of Israel and played a powerful role in the Morrison government as the PM’s personal private secretary. After the Coalition defeat in 2024, Finkelstein worked for NSW Premier Dominic Perrotet and then founded Society Advisory Pty Ltd, which has been granted a $200,000 contract to advise Special Envoy Jillilan Segal until April 2027.
Trickery claims
Polson and Brigham worked together on the Better Australia campaign. Finkelstein attended a meeting where campaign materials and a detailed campaign strategy were discussed with Labor party members of Better Australia. Everyone listed as present was a committed pro-Israel Zionist – but the campaign messages were
‘Don’t be Tricked by Teals’ and ‘Put the Greens Last’.
Agenda C claimed its campaign successfully defended four major seats and won back another four.
Brigham celebrated when his friend Tim Wilson narrowly defeated Teal Zoe Daniel in Goldstein after his campaign branded her as untrustworthy.
With the success of Better Australia behind them, Alex Polson and his DBK consultancy again linked up with Brigham and Agenda C for the CAM’s first conference. Polson and Brigham both signed the media release for the conference, along with a PR person in the US.
Agenda C aimed to deliver a “fully integrated, multi-channel strategy that positioned the summit as a credible, necessary platform for national leadership.”
Agenda C and CAM continue to work together, partnering on exclusive polling for The Sunday Telegraph about levels of fear in Australia, which was featured in a piece promoting the CAM conference.
CAM’s political agenda
The 2026 conference program promotes CAM as being all about interfaith, inclusive and sharing cultural approaches. Everyone is expected to commit to goals in the final session.
There are no speakers from Jewish, Palestinian or other human rights organisations that favour broad anti-racism strategies and do not accept that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism (unlike CAM).
CAM’s actual political agenda is clarified in its submission to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, which was published on the Commission’s website in mid-September.
The CAM submission has four authors – the first is CEO Roytman and the second is CAM’s Australia CEO Nissel. Nowhere is it mentioned that Roytman is in Israel or that Nissel is on leave from an organisation that partners with the Israeli state. The other authors are Polson and Gutnick.
Despite their ‘grassroots’ talk, CAM’s agenda is a top down one.
CAM wants the Royal Commission to recommend training police to enforce IHRA as it is doing in several US states where CAM trains police in “evolving forms of antisemitism”.
It favours passing laws which prohibit posting online material viewed by CAM as antisemitic. It wants a National Local Government Partnership Against Antisemitism and for Social Cohesion, delivered through Australian Local Government Association LGAs built on CAM’s Action Plan’s four pillars.
Even by Zionist standards, CAM’s version of IHRA is wide. A symbols document that they distributed to conference attendees last year is attached to their submission. It takes in everyday symbols like ‘keffiyehs’ and ‘watermelons’ and a broad range of pro Palestinian slogans.
In the submission CAM attacks union and activist campaigners who wrote letters (including one to Darcy Byrne signed by 700 people) urging a boycott of last year’s conference.
They accuse them of intimidation, harassment and antisemitism – for example by referring to a Zionist Lobby or Israeli propaganda. It asks the Royal Commission to conclude that the albeit peaceful action of critics demonstrates the need for a Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
Peace protestors to blame
CAM blames peaceful protesters for costing them thousands of dollars and forcing them to bring in a counter-terrorism squad.
One of these protesters was Jewish anti-Zionist Veronica Sherman. Sherman told MWM that she was one of about five people who “travelled independently from around Australia to protest outside the conference …
“nothing about us could be described as intimidating.”
“Even the cops told me how surprised they were at how few protestors there were because they had been told there would be hundreds if not thousands. Which explained why there was such a heavy police presence. Including helicopters,” she said.
Protesting is a “basic Australian and democratic right. It’s important that Australians know that the Zionists don’t represent all Jews which is one of the reasons I flew up to hold a banner peacefully outside the venue”.
Pressure and complaints
Recently Polson exercised his democratic right to write on behalf of CAM to the organiser of an event at the University of Tasmania at which Nick Hanna, co-founder of the Civil Defence Legal Centre and lawyer at Hanna Legal was delivering the keynote address.
CAM claimed that Hanna had produced an antisemitic video and asked the University to reconsider its invitation. The University rejected CAM’s argument and said the event would go ahead. Hobart Synagogue, which is supporting the CAM conference, then wrote a letter complaining that while Hanna sounds ‘calm and reasonable’ he is ‘extremely dangerous’ for its Jewish community.
In releasing his video about this behind the scenes pressure, Hanna says it showed that people can resist pressure and win.
Polson has high hopes for the November conference, hoping that it will “scale a national movement already underway”.
But MWM hears applications to attend the conference, which this year costs $600 without accommodation, are slow – and a new campaign to discourage councillors from attending has just begun.
Detailed questions for this story were put to CAM, Polson and Waverley Council but we received no reply or acknowledgement.
Wendy Bacon
Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was the Professor of Journalism at UTS. She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism.
She is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS and the Greens.
AUKUS Inquiry exposes the great submarine deception
My own submission, ‘AUKUS is a boondoggle’, grappled with the problem of the afterlife of defence ministers. “Boondoggle” is an American word used to describe a government program that is expensive and wasteful yet continues to be funded because it is paid from the public purse, which fits AUKUS perfectly.
By John Jiggens | 5 October 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/aukus-inquiry-exposes-the-great-submarine-deception,21620
AUKUS critics warn the $500 billion submarine deal is sacrificing Australian sovereignty and social priorities to deeper integration with the U.S. war machine, writes Dr John Jiggens.
This article is the second part of a two-part story. Read part one HERE.
Members of the Queensland “peace not war” community, including myself, attended the Brisbane session of the AUKUS Public Inquiry on 25 August. Many academics, unionists and activists from other peace groups attended, too.
At the Brisbane session, only two of the five Commissioners were physically present: Peter Garrett and retired Admiral Chris Barrie, a former head of the Australian Defence Force. Two other Commissioners beamed in via the internet: Dr Carmen Lawrence, the first woman to become Premier of an Australian state and Karina Lester, a Yankunytjatjara woman whose people’s country had been poisoned by the UK Government in nuclear tests in the 1950s.
As lead Commissioner, Peter Garrett judicially ran the Public Inquiry, introducing the evidence-givers and reading the questions of the online Commissioners. His rockstar charisma enveloped him in a kind of awe, while his career as a powerful voice for change gave him enormous presence and credibility.
Sharing the bench with him was Chris Barrie. They seemed an odd couple: the peacenik and the former chief of Defence, but AUKUS had united them.
The Queenslanders who presented to the Public Inquiry at the Brisbane hearing included Marianne Hanson, an academic representing the International Campaign against Nuclear Weapons (ICAN); Margaret Pestorius from Wage Peace; Adrian Skerritt, a unionist, ALP member and housing activist; and Professor Warwick Powell from QUT, among others.
Pestorius argued that AUKUS wasn’t a Defence program: it was an economic program that aimed to enmesh Australia in the U.S. military-industrial complex to enable the flow of money to corporate warmongers who had an appalling record of destruction, genocide and ecocide.
Pestorius said former Defence Minister Christopher Pyne, now a military exports consultant and arms dealer, reshaped Australia’s involvement in the weapons industry. This pathway was prefigured by other defence ministers who joined the board of major weapon manufacturers, such as Kim Beazley, who joined Lockheed Martin, and Brendan Nelson, who became CEO of Boeing Australia.
At the end of Margaret Pestorius’s evidence, Admiral Barrie asked her about several Australians employed by U.S. think tanks to profit from AUKUS:
I wonder if you know about American Global Strategies.
It’s an organisation based in Washington, DC, and I wondered if you knew that Scott Morrison is the vice president of American Global Strategies, and he’s assisted by a former ambassador and Liberal Senator, Arthur Sinodinos, and a former head of the Office of National Intelligence, Nick Warner.
The Brisbane session
My own submission, ‘AUKUS is a boondoggle’, grappled with the problem of the afterlife of defence ministers. “Boondoggle” is an American word used to describe a government program that is expensive and wasteful yet continues to be funded because it is paid from the public purse, which fits AUKUS perfectly.
The Americans have another word, which explains why boondoggles go ahead, even though they are such incredibly expensive and wasteful uses of public money. That word is “grifter”.
In politics, the word “grifter” refers to people who use the political process to enrich themselves from the public purse and profit from the extraordinary waste of public money created by boondoggles, such as AUKUS.
Prime Minister turned grifter
When Morrison became Prime Minister in 2018, the Future Submarine Project was running well behind time, and American voices were whispering about ditching the French deal and accepting the worst deal ever.
In his 2022 book, Morrison’s Mission, journalist Paul Kelly reveals that Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, was the U.S. voice who collaborated with Morrison in planning AUKUS. Evangelical Christians, the two men spoke every week about Jesus while plotting AUKUS. As they drew closer, Morrison, a geostrategic lightweight, became Pompeo’s pupil, who was co-opted by Pompeo into the U.S. strategic architecture.
In his role as Chair of the Strategic Advisory Board at the Hudson Institute, Mike Pompeo invited Morrison to join the Strategic Advisory Board at the Hudson Institute in November 2022.
The major originator of the AUKUS strategy was Mike Pompeo, who hijacked Australia’s Future Submarine Project and rebuilt it as AUKUS. His strategy was to lock Australia into a global war allied with the U.S. and UK against China, not an Australian-based strategy to deter invasion.
Adrian Pisarski, a veteran housing advocate and former CEO of National Shelter, championed purchasing the cheaper conventional submarines instead of AUKUS nuclear submarines, and using the hundreds of billions saved for addressing Australia’s major housing crisis and other social policies.
Pisarski said:
We could do free dental and Medicare for that sort of money quite easily.
We could have cheaper university education. Commonwealth rent assistance is something else that we could also lift very easily and start to assist people.
I caught the train down from the Sunshine Coast this morning and on the way, I observed no fewer than six homeless camps along parklands etc. We’ve just had a council to the north of Brisbane set up a permanent camp for homeless people. We haven’t seen these conditions in Australia since the 1940s. We are in a genuine housing crisis.
The sort of money that we are talking about for AUKUS would solve our housing crisis.
Admiral Chris Barrie followed this up. He had spoken to colleagues who suggested that for $78 billion Australia could get 12 conventional submarines, not the eight nuclear submarines for circa $500 billion from AUKUS.
Carmen Lawrence asked Mr Skerritt:
“As a fellow ALP member, why do you think the Labor Government has embraced AUKUS rather than prioritising social needs that you have identified?”
Mr Skerritt replied:
I don’t know. I find it particularly unfathomable that when there was a change of government, and this being signed up to by a previous government, that there was no proper inquiry or government-led initiative to question whether this was in Australia’s best interests in the long term.
In my view, it’s not in our best interest and I would have really appreciated the Australian Government performing a proper inquiry that looked at those questions.
Another witness was Professor Warwick Powell, who argued that Australian foreign policy has long been trapped between two deep psychological anxieties: a fear of our own Asian geography and a persistent fear of being abandoned by a distant transatlantic protector.
For over a century, these twin fears have led us to seek security from Asia, rather than security in Asia.
Powell said:
AUKUS tells us that Australia is small, vulnerable, frightened and incapable of surviving in its own region without huddling beneath an overseas nuclear umbrella…
We do not need to choose between being a vassal state or shutting ourselves off from the world and building a fortress. We need the courage to be a sovereign middle power.
The Morrison-Pompeo AUKUS deal changed the Future Submarine Project from providing for the defence of Australia to providing a base for U.S. and UK nuclear submarines in Australia for forward attack operations by the U.S. military against China.
The claim that AUKUS is about the defence of Australia is a lie disguised by Orwellian misuse of language. The Government’s pretence is that U.S. and UK nuclear submarines won’t be based in Australia. Instead, they say that the U.S. and UK nuclear submarines will be “rotated” through Australia.
To assist this “rotation”, the Australian Government is building accommodation for 2,000 US. military personnel at the Stirling Naval Base in Western Australia. This base is only 20 kilometres south of Fremantle and it will be a nuclear target if the coming war with China eventuates.
The extraordinary cost of the project, its clear strategic misdirection from a defence of Australia policy to participating as a vassal in a U.S. war on our main trading partner, China, and the high probability we will never see these submarines were just a few of the many faults of this far-fetched and highly implausible deal discussed at the Brisbane Hearing of the Public Inquiry into AUKUS.
Social cohesion, far-right astroturfers and the Royal Commission
Right-wing astroturfers were given a platform at the Bondi Royal Commission, their history concealed and their testimony uncontested. Wendy Bacon reveals what the Commissioners ignored.
by Wendy Bacon | Sep 16, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/social-cohesion-far-right-astroturfers-and-the-royal-commission/
The last hearing block of the Royal Commission focused on social cohesion, defined as the “national consensus in support of democracy, freedom, and the rule of law”.
Counsel assisting Zelie Heger SC explained that the block would present “measures currently contributing to strengthening social cohesion” and “advancing the interests of all Australians” by promoting “respectful discussion of difficult issues”.
Amongst those chosen by Counsel Assisting were Roz Mendelle and Simonne Whine, co-directors of the Australian Cohesion Forum
The Australian Cohesion Forum
ACF is a national not-for-profit connecting communities across Australia. It claims to be apolitical,
“… we don’t advocate for parties, candidates, or geopolitical positions, and we don’t promote stances on international conflicts. However, we recognise that politics is often central to lived experience. Our focus is on how global events affect Australians here, and our programs create structured, safe spaces to discuss difficult topics with openness, respect, and healthy boundaries.”
In explaining how ACF came into being, Mendelle and Whine told the Commission that in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 2023, they had separately organised to support the Jewish community.
Marketing manager and Israeli citizen Roz Mendelle explained how she moved to Brisbane with her Australian wife Hava, who had ‘made Aliyah’ to Israel.
After October 7, Mendelle felt a
“wall of hate” from protests against Israel.“
She started organising pro-Israel events which were supported by Iranians and Hindus who supported Israel. She realised “this is the trick … these are the people that I need to expand relationships with.”
Meanwhile, Whine had founded a grassroots network in Melbourne called J-United to support the Jewish community.
Whine told the Commission that she kept hearing about Mendelle’s work, telling the Commission, “We want to fill a gap. And so we came up with the Australian Cohesion Forum.”
The ACF organises ‘Impact nets’, ‘coLabs’ and virtual storytelling through which they collect data from attendees to analyse how they can partner together in a “fully collaborative, agile” way.
“As long as “none of us endorses violence against another community, and we don’t wish the elimination of another community, we can work together, we can create beautiful things together,” Mendelle told the Commission.
None of the lawyers present or the Commissioner had any questions, and so Mendelle and Whine were excused.
Astroturfing campaignsThere is an easily identifiable gap in Mendelle and Whine’s evidence about how they came to work together, which in turn raises questions about how they were selected as witnesses who are said to be “advancing the interests of all Australians” by promoting “respectful discussion of difficult issues”.
Mendelle and Whine collaborated in well-funded political astroturfing campaigns in 2024 and 2025 aimed at defeating Greens and Teals. (Astroturfing is the practice of making a top-down political campaign look like a spontaneous grassroots movement.)
Deep Cut News, The Guardian and Australian Jewish News also reported on these campaigns.In March 2025, Whine and Mendelle appeared in a webinar staged by the far-right Australian Jewish Association, then led by David Adler, who was a founder of Advance Australia. Advance campaigned strongly against the 2023 Voice Referendum in terms that many saw as racist.
On this occasion, Mendelle and Whine gave a different version of how they came to work together.
Earlier still, in 2024 Mendelle and her wife Hava began the third party campaigning organisation the Queensland Jewish Collective (QJC). Their strategy was to defeat the Greens by recommending voters put them last on the ballot papers.
Asked how she developed her messaging, Mendelle explained that she chose
“what was screaming in her head”,
which was that the Greens support terror groups and are anti-semitic.”
It was that simple. Australia has no truth in political advertising laws, so it didn’t matter that the Greens completely rejected the allegations.QJC claimed credit for defeating Queensland Greens MP Amy McMahon in October 2024. They then set their sights on the Federal election and established a new third-party organisation called Minority Impact Coalition (MIC) to campaign in Queensland, NSW and Victoria. MIC describes itself as “minority and refugee lead grassroots advocacy“.
MIC and ACF operate from the same address in Apsley, Queensland. Roz Mendelle was an MIC director until January 2026.
J-United director Sharon Kuper later told the pro-Israel L’Chaim radio program that QJC were happy for J-United to replicate their messaging campaign that the Greens were “misinformed, dishonest, fostering hatred and harming social cohesion” and “disregard for human life.”Enter Advance Australia
When J-United needed funds to emulate the QJC campaign in the 2025 Victorian Prahran by-election, they reached out to Advance Australia. Kuper told the L’Chaim radio program that the Advance organisers said, “We’re happy to support you. What do you need? How about if we just support your whole campaign?”
Kuper described this as a “huge boost that they paid for our entire campaign… it took away the security concerns we had, with them endorsing and authorising our campaign.”
Advance went on to work with MIC and J-United on the Federal election under the brand name Put the Greens Last.
In the AJA webinar, Whine confirmed Kuper’s account of Advance providing assistance to J-United, describing it as a “fantastic, efficient, strategic and resource” which was “totally transparent. Very helpful…I think we’ve now built a really good relationship.”
The QJC’s Queensland campaign cost $30,000. Mendelle realised that they needed more funds for the Minority Impact Coalition’s Federal campaign from “people with slightly bigger means”. MIC sought help from Advance, who she found to be “absolutely honest, transparent, direct, and easy to deal with.”
ZIonist astroturfing organisations were not the only Zionists to embrace Advance. Jillian Segal’s husband John Roth donated $50,000 to Advance through a family foundation.
Any hint of this intense political campaigning was missing in Mendelle and Whine’s Royal Commission version of how they came to join forces in ACF.
Women’s International Zionist Organisation
In June, ACF featured in a plenary at the Women’s International Zionist Organisation (WIZO) Australia conference on the Gold Coast. WIZO works in partnership with the Israeli government to strengthen the resilience of Israeli society and raises funds for Israel.
The panel discussion “Cohesion in Action: Strength and Friendship featured Jewish, Iranian, Druze and Torres Strait Islander Australians”, Led by Roz Mendelle, the five speakers each expressed support for Israel.
Minority Impact Coalition
In introducing the Social Cohesion hearings at the RC, Senior Counsel Assisting Richard Lancaster SC explained that staff had already reviewed all submissions and that these informed the choice of witnesses. We can assume then that Counsel were aware of MIC’s 122-page submission.
The key contact for the MIC submission is Roz’s wife, Hava Mendelle, and the submission team includes Roz Mendelle, fellow ACF director Iranian Azin Naghibi, messianic Christian Zionist preacher and lawyer Warren Keir and extreme pro-Israel supporter Joshu Turier.
MIC’s recommendations to the Royal Commission are hard-line, in some cases going beyond Special Envoy Jillian Segal’s recommendations.
Far from showing respect for other Australians, MIC wants Australians who do not support Israel to be penalised and shut down.
According to MIC, accusing Israel of genocide is a “blood libel” sustained through “fabricated casualty figures and weaponised by elected officials, protest organisers and venue operators” to justify the exclusion of Jewish Australians.
“Anti-Zionism is antisemitism“
According to MIC, those who amplify anti-zionist narratives should face enforceable consequences including loss of funding. Institutional silence in the face of documented antisemitic conduct should be considered a failure of duty of care.
Elected officials who promote statements that do not meet the IHRA definition or who operate official Parliamentary events featuring such content are in breach of their duties and should be accountable.
The ABC and the Federal Court should both be investigated for antisemitism for accepting the existence of a ‘lobby’ that pushes pro-Israeli perspectives.
Duties of Counsel Assisting
Counsel assisting Royal Commissions play a key role in developing investigation strategies and ensuring evidence is presented impartially and in a way that does not obscure the truth.
Mendelle and Whine were introduced by Counsel Assisting Tamara Phillips whose manner throughout the Royal Commission has been empathetic.
In December 2023, Phillips was one of more than 450 lawyers who signed a letter which defended Israel and its military tactics against criticism by 1400 lawyers who had signed a letter calling for a ceasefire.
Mark Liebler of law firm Arnold Block Liebler, which represents Federal and State Zionist organisations at the Royal Commission, was a top signatory to the pro-Israeli letter.
All the material in this piece is on the public record. MWM alerted the Royal Commission to published material about their astroturfing activities shortly before Mendelle and Whine gave evidence.
Has the evidence changed?
MWM has been asking for the exhibit of Roz Mendelle for three weeks, and has been told that there are delays “to ensure accuracy is maintained, and legal sensitivities are addressed.” We have responded and asked
how an exhibit once tendered could be changed?
Commission lawyers are now summarising evidence and developing final arguments. The Commissioner alone will then make findings. Meanwhile, the Commission staff continues to hold meetings with selected individuals where no details are published.
In the name of ‘procedural fairness’, those who were called as witnesses will be given a chance to respond to final submissions of Counsel Assisting.
Not so the groups and unnamed but identifiable individuals in the pro-Palestinian movement whom witnesses have accused of antisemitism, including those who wanted to give evidence but were not invited.
For them, there is no right of reply.
Editor: this is Part One in Wendy Bacon’s series on the Royal Commission. In Part Two Advance Australia denies support for astroturfers. Where do they get their money?
‘Absolutely shocked’: Top level NACC recruitment process shrouded in secrecy
Despite Attorney-General Michelle Rowland’s promises of greater transparency around the hiring of a new NACC commissioner and deputy, nothing has changed
Michelle Fahy and Elizabeth Minter, Undue Influence, 30 August 26
We undertook this investigation in collaboration with Jommy Tee. It was first published by The Australia Institute’s The Point on 26 August 2026.
A third top level recruitment process is under way for the National Anti-Corruption Commission – to appoint a new commissioner and deputy commissioner following the resignations in May of Paul Brereton and Nicole Rose, both two years short of their five-year terms.
The first two processes – in 2022 and 2023 – were characterised by secrecy. Even members of parliament’s NACC oversight committee, the PJC-NACC, were given little information on how the recruitment was conducted. The jobs were publicly advertised but then the shutters came down.
In acknowledgement of the profound public disappointment in the NACC’s performance to date, following Brereton’s resignation Attorney-General Michelle Rowland promised a more transparent recruitment process and a “reset” of the beleaguered organisation:
I’m engaging across the parliament to look at ensuring … that there is transparency of the merit-based process … [and] also realising there is an opportunity here to reset the Commission and to ensure there is public confidence in this very important institution. (Bold added.)
This investigation, based on documents released under Freedom of Information, shows that nothing of substance has changed. The secrecy that characterised the two earlier recruitment processes looks set to be repeated. The government appears just as intent on evading scrutiny and oversight of this crucial third recruitment process.
Despite having been repeatedly advised by integrity experts to establish a recruitment process at arms-length from government for the top NACC roles, the Albanese government has chosen to stick with the ‘merit and transparency’ guidelines that have been in place since 2008. These guidelines were strongly criticised by Lynelle Briggs in her 2023 ‘Jobs for Mates’ report.
Smoke and mirrors
The current attorney-general, Michelle Rowland, appears to have led members of the NACC oversight committee and respected integrity advocates to believe that the latest recruitment process is a marked improvement – because there will be an “eminent” independent person included on the government-controlled selection panel.
Yet we can reveal that the first recruitment process also featured an eminent independent member on the selection panel.
Not only was this information kept from the public, it was also withheld from the PJC-NACC.
“It’s extraordinary as a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the NACC to be finding this out three years after the event and only through an FOI,” Greens Senator David Shoebridge told us.
Despite Rowland’s promises of increased transparency, the government has refused to disclose – even to members of the PJC-NACC, which is bound by confidentiality – the names of the people it has appointed to the selection panel.
Integrity expert, and former counsel assisting the NSW ICAC, Geoffrey Watson SC, told the committee he was “absolutely shocked” when advised the government would not be telling the committee who’s sitting on the selection panel……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Revealed: the selection panels and conflicts of interest
We obtained via FOI the names of the seven people who sat on the two selection panels. Aside from the sole external person, all panellists were senior government officials.
A separate set of documents, also obtained via FOI, revealed that four of those seven people – including the eminent independent person – declared actual or perceived conflicts of interest………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
NACC secrecy a deliberate choice of Albanese government
The secrecy around NACC recruitment is a deliberate choice of the government, according to integrity organisation the Accountability Round Table (ART).
The ART, which works to strengthen government accountability and democratic practices, is a non-partisan organisation with a board that includes senior legal practitioners, former judges, former parliamentarians and others with substantial experience of Commonwealth integrity arrangements………………………………………..
The ART said that immediate reform is urgently required to restore public trust. It is a statement for which this investigation provides strong evidence.
We put a number of detailed questions to Attorney-General Michelle Rowland and her department for this article. Neither responded.
We put detailed questions to former attorney-general Mark Dreyfus. He did not respond to the questions and directed us to contact the attorney-general’s department.https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/absolutely-shocked-top-level-nacc?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=213255175&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Robodebt on Steroids. Palantir eyes NDIS
Palantir has been lobbying the Government to control the National Disability Insurance Scheme”s (NDIS) data, potentially exposing Australia’s most vulnerable. Claudia Weisenberger reports.
If the NDIS Amendment Bill passes this week — and it will — a computer program will have the authority to cut a disabled person’s funding. If the program gets it wrong, section 59E(3) of the Bill provides that the decision stands anyway.
by Claudia Weisenberger | Aug 18, 2026 |
“There is no appeal.”
What the documents show
In 2023, Samuel Porter, then Deputy CEO and Chief Operating Officer of the NDIA, took a personal meeting with the Australian President of Palantir. The NDIA’s own security architect flagged that Palantir did not hold the required government security clearance. The engagement continued anyway.
Freedom of Information documents, obtained by disability advocate Sam Connor, show it ran from April 2023 to February 2024 — spanning a Proof of Concept, Palantir’s Foundry Cloud Architecture Diagram and Security Whitepaper, multiple documents titled ‘Palantir Technologies — Failed Payments NDIA,’ follow-up sessions on SAP integration, and a Palantir Terms of Service.
In November 2025, Palantir received its Protected-level security clearance — the level at which NDIS participant files sit.
“The NDIA declined to release all 22 documents,“
citing business information exemptions — protecting Palantir’s commercial interests rather than the public’s right to know.
Whether the engagement proceeded to a contract remains unknown. The NDIA is exempt from Commonwealth Procurement Rules and does not publish its contracts on AusTender — making independent verification impossible.
In response to questions from Michael West Media, a NDIA spokesperson said: “The NDIA has not used Palantir technology and has no plans to do so.”
The statement did not address the Freedom of Information documents showing extended engagement between the NDIA and Palantir from April 2023 to February 2024, including a Proof of Concept, a pitch on failed NDIS payments processing, and a Palantir Terms of Service document. It did not address why 22 documents relating to that engagement were refused in full.
What can be confirmed: AusTender records show AUSTRAC — one of 24 agencies sharing participant data with the NDIA through the Fraud Fusion Taskforce — holds an active Palantir contract for ‘Data Analytics capability’ worth $8.83 million, running to June 2027.
Participant data shared with AUSTRAC is therefore already being processed on Palantir infrastructure.
The government has committed $442 million to rebuild the NDIS’s digital infrastructure. The new PACE payment platform is already live. The $358.5 million digital enrolment and payment system will introduce automated real-time
“checking of every claim for 800,000 participants.“
Nobody asked those 800,000 people whether they consented to their data being processed this way. No privacy impact assessment has been published. No consultation with disabled people has taken place.
When automated systems get it wrong — and at this scale, they will — a participant loses funding they depend on to live. To eat. To get out of bed. To breathe. There is no human on the other end of the phone. There is no appeal. There is a computer program and a decision that stands.
What the Bill does
For the first time in Australian law, the Bill expressly permits a computer program to make decisions involving ‘discretion’ and ‘evaluative judgment’ — decisions previously reserved for humans. Section 59E(3) goes further: an automated decision stands even if the required safeguards were not followed.
Schedule 1 removes review rights. New section 34A makes a ministerial funding cut non-reviewable.
Here is what that means. A participant in a wheelchair receives an automated notice — her funding for home modifications has been cut. The computer got it wrong. Her occupational therapist’s report was filed under the wrong support category. Under section 59E(3), the decision stands anyway.
Under section 34A, she cannot challenge it. She has a wheelchair and a house she can no longer live in safely. And nowhere to go.
The Robodebt Royal Commission described exactly this architecture — automated decisions, delegated authority, reduced oversight — as the precondition for unlawful harm at scale. The NDIS is five times the size of Centrelink’s debt-raising program. The people affected are among the most vulnerable in the country.
Parliament is handing a Commonwealth agency the power to automate decisions, conduct coercive investigations and share data across 24 agencies — without telling the people affected who is building the system, or what will happen when it gets it wrong.
The questions that need answers this week
First: FOI documents show the NDIA engaged with Palantir for nearly a year, including a Proof of Concept and Terms of Service discussions. Did that engagement proceed to a contract — and if not, who did?
Second: 800,000 disabled Australians have not been told what data is being collected about them, who holds it, or what it will be used for. When will they be?
Third: section 59E(3) provides that an automated decision stands even when the required safeguards were not followed. In plain English — the system can break the rules and the decision still counts. Who approved that, and why?
In the shadows of Robodebt
The last time a Commonwealth agency built this kind of automated decision architecture — with delegated authority, reduced oversight and no meaningful right of appeal — a Royal Commission found it unlawful.
People lost their homes. People took their own lives. Nobody was prosecuted. The architects faced no legal consequences whatsoever.
The NDIS is five times the size. The people affected are among the most vulnerable in the country. When this goes wrong — and people are harmed — will the architects of this system face criminal prosecution? Or will history simply repeat itself?
According to disability advocate Sam Connor, the embedding of Palantir into the NDIS is the result of Labor associates lobbying the government.
“The President of Palantir is a former Labor Defence politician, Mike Kelly AM – one of their chief lobbyists is another, former autoelectrician turned Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon. More than 14 of Palantir’s 42 staff appear to have come from Labor political or public service backgrounds.”
The NDIA was contacted for comment at 11am AEST on 17 August 2026. An NDIA spokesperson responded prior to the 5pm AEST deadline; their statement is incorporated in the article above
Claudia WeisenbergerClaudia Weisenberger is a management consultant with deep experience in pharmaceuticals, hospital transformations, and strategic due diligence across four continents. She combines sharp analysis with hands-on execution.
Today In Dystopia: Burning Books For Israel, Burning Books For AI
Caitlin Johnstone, Aug 20, 2026
I’ve been putting out more and more of these “today in dystopia” write-ups because our society is plunging into iron-fisted authoritarianism and AI-induced idiocracy so rapidly that it’s hard to keep up with how it’s unfolding day by day without shoveling multiple stories into a single essay.
Today in dystopia they’re really going after books. A library in Sydney has removed the book “How to Sell a Genocide” by Adam Johnson from its shelves after Zionists complained about its criticisms of Israeli mass atrocities in Gaza.
The Guardian reports:
“A Sydney library has removed a book critical of Israel called How to Sell a Genocide, following a complaint reportedly from a survivor of the Bondi beach terror attack.
“Waverley library at Bondi Junction is in the same council area as Bondi beach.
“A Waverley council spokesperson said: “The book has been removed from library shelves for review, and council will further consider processes to ensure closer oversight of book selection.”
“They seem to be objecting largely based on the title using the word ‘genocide’,” Johnson commented. “But ‘genocide’ is not my word, or my finding. The fact of genocide in Gaza is the overwhelming consensus of the human rights world, and it is a wholly mainstream opinion among those tasked with studying and determining such matters.”
So in Australia they’re now banning books for Israel. I guess it was only a matter of time.
Also today in dystopia, Amazon is buying and destroying rare books in a secret facility to train AI.
404 Media has been doing some great reporting on how companies like Google and Anthropic have been buying up rare and out-of-print books to train their LLM models before destroying them, and now 404 has a new article out describing how its reporters placed a tracking device on a shipment of books and followed it to an Amazon warehouse where the books are being scanned and shredded.
Here’s an excerpt:
“That final destination was an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada. Amazon employees who work at this location say all they do is receive massive shipments of printed books which they then cut the bindings off in order to scan the books more quickly. The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands.”
That’s right: the logo for Amazon’s book-destroying location is an angry tyrannosaurus preparing to rip apart a book…………………………………
Today in dystopia, the Israeli government is working harder and harder to manipulate the information AI chatbots feed their users about Israel and its myriad military projects in the middle east.
Politico reports:
“Israel has launched a new campaign to influence how large-language models like ChatGPT are answering questions about Gaza and the Israel Defense Forces amid declining public support for the country across the U.S. political spectrum.
“French PR firm Havas Media, which runs the lion’s share of Israel’s FARA-registered foreign influence work in the U.S., appears to have stood up an ‘institute’ aimed at feeding LLMs positive information about Israel via one of its subcontractors, boutique ad agency Piro, Inc.”
This builds on previous reporting from Drop Site News about FARA revelations showing that former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale secured a lucrative deal with Israel to set up dummy pro-Israel websites designed to be read not by humans, but by the web crawlers that LLMs get their information from. Drop Site found that Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and Perplexity were the AI companies most vulnerable to Parscale’s manipulations.
Today in dystopia it’s becoming more and more common for online commenters to accuse me of using AI to write my essays, which I have never done and will never do.
I hate that this is a thing now. I’ve been writing essays every day for a decade, and nobody who’s been reading me for a long time believes I use AI. But now that so many people are using these creepy chatbots to do everything for them, people believe it’s impossible for a human brain to produce a few paragraphs of text.
I don’t mind the accusations, I just hate what it says about where we’re heading as a species. These things have only existed for a few years, but some people are already forgetting what it was like to be able to use your own mind to complete simple cognitive tasks. I find it deeply disturbing.https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/today-in-dystopia-burning-books-for?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=211937785&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
What a top secret navy officer case says about the The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) and Defence’s ‘cosy’ relationship
Defence initially referred to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) a case involving a former ‘star-ranked’ navy officer. The NACC chose to send it back to Defence to investigate itself instead — and not for the first time.
Michelle Fahy, Aug 16, 2026, https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/what-a-top-secret-navy-officer-case?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=211342821&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
A former “star-ranked” officer of the Royal Australian Navy is facing a court-martial in September on eight charges relating to reported “lucrative defence contracts” for sustainment work at the Henderson shipyard near Perth, which the government has invested $12 billion in to prepare for AUKUS purposes.
The ADF’s chief judge advocate, Major General Michael Cowen KC, is hearing the case and has suppressed all details thus far, including the identity of the accused former officer.
Several elements of the case have drawn attention from defence commentators, who have argued that it appears as if Defence leadership and ministers are trying to “bury” the case from public view, and that the case should take place in an open civil court.
But a key point of interest is the fact that the National Anti-Corruption Commission, after initially being referred the matter by Defence, as required by law, chose to hand the case back.
This means Defence is overseeing its own investigation into the matter.
It’s not the first time this has happened
The NACC has a history of handling certain cases like this.
In mid-2024, the national audit office found that a Defence official had given French weapons maker Thales confidential information during a protracted negotiation process. The official subsequently took a position with Thales, just before the company was awarded a 10-year, $1.2 billion contract to manage two Commonwealth-owned munitions facilities.
When Defence referred that matter to the NACC, the watchdog sent the case back to the department to investigate. Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy later claimed the department had “thoroughly investigated” the Thales matter and found “no evidence to substantiate the allegation”.
But as former Australian Federal Police investigator Chris Douglas said at the time, Conroy was wrong to make this claim.
Douglas, who worked for the AFP for 31 years in intelligence and operational units before going on to advise domestic and foreign governments on the design and implementation of anti-corruption programs, said Defence cannot effectively investigate allegations that could involve corruption.
A “thorough” investigation can only be undertaken by a law enforcement agency, particularly the NACC, “using a full suite of investigation powers including electronic evidence gathering.”
“There might be evidence at the person’s home, Defence isn’t going to find that, or in premises occupied by Thales, Defence won’t find that either. That is why we have a NACC.”
The NACC also did not appear to have placed sufficient weight on the seriousness of the matter, particularly as Thales is linked to several international corruption matters, operates in one of the most corrupt industries in the world, and currently manages Australian government contracts worth billions of dollars.
Douglas added that if Thales were an individual, “based on its past behaviour it would not be given a security clearance and therefore no employment”.
‘They should have been investigated’
Talking with Crikey, Douglas said the NACC’s decision to send the naval contracts case back to Defence for investigation provides further indication that “it lacks an understanding of how to approach serious corruption matters”.
While there are valid reasons for a department to be asked to conduct preliminary investigations into minor matters, Douglas said the case involving the former Navy officer is not minor.
“They should have been investigated thoroughly by the NACC. Defence does not have the power to tap telephones, install listening devices or compel witnesses to speak.”
Senator David Shoebridge, Greens spokesperson on Defence and Justice, agrees.
“It is now a pattern of behaviour where the NACC, which is meant to be the independent watchdog that takes on corruption, has handballed its responsibility back to the institution at fault,” he told Crikey.
Douglas also criticised the court-martial process, noting that police officers do not sit on judicial panels overlooking other police. “You wouldn’t have a corrupt cop who’s been taking money from outside being adjudicated by police only; those matters go to a civil criminal court.”
In contrast to the secrecy being imposed by Defence, the former AFP investigator supplied several examples in which the names of senior law enforcement officers have been made public regarding serious offences. These included former assistant WA police commissioner Gailene Hamilton, who was stood down from the WA police force in July last year. Her trial started in May.
Further bolstering the argument that the former navy officer’s case should be heard in a civil court is news that entities external to Defence also appear to be involved in the matter, with interactions to be examined between Defence’s former arms buying group — the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group — and several large companies that completed sustainment at Henderson shipyard.
‘Cosy’ relationship between NACC and Defence
The NACC’s freedom of information disclosure log contains documents related to the abovementioned Thales matter of 2024. The six documents reveal emailed interactions between relevant personnel at the NACC and Defence, and show what Douglas has described as an apparently “cosy relationship” between the two.
Notably, the NACC notified Defence, from the outset, of the expected length of its investigation: four to six weeks.
NACC handed naval contracts corruption case back to Defence
Not the first time NACC has asked Defence to investigate itsel
Former senior naval officer to face general court martial in Canberra in September
Michelle Fahy, Jul 29, 2026, https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/nothing-to-see-here-says-australia
Last week, reports from The Nightly and the ABC revealed details of a case involving a recently retired senior naval officer facing a court martial on eight separate charges relating to naval sustainment contracts at the Henderson shipyard near Perth.
Further details emerged over the weekend that the defence department had initially referred the matter to the National Anti-Corruption Commission but the watchdog handed the case back to Defence. (See non-paywall version.)
A NACC spokesperson said:
As it is now in the public domain, we confirm that the Department of Defence did refer this matter to the Commission in compliance with their mandatory reporting obligations under the National Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2022.
Beyond this, it is not appropriate for us to comment further as this matter is subject to suppression orders.
The NACC would not say whether it was continuing its own separate investigation into the matter.
Defence minister Richard Marles told the ABC he thought the court martial process was “appropriate”, but refused to comment further
Court martial proceedings set for September
The ADF’s chief judge advocate, Major General Michael Cowen KC, has issued a non-publication order suppressing the accused person’s name, saying the person should be referred to only by the pseudonym, “star ranked officer in the Royal Australian Navy, Officer Brown”. ‘Star ranked’ refers to the top ranks of the navy and includes admirals, vice-admirals, rear-admirals and commodores.
A five-day pre-trial hearing was held at HMAS Stirling naval base in Western Australia in June. Another pre-trial hearing is scheduled to start on September 1 at a military facility in Canberra. The court martial is set to commence at the same facility on September 14, running for up to six weeks.
Figures familiar with the allegations told The Nightly last week that due to the seniority of the accused it was initially difficult to find senior officers to take part in the court martial who were not conflicted. Those figures also said the case will examine interactions between the government’s former weapons-buying group – Capability and Sustainment Group (CASG) – and several large companies who completed sustainment projects at Henderson shipyard.
It is unclear exactly when the alleged wrongdoing took place. The Nightly reported that the activity under investigation occurred during the previous Coalition government, before the Albanese government took power in 2022.
Not the first time NACC has asked Defence to investigate itself
In late 2024, Undue Influence reported on another known defence-related corruption matter where, having received a referral from Defence, the NACC sent the matter back to Defence for investigation. That matter related to a billion-dollar munitions factory contract between Defence and the Australian subsidiary of French multinational arms-maker Thales. Defence said it was “unable to substantiate the allegation”. The NACC has made no further statements on the Thales matter and it is unclear whether it remains under investigation.
‘Nothing to see here’ says Australia as third Thales corruption case starts globally https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/nothing-to-see-here-says-australia
“Intolerable pressure”. Inside the Israel lobby campaign to coerce regulators on antisemitism
by Wendy Bacon and Stephanie Tran | Jul 17, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/intolerable-pressure-inside-the-israel-lobby-campaign-to-coerce-regulators-on-antisemitism/
The health regulator AHPRA was “forced into a massive capitulation” to adopt the hardcore IHRA definition of antisemitism. Wendy Bacon and Stephanie Tran investigate.
A Zionist doctor has claimed that AHPRA CEO Justin Untersteiner “was forced into a massive capitulation with IHRA”.
The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Authority (AHPRA) recently introduced the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism which puts healthcare workers at risk for criticising Israel.
The Zionist doctor, Doron Samuell, alleges that he was part of a campaign that “exerted intolerable political pressure” on AHPRA to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
IHRA resisted for two years
AHPRA, which regulates the conduct of 900,000 Australian healthcare workers, had resisted pressure to adopt the IHRA definition for two years.
However, on June 17, the health regulator shifted its position unexpectedly and without consultation when CEO Justin Untersteiner issued a joint statement with the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal announcing the adoption of the definition and that Segal’s guidance handbook would be used as a tool in handling complaints.
Thousands of health care workers, and many organisations including the Australian Nurses and Midwifery Federation, NSW Civil Liberties Council and Medical Association for Prevention of War have called for AHPRA to reverse its decision and continue to rely on its existing framework in dealing with complaints of racism including antisemitism.
In response, Israel’s Foreign Ministry pressured the Australian government to “confront antisemitism in healthcare” in a post on X on Sunday.
AHPRA subjected to “intolerable pressure” from Israel lobby
The ‘intolerable pressure’ claims were made by “Aba Shesh”, a social media pseudonym linked to the Facebook account used by Dr Doron Samuell, a member of the Australian Zionist Healthcare Alliance (AZHA).
Dr Samuell’s comments were made in response to a post on ‘Jews of Melbourne’ (JOM) Facebook page drawing members’ attention to a Civil Liberties Defence Centre (CLDC) webinar presented by its chairperson, lawyer Nick Hanna. The webinar was an educational briefing for healthcare workers on the implications of AHPRA’s adoption of the IHRA definition .
A member of the Jews Of Melbourne group predicted there would be
“lots of “antisemitism” at the webinar which members could monitor and report to AHPRA.”
In response, “Aba Shesh” described Untersteiner as an “unthinking bureaucrat” who “repeatedly minimised the problem until his hand was forced”.
Samuell lamented that Untersteiner “said the right things and even visited a shule but AHPRA sat on their hands, receiving vexatious complaints for two years until we exerted intolerable political pressure on them to act.”
Samuell stated that Untersteiner “was forced into a massive capitulation with IHRA”.
Last year, Samuell claimed he was responsible for the cancellation of a staff forum on Children and War at the Royal Children’s Hospital.
MWM sent detailed questions to Untersteiner and provided him with an opportunity to respond to the comments. Instead of specific answers, AHPRA provided us with a general statement. AHPRA’s full response is below.
MWM also contacted Samuell for comment, he did not provide a response.
Several healthcare professionals who opposed the change said they met with senior AHPRA officials, including Untersteiner, earlier this year to argue against adopting the IHRA definition.
One doctor, who requested anonymity because of concerns of professional repercussions, said senior leadership were presented with medical evidence of the genocide and concerns that the IHRA definition would be used to silence doctors.
“As well as presenting the overwhelming amount of medical evidence of genocide and the silencing of healthcare workers as an apparatus of genocide, we also focused on the concern of the IHRA definition being used to silence doctors who openly support human rights,” they said.
Jerusalem definition preferred
The doctor said they proposed the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism as an alternate definition.
“We provided an alternative definition on antisemitism, the Jerusalem definition, should it be necessary to single out one group for a separate definition on discrimination.”
The doctor said Untersteiner told them he had publicly rejected the IHRA definition and discussed pressure the regulator was facing from Israel lobby groups.
“Untersteiner said he has publicly rejected the IHRA definition but when pressed to provide this in writing later, AHPRA did not,” the doctor said.
“[Untersteiner] also expressed some of the personal stress he was under due to the Zionist groups and in particular from doctors like Doron Samuell. It appeared to be genuine and heartfelt.”
MWM put those claims to Untersteiner, who declined to comment.
The doctor expressed concern that AHPRA’s decision to adopt IHRA will encourage vexatious complaints against practitioners, an anxiety shared by thousands of other healthcare workers.
“AHPRA’s statement on the IHRA definition will embolden the Zionists to ramp up their vexatious complaint campaign,” they said.
Path to capitulation
Samuell told the Facebook group that “with my pressure, the Minister issued a directive for Justin to remedy the situation and gave him 6 months to do it” yet, “when he reported back 7+ months later, he was still refusing to define antisemitism”.
In September 2025, health ministers directed APHRA to provide a six monthly report on “Improving the health practitioner response to racism and discrimination, including antisemitism”. AHPRA established a Racism and Discrimination Committee to provide an action plan.
Minister for Health, Mark Butler did not respond to questions on the matter.
In February 2026, Untersteiner was pressured by Senator Andrew Bragg in Senate Estimates to adopt the IHRA definition.
“I’m wondering why you haven’t decided to adopt a clear definition of antisemitism. We’ve just had a religious massacre in Australia where antisemitism was a key driver. So I’m wondering why you haven’t adopted one,” Bragg asked.
In response, Untersteiner said the issue was a “live discussion” however, “the vast majority of practitioners do the right thing and they comply with our codes of conduct” and “in the very few cases where they don’t, we do believe that we’ve got the tools to be able to deal with that effectively.”
The Segal meetings
When pressed further to explain why he had not adopted the IHRA definition, Untersteiner said he had been meeting with Jillian Segal “on a regular basis”.
“I’ve been meeting with the special envoy on a regular basis. I think we’ve been able to work quite well together,” Untersteiner told the Committee.
On 13 April 2026, AHPRA’s Race and Discrimination Committee submitted its report responding to the Ministerial directive. In his posts, Samuell objected to the composition of the committee because it
“included a Jewish person who had been critical of Israel.”
The report stated that “the National Code of Conduct sets out clear expectations that registered health practitioners will deliver care that is culturally safe and free from discriminatory behaviours.” There was an action plan for strengthening AHPRA’s anti-racism approach but no mention of the IHRA definition.
On April 24, Special Envoy Segal released the Understanding Antisemitism in Australia handbook.On May 1, the Health Ministers accepted AHPRA’s report and it was published on AHPRA’s website.
APHRA’s usual practice is to publish communiques on its Board meetings shortly after they occur. Communiques have not been published for the May and June meetings.
Call for Untersteiner sacking
AHPRA declined to supply us with copies of those communiques so it is unclear whether the Board approved the use of the IHRA definition in these meetings.
On May 6, Samuell expressed his frustration with AHPRA in a podcast episode published by “The Israel Connexion”.
During the interview, Samuell said that AZHA had called for Untersteiner’s sacking in its submission to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
“AHPRA has dropped the ball. Now we’re making a submission to the Royal Commission, calling on the Health Minister to sack Justin Untersteiner for the role that he has played in this,” he said.
“Antagonistic to Israel”
“We’ve outlined in our submission a large number of failures. For example, there are governance problems in AHPRA. There are board members in AHPRA who are on the public record as being antagonistic to Israel.” Samuell said.
“I know from their own staff, many of whom have been in private communications with me, that they are not taking this matter seriously at all. They’ve breached their social contract with us. [Untersteiner] is not the person that can fix this situation.”
Samuell told Israel Connexion that AZHA has encouraged “practitioners and patients in the health sector to make submissions to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism through [AZHA] website” and is “synthesising the submissions into a discussion paper for the Royal Commission” by applying the IHRA definition.
The result is a “whole of sector submission” developed by applying “social theories about what is going on and what should happen to remedy it.”
MWM is not asserting that any of the public allegations against AHPRA are true. In the absence of responses from AHRPA or Samuell on these matters, we are reporting them in the interests of transparency.
Zionist Healthcare Alliance attacks on AHPRA
Samuell is one of several Zionist health workers who represent the Australian Zionist Healthcare Alliance (AZHA).
The AZHA was launched in October last year. It describes itself as “Australia’s first dedicated Zionist healthcare advocacy organisation”
AZHA’s most vocal member is public affairs officer Sharon Stoliar who helped found AZHA last year.
Ten days after the IHRA definition announcement, on June 27, Stoliar was featured in a major report by The Australian titled “How did hospitals become the front line in the antisemitic onslaught?”.
The report accused AHPRA of ignoring an “unprecedented explosion of antisemitism” and said Australian health care workers were amplifying anti-Jewish hate speech” and deliberating neglecting or harming Jewish patients.
Royal Commission hearsay
Stoliar told The Australian that she hoped to give evidence at the Royal Commission.
Stoliar is quoted describing an incident in which a woman in a Sydney hospital was “left to lie in a pool of blood with no pain relief” while her baby screamed in its cot alongside hers.
She has also claimed that an antisemitic health care workers caused a Jewish person to have a ‘forced abortion’.
No evidence is provided to support these hearsay claims which Stoliar has repeated in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12.
The Australian article has taken on a life of its own being regurgitated in various forms in Australian and Israeli media. The Channel 12 broadcast was reposted on Facebook and Instagram by the Zionist Federation of Australia. Collectively these posts have triggered a large amount of hate against Australia health workers and precipitated the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs tweet this week.
AHPRA’s response
Rather than responding to our questions, AHPRA supplied MWM with a statement similar to one it has sent to thousands of healthcare workers who signed letters expressing opposition to its adoption of the IHRA definition.
AHPRA appears keen to allay the concerns of its registered health care workers. It emphasises that ”there is no place for racism or discrimination in healthcare”, and that it will deal with complaints on an individual basis. An AHPRA spokesperson provided the following explanation for the sudden change:
Ahpra had initially not adopted the IHRA definition, as we felt there was insufficient clarity between legitimate commentary and debate regarding the policies and actions of the state of Israel and its elected leaders, and antisemitism. However, the Special Envoy on Antisemitism’s handbook is designed to support use of the definition by distinguishing ‘between antisemitism and legitimate political debate, including on the topic of Israel’.
It is on that basis that Ahpra will use the IHRA definition as a reference tool where relevant, supported by the ASECA handbook, when considering regulatory responses. As a reference tool, the definition is not legally binding. There are no changes to the National Codes or the guidance that supports them.
AHPRA’s explanation is surprising. The handbook itself exacerbates concerns with the IHRA definition. For example, Segal’s examples suggest that it is antisemitic to say that Israel is a ‘racist project’ or that Israel is ‘committing genocide’, views that are widely held by numerous international law experts and humanitarian organisations.
The Genocide continues
Daily, the genocide continues. Israel has murdered thousands of healthcare workers in Gaza and devastated its healthcare system.
Last week the UN Commission of Inquiry on Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel demanded that Israel release Gaza paediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya who has been imprisoned without charge and tortured by Israel for over 18 months.
Australian health care workers are mobilising and have formed a new national coalition. Yesterday, the Australian Healthcare Alliance 4 Palestine, encompassing hundreds of thousands of registered doctors, nurses and dentists, wrote a letter to AHPRA asking it to “provide full transparency regarding the governance, consultation and decision-making processes” that led to the decision to adopt the IHRA definition.
The Alliance said that health practitioners have “an ethical responsibility to advocate for our patients, our colleagues and the healthcare system” and called on AHPRA to rescind its decision.
Wendy Bacon
Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was the Professor of Journalism at UTS. She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism.
She is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS and the Greens.
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.
Close that Facility: The 2026 Pine Gap Protests
Dr Binoy Kampmark, 21 July 2026, https://theaimn.net/close-that-facility-the-2026-pine-gap-protests/
It remains a prickly reminder that Australia remains an embarrassed vassal of power, annexed to the security interests of another state basking in imperial and fast diminishing splendour. Pine Gap, known more technically as the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG), is a largely US-operated effort in Alice Springs, Central Australia. As the late scholar of strategic studies Desmond Ball pithily remarked in 1988, it is “an espionage operation.
Euphemisms should not be allowed to obscure this essential point.” It grew out of a desire on the part of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1965 to establish a remote Australian-sited ground control station intended for signals intelligence satellites. Land belonging to the Central Arrernte people was accordingly excised the following year for the site. The decision, in typically rough fashion, was made without consultation and discussion with local residents or elders, a secret place that became what Trevor Paglen would describe as a “blank space on the map … erased from the public record.”
The facility staffs some 800 personnel from the US National Security Agency (NSA), CIA, the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and such Australian agencies as the Australian Signals Directorate and Australian Federal Police. Over the years, the base has become increasingly corporatised with a heavy American accent: Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, IBM and Hewlett Packard. A mere 10% of the constituted personnel are said to be Australian government employees.
The base periodically attracts its keen and principled protesters, aghast at the base’s role in furnishing targeting data for US and allied drone and missile strikes across the Middle East and Africa. This year, the Close Pine Gap-Sacred Land Back convergence featured three days (July 18-20) of activities, with hundreds of participants gathered in Alice Springs to demand the closure of the facility through a series of workshops, panels and woven “threads of anti-militarism and decolonial movements.”
On July 20, a rally of 300 individuals gathered close to the front of the spy base, the largest since 1987, sporting signs and flags and chanting the stock phrases: “shut it down”, “close Pine Gap”, and “always was, always will be Aboriginal land.” New South Wales Greens Senator David Shoebridge was present, expressing his concern about a “foreign military base set up for the interests of a foreign military” in the service of “right wing politics” and disrespectful of international law. The base was also a potential target for any adversaries the US might be willing to antagonise, thereby bringing “danger into the heart of our country.”
Arrernte Apmereke-artweye traditional custodians Felicity, Wyonna and Jacquita Hayes offer sound if disturbing logic, as reported by the Australian Associated Press: Pine Gap sits on a sacred site that not only profanes tradition but acts as vehicle for the waging of foreign wars and the conduct of genocide. “We don’t want to be feeling guilty all the time when bad things are happening overseas to little ones. We’re not the ones controlling that facility, but we feel guilty that it’s coming to our land.”
The custodians wished for the facility to be closed “so the generation coming can be safe. We want to be compensated so we can get houses at Whitegate community.” It is also with some astonishment that the residents of Whitegate, to this day, are deprived of rudimentary services, including decent housing and running water. The water has to be brought in by truck. There is no sewerage.
Richard Tanter of the Nautilus Institute, one of Pine Gap’s most astute and flawlessly detailed critics, proved ever reliable in remarking that, “Unless the Australian direct and indirect military relationship to Israeli activities in the Gaza Strip are closely reviewed … it is not possible for the Australian government to assure parliament and the Australian public that Australia is no complicit in acts of genocide.” The good professor has been able to shed much light on the facility’s broader purposes and is dismissive of critics who fault claims that the site is being used to feed such military efforts as those of Israel. (He can point to at least three satellites having the Gaza Strip within their reach.) In October 1973, for instance, satellite intelligence from Pine Gap was passed on to Israel during the Yom Kippur War, a contribution that aided Israel’s breakthrough of the Egyptian lines.
This is of little concern to the clubland militarists in Canberra and such think tanks as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Former intelligence officer Patrick White, writing for ASPI’s The Strategist, laments the diminished secrecy and security of the site, worrying that trends in signals technology have no longer made the base “irreplaceable”. The advent of extensive encryption means that satellite download feeds can be protected “almost anywhere. The remoteness that once hid the site from view no longer hides much at all.” He is sentimental about the ties with Washington. “We have shared in intelligence and expertise far beyond anything our own resources could produce. We have no satellites of this kind.” Precisely why Canberra is blood-crusted in its complicity, less an authoritative host than a butler eager to please.
Pine Gap acts, then, as a symbol of highly distilled, triple strength colonisation: a garrison outpost dominated by the US imperium and its personnel (a poke in the eye of Australian sovereignty), located on native land it defiles (a poke in the eye of the First Nations peoples), and also responsible for aiding the predations of Washington’s allies – more recently the Israeli Defense Forces in its cleansing conflict against the Palestinians. “I understand the genocide in Gaza against my people is made possible by intelligence flowing from the heart of this colony in Alice Springs directly to the Israeli occupation forces,” stated Palestinian activist Remah Naji of Justice for Palestine Magan-djin with potency. Shoebridge agreed: “We’re letting them use our land, this key real estate, I think [to] commit some of the worst atrocities we’ve seen.”
As the AUKUS Public Inquiry continues its various hearings on that ghastly, doomed security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, the Close Pine Gap campaign should be commended as a linked, worthy extension. The former’s proceedings have been mostly savaging the wisdom of a pact that has shown Australia to be embarrassingly disadvantaged, its politicians largely deluded, and its strategic establishment impressionable and bankrupt. (That establishment seeks to bankrupt the Australian treasury to the princely sum of AU$368 billion over promised nuclear-powered submarines that may never arrive.) The Close Pine Gap protests, while receiving less in the way of coverage, is no less pertinent and urgent in its aims.
Senior naval officer facing court martial over naval contracts – breaking news from WA
Defence accused of trying to bury details of a high-level investigation into handling of lucrative naval defence contracts by a former senior naval figure
Michelle Fahy, Jul 21, 2026, https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/senior-naval-officer-facing-court?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=207838287&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
A secretive court martial process is under way in Western Australia involving a recently retired officer, The Nightly’s Andrew Greene has reported.
The Nightly said it understands the accused had left the Australian Defence Force in the past few years and will soon be subjected to a court martial on eight separate but unspecified charges.
Former senior Defence official Michael Shoebridge said he believes the entire process should be handled by a regular civil court, rather than kept inside the military justice system.
“The alleged offences are probably also offences under civilian law, so the better approach is a standard — open and public — prosecution in a civil court,” Shoebridge told The Nightly. “Instead, this just looks like the Defence leadership and ministers trying to keep this away from the public.”
Another defence industry figure familiar with details of the case backed the assessment, telling The Nightly they believed the military establishment was trying to “bury” the case from public view.
Figures familiar with the allegations have told The Nightly that due to the seniority of the accused ADF member it was initially difficult to find senior officers to take part in the court martial who were not conflicted.
Those figures told The Nightly the complex case will also examine interactions between the government weapons-buying group – Capability and Sustainment Group (CASG) – and several large companies who completed sustainment projects at Henderson shipyard.
The Nightly said it understands the activity under investigation occurred during the previous Coalition government and before the Albanese government took power in 2022.
It is unclear why the matter is being handled by a military disciplinary process rather than a civilian court.
Read The Nightly’s full story here.
‘Height of unfairness’: Former SA senator slams government over AUKUS nuclear waste move
Adrian Zorzut 15 July 26, https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/height-of-unfairness-former-sa-senator-slams-government-over-aukus-nuclear-waste-move/news-story/1cfe188f41d9b5530b81e065a4656ebc
The government has an AUKUS program, which they also have to justify to the Australian public but also that they have thought about and have a proper proposal to deal with the waste that will inevitably come from that program. And we know these sorts of topics are controversial. The government needs to gain a social licence and secrecy is not the way to do that,”
As plans to develop nuclear submarines under the AUKUS deal move ahead, the government is being coy about where they’re going to dump nuclear waste.
A former South Australian senator has slammed the federal government for refusing to release information about potential storage sites for nuclear waste that comes from AUKUS submarines.
Rex Patrick said the Australian public had a right to know where hazardous spent fuel from nuclear-powered submarines will be buried and shot down claims the information was a national security secret.
The former submariner turned politician is now considering taking the government to court after they refused three Freedom of Information (FoI) requests.
Mr Patrick wants Canberra to disclose the cost and potential locations for a storage facility as well as a cabinet report on this topic.
“Sensitive is not a ground for exemption. There is no military sensitivity in the storage of nuclear waste. Information about the submarines themselves will potentially attract a national security exemption, but the waste that comes from them has nothing to do with engaging in conflict or defending the country,” he told news.com.au.
“It’s incidental to the project but obviously a significant problem that needs to be addressed. It’s not like someone can build a facility in complete secrecy.”
Mr Patrick, who was an independent SA senator between 2017 and 2022, partially won a court order to cap maximum legal costs he’d have to pay if he lost an appeal against the government to $20,000. Without the cap, the former senator claims he’d face a legal bill of up to $150,000.
Handing down his finding on Monday, July 13, federal court judge O’Sullivan said the information Mr Rex’s was seeking was “a matter of significant public interest,” but stopped short of the senator’s request for a $5,000 cap on legal expenses, a copy of the judgement shows.
Mr Patrick wants to fundraise the cash but said there is no point unless he has a shot of winning his case in court and is consulting with a lawyer on what to do next.
“I’m not in the court to run litigation needlessly. I’m focused on the document and now I need to react,” he said.
‘There will be a cost’
Mr Patrick said he lodged a FoI request for a cabinet report on potential storage sites, which was knocked back by the government and the Administration Review Tribunal (ART) – a watchdog for administrative decisions made by government ministers.
The former parliamentarian plans to appeal and claims the sections of the report he is seeking are not exempt from Freedom of Information laws and are of tantamount interest to the public.
He is also separately challenging a successful appeal by the government to stop the release of other related paperwork he was due.
He claims the government wants him to cover up to $150,000 in its legal fees if he loses.
Mr Patrick won an ART decision in May to access the paperwork which helped develop the cabinet report. The government immediately appealed the decision. The parties are expected to battle it out in court.
“That’s an awful situation for me and for you as a journalist. To win an FoI in a tribunal and have the government appeal it and say if you don’t win this, you will be charged $150,000. I think that is the height of unfairness from the government,” he said.
“The whole point of the FoI regime is to allow people to get access to information, to participate in democracy, to scrutinise the government and what this does is signal that if you win, there will be a cost.”
A spokesperson from the Department of Industry, Science and Resources told news.com.au, “As this matter is before the court it would not be appropriate to comment.”
This month, Jacqui Lambie, Pauline Hanson and David Pocock were just some of 18 independent and minor-party members to pen a letter urging Attorney-General Michelle Rowland to intervene in the public interest.
“It is clear to us that this is an attack on our freedom-of-information regime, with the intent of deterring Australians from pursuing access to information,” they said, according to The Guardian.
“Dragging an ordinary citizen, self-represented and under threat of costs, to argue questions of law raised by the government is most unfair.”
Mr Patrick said a third FoI request is before the Information Commissioner. Mr Patrick submitted a request for the latest cost estimates for a facility with the Australian Submarine Agency but was told they couldn’t find them – a response he said was an “extraordinary situation” for an organisation that is supposed to cost projects from cradle to grave, a submission to an independent inquiry into AUKUS shows.
Mr Patrick said he believes an underground storage facility could cost “billions” to build and up to $30m a year to maintain.
‘Nothing stopping the PM’
Mr Patrick, who calls himself a transparency warrior, said the documents were a “significant public policy interest”.
“The government governs for us. The government has an AUKUS program, which they also have to justify to the Australian public but also that they have thought about and have a proper proposal to deal with the waste that will inevitably come from that program. And we know these sorts of topics are controversial. The government needs to gain a social licence and secrecy is not the way to do that,” he said.
The former submariner suggested because a storage facility isn’t needed until a nuclear-powered submarine is nearing decommissioning, the government is refusing to make a decision or release information. The average lifespan of a nuclear sub is 33 years, he said.
Mr Patrick added at least one site is needed to bury spent fuel and the decommissioned reactor inside the submarine. He said reactor components are generally buried in a shallow facility while spent fuel needs cooling before it is buried deep underground.
“These are politically-sensitive and emotional issues that the government is seeking to kick down the road, possibly to a time period where they’re not even in power,” he said.
“The government just really doesn’t want to deal with this publicly because it’s a politically controversial topic.”
Mr Patrick is calling on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to release the cabinet report, which the government is claiming to be exempt from FoI laws.
“Even if the document is a cabinet document, there is nothing stopping the prime minister from releasing it and the prime minister is at liberty to do that and he hasn’t.”
The Department of Industry, Science and Resources, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Australian Submarine Agency have been contacted for comment.
Vile abuse, targeted by Murdoch – The cost of speaking out against Israel
by Stephanie Tran | Jul 2, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/hitlers-jew-judenrat-kapo-the-cost-of-speaking-out-against-israel/
Executive Director of the Jewish Council of Australia, Sarah Schwartz, has told the Bondi Royal Commission of sustained abuse by pro-Israel activists. Stephanie Tran reports.
Giving evidence on Thursday, Sarah Schwartz, a human rights lawyer, said attacks from pro-Israel groups sought to delegitimise Jewish people who criticise Israel.
“They rest on the idea that Jewish identity is inherently tied to Israel, and therefore Jewish people who don’t support Israel or who criticise Israel are not really Jewish and are traitors,” she told the Commission.
Schwartz said she had been referred to as a “self-hating Jew”, “Hitler’s Jew”, “kapo” and “Judenrat”, and had been depicted using Holocaust imagery, including “on a train to concentration camps” and with the yellow Star of David imposed on Jews under Nazi rule.
Holocaust weaponised
She said the atrocities of the Holocaust were a motivation for her Palestine solidarity work and the weaponisation by pro-Israel accounts of Holocaust imagery was “incredibly disturbing”.
“I was taught that never again meant never again for anyone, and that’s why I do the work that I do,” Schwartz said.
“To have the symbols of the Holocaust and Nazi imagery and Jewish persecution used against me has been incredibly disturbing and distressing, and I think it
Schwartz said the stereotype that all Jewish people are politically aligned with Israel “causes immense harm”.
“I speak … almost every day to Jewish people who contact me and who are terrified of speaking out, because they know that if they speak their political convictions, they face the risk of a similar sort of abuse and vilification and targeting that I have experienced.”
Murdoch media coverage fuelled abuse
Schwartz told the commission that reporting by The Australian undermined her safety and ultimately led her to abandon a police application intended to protect her from ongoing harassment.
She recounted an incident in March 2025 after police applied for a personal safety intervention order (PSIO) on her behalf against lawyer Zara Cooper, who targeted Schwartz on Instagram under the pseudonym “@clammy_fraud”.
Schwartz said she first learned of the application through a journalist from The Australian, who contacted her to say the newspaper was preparing a story.
“I informed him I hadn’t been informed of the nature of the PSIO,” she said.
“When I asked him if he could provide me with a copy, he said he couldn’t provide me with a copy … because I didn’t know its contents, I also couldn’t really respond to a lot of it, because it was a police application.”
Schwartz said the following day’s front-page article incorrectly suggested she, rather than police, had initiated the proceedings in an attempt to suppress free speech.
Free speech for me, not for thee
he told the Commission that The Australian subsequently published further articles about the case, including reproducing images and slurs that formed part of the material relied upon by police in seeking the intervention order.
“What was most distressing to me is The Australian chose to republish some of the offensive imagery that was the basis on which police applied for the PSIO,” she said.
“[The Australian] republished content that took my image and placed it on a train to concentration camps, content calling me a kapo and other various slurs.”
Schwartz said the coverage convinced her that pursuing legal protection would expose her to further public attention and place her at greater risk.
“It became very clear to me after that coverage that this was becoming a media circus,” she said.
“Having reported these matters to police … was actually something that was
“going to make me less safe because of the media coverage.”
She subsequently told police she no longer wished to proceed with the intervention order, and the application was withdrawn. She has since been reluctant to report further incidents because she fears doing so would attract similar publicity.
“It’s become very clear to me that, because of the media interest in me as a person, but particularly because of News Corp’s targeting of me, it’s not going to be safe for me to engage in reporting,” she said.
She also expressed concern that republishing the abusive material normalised antisemitic attacks against Jewish critics of Israel.
“I think that media reporting really normalises the use of these terms against other Jewish people … people see that coverage and think that it is legitimate to call a Jewish person Nazi-aligned or to place our face on a train to concentration camps.”
Being Pro-Palestine is not antisemitism
Schwartz dispelled suggestions that pro-Palestinian activism is a significant driver of antisemitism, stating that, despite attempts to portray Palestine solidarity spaces as hostile to Jews, that had not reflected her own experience.
“I know that there is a lot of public discourse … that suggests that human rights spaces and Palestine solidarity spaces, in particular, are spaces that might be hostile to Jewish people,” she said.
“That hasn’t been my experience at all.”
Instead, Schwartz said she had received “many messages of support and clear condemnations of antisemitism” from Muslim colleagues following the Bondi terror attack.
Government response
Schwartz criticised the government’s responses to antisemitism, which have disproportionately focused on the Palestine solidarity movement, including the banning of protest slogans.
“I think that government responses, which locate the source of anti-Semitism within the Palestine solidarity movement, suggest for Jewish people who are also part of that movement that either we’re not really Jewish or that we are somehow against Jewish people in our own communities.”
Asked what measures would most effectively combat antisemitism, Schwartz said governments should prioritise addressing far-right extremism and
“It’s really important for us to take the threat of far-right extremism really seriously … we know that it’s rising and it’s becoming more mainstream,” she said.
“It is critically important that governments and institutions don’t adopt policies in response to antisemitism that engage in that form of conflation itself that suggests that antisemitism is coming from the Palestine solidarity movement.”
She also called for progressive Jewish organisations to be included in policymaking on antisemitism.
“It’s really important that organisations such as the Jewish Council and other progressive Jewish organizations actually have a seat at the table” she said.
“It shows the broader community that
“the Jewish community, like every community, has a diversity of opinions.”
Royal Commission on cohesion hears only half the story
the same evening news that reports rising antisemitism in Australia – correctly, and without my objection – routinely fails to report the parallel rise in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian abuse, the vandalised mosques, the women afraid to wear hijab in public, the children told by implication that their faith makes them suspect
By Wayne Hawkins | 2 July 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/royal-commission-on-cohesion-hears-only-half-the-story,21247
Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion risks undermining its own purpose by excluding evidence of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, writes Wayne Hawkins.
AUSTRALIA’S Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion is now in its third Sydney hearing block, running until 10 July.
It was established in January, in the aftermath of the Bondi Beach attack that killed 15 people on a night meant for celebration. Nobody disputes that the Commission has real work to do. The rise in antisemitic incidents recorded since October 2023 is documented, severe and deserving of the most rigorous scrutiny our institutions can offer.
But an inquiry into hatred reveals something about itself in who it decides not to hear from. And on that count, this Commission has already answered the question.
In May, the Loud Jewish Collective applied for leave to appear before the first hearing block, wanting to give evidence about their own members’ experiences of antisemitism. They were refused — the Commissioner was, in the words used to reject them, “not satisfied” that they had a direct and substantial interest in the matter.
The Australian Palestine Advocacy Network met the same fate. Two organisations, both with members who have lived antisemitism or anti-Palestinian racism directly, both judged to be outside the scope of an inquiry into hatred and social cohesion in Australia.
I find it hard to read that as anything other than a decision about which Australians get to define what cohesion means.
I wrote a parliamentary submission earlier this year arguing that Islamophobia is racism — not by analogy, not as a lesser cousin of antisemitism, but structurally, mechanistically, the same thing happening to a different group. Collective blame. The demand that an entire community continuously prove its loyalty to the actions of people who share only its faith. The recasting of legitimate political grievance – in this case, mass civilian death in Gaza – as evidence of an inherent, civilisational danger.
These are not two separate phenomena needing two separate inquiries that never speak to each other. They are the same mechanism, pointed in two directions at once, often by the same actors in the same news cycle.
The Commission’s own proceedings have illustrated the problem it was never asked to examine. Commissioner Virginia Bell described the 7 October attack, in passing, as a “Hamas invasion”, a characterisation that quietly recasts a population under decades of occupation as the invading force on their own land.
Witnesses in an SBS News report on the second hearing block have testified to being “tired” of seeing Palestinian flags at cultural events, of overhearing artists call for a free Palestine, of having to scroll past footage of starvation in Gaza on their phones.
These are real discomforts and I don’t dismiss them. But an Inquiry that treats a 45-second elevator ride past distressing news as a harm worth recording, while refusing entry to the people living the underlying catastrophe, has told us where its sympathies sit before a single recommendation is written.
This is not a call to relitigate the Commission’s right to exist, or to diminish what Jewish Australians have endured since the Bondi attack and well before it. It is a call to notice the asymmetry, because the asymmetry is the story.
No one has asked Christian Australians to account for Christian nationalist violence as the price of being heard on social cohesion. No one demands that Buddhist or Hindu Australians distance themselves from documented nationalist violence against Muslim minorities in Myanmar and India before their testimony is taken seriously. Only one direction of scrutiny in this country currently requires an entire community to prove, in advance and as a condition of entry, that it is not secretly the threat.
I don’t say this to score a point against the Commission. I say it because the same evening news that reports rising antisemitism in Australia – correctly, and without my objection – routinely fails to report the parallel rise in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian abuse, the vandalised mosques, the women afraid to wear hijab in public, the children told by implication that their faith makes them suspect.
A Royal Commission with “social cohesion” in its title, that structurally cannot hear from the second-largest group experiencing religious and racial hostility in this country, is not examining social cohesion. It is examining one half of a single problem and calling the result whole.
The fix here isn’t complicated and it doesn’t require abandoning the Commission’s core purpose. It requires the Commissioner to recognise that anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia sit inside the same terms of reference as antisemitism, not outside them — because they are produced by the same mechanism of collective blame, and because a finding on “social cohesion” that only canvasses the cohesion of part of the country isn’t a finding at all.
Bell still has time, before her final report in December, to widen the door rather than defend its current width.
Naming a mechanism early is not alarmism — it’s the only thing that has ever interrupted one before it finishes running its course. Every Australian who has had a synagogue vandalised, a mosque firebombed, or a hijab grabbed in the street deserves the same seriousness from the institutions meant to protect them.
An Inquiry that only extends that seriousness in one direction isn’t building cohesion. It’s choosing sides while insisting it isn’t.
Wayne Hawkins is an independent commentator based in Tasmania and an independent candidate for the federal seat of Clark.
Macdonald Witch Hunt. Melbourne Uni cancels cardiologist – Israel lobby pressure
by Wendy Bacon | Jun 27, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/witch-hunt-melbourne-uni-cancels-surgeon-israel-lobby-pressure/
The University of Melbourne has cancelled a prestigious lecture by eminent Australian cardiologist Professor Peter MacDonald after Zionist pressure. Wendy Bacon reports.
Eminent Australian cardiologist Professor Peter MacDonald, who was scheduled to give a prestigious lecture at University of Melbourne in July, has been ‘cancelled’ due to behind-the-scenes pressure from Zionists.
In April, Macdonald, who is a pioneer and innovator in heart transplant medicine, was invited by University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s Hospital to deliver the annual Memorial lecture in honour of surgeon John Clarebrough.
The lecture is delivered at the Surgical Forum, which is the premier event for the partnership between University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne.
Second time cancelled
This is the second occasion on which Macdonald, who supports Palestinian rights and has attended rallies, has been cancelled due to pressure from Zionists.
Last year, he was on forced leave from St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney for seven weeks before the complaint against him by doctors associated with the Australian Zionist Healthcare Alliance ( AZHA) was dismissed following an independent investigation.
Macdonald was contacted but declined to comment for this story.
In early May, a Melbourne University staff member posted a promotion for the Surgical Forum on Facebook, where Macdonald’s name remained on the program until yesterday, when it was removed and replaced with St Vincent’s surgeon Dr Elizabeth Paretz.
A promotional brochure was produced and remains in circulation.
“Unnamed accusers” – invite withdrawn”
On June 12, more than a month after the lecture was first promoted, University of Melbourne Acting Head of Surgery Professor Justin Yeung and St Vincent’s surgeon and Adjunct Professor Matthew Read, who chairs the Surgical Forum, sent a letter withdrawing the invitation.
“concerns” were raised regarding remarks“
They informed Macdonald that “concerns” were raised regarding remarks attributed to you that have been “widely interpreted as antisemitic”.
After “careful” consideration, the organisers had come to the conclusion that the remarks could distract from the forum event. This suggests that those who made the decision understood that if they did not withdraw their invitation, Macdonald’s unnamed accusers would conduct a public campaign against him.
The accusers were referring to a 30-second question that Macdonald asked at a Palestinian Justice community forum last year, during which he said that, before he had been informed by the Australian government that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was responsible, he considered that Mossad could be behind some antisemitic incidents.
(Mossad itself acknowledges that it conducts extensive covert operations, including embedding agents in other countries, including Iran.)
No right of reply
Unusually, given the vague and anonymous nature of the allegations and the fact that St Vincent’s knew the 2025 allegations had been dismissed, the organisers gave MacDonald no opportunity to respond to his critics before making their decision.
Following the withdrawal of the invitation and before it became public, MWM became aware that the Forum organisers were informed that the allegations had been dismissed in 2025, and St Vincent’s removed negative and defamatory statements about him from its website.
They were also aware that during reconciliation week, Macdonald presented a ‘Grand Round’ at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney about his monthly visits to run a heart health clinic for the Aboriginal community in Condobolin in NSW for two decades.
This lecture was attended by the CEO of St Vincents Health, Chris Blake and was positively received without anyone publicly raising last year’s incident.
Despite the facts
Despite knowing all these facts, University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s refused to reverse their decision.
Their decision denies those who would have attended the lecture the benefit of Macdonald’s first-hand and up-to-date report of his research findings and his practice, which has saved thousands of lives.
The event would have proceeded smoothly if it had not been for the determination of unnamed Zionists or those influenced by them to silence and punish Macdonald.
Uni’s tepid response
MWM put questions to the St Vincent’s Foundation, which is responsible for the bequest that supports the lecture. We were told that no questions would be answered.
MWM also put detailed questions to Professor Jason Yeung, but received no answers.
We also put questions to the Interim Vice Chancellor, Glyn Davis, asking whether he or other members of senior management were made aware of these events, and, having been made aware, whether he would investigate.
We got the following response from a Uni spokesperson:
“After careful consideration, the lecture organisers decided to withdraw the invitation to the guest speaker. This will enable the lecture to run smoothly so students, researchers and the wider medical community can focus on the important topics which will be discussed.
“Each year, faculties, schools and our partner institutes hold hundreds of events such as this. The University supports and encourages the organisers to make the appropriate judgements to ensure they are delivered without any disruptions.”
As a result of the decision, those attending the lecture will not hear about the “important topics” which would have been “discussed.”
“Antisemitic” or anti-Israel?
So the situation goes like this: A person is invited to participate in a public university event. Some unnamed individuals claim that the invitee has previously made a remark that some pro-Israeli people considered ‘antisemitic’.
These complainants convey a message that they will create a public fuss if the event goes ahead. The invitee is given no right of reply and is ‘cancelled’.
It’s a laissez-faire attitude to political censorship and potential bullying if ever there was one.
MWM also asked the Interim VC Davis: Do you agree that to cancel such a prestigious and publicised lecture on the basis of anonymous allegations without even giving Professor Macdonald a chance to respond does not meet the values of integrity, justice and transparency on which University of Melbourne claims to conduct its affairs?
We got no reply, but the answer is obvious. It doesn’t.
Macdonald attack an AHPRA concern
This second attack sends a disturbing message to Australian health workers who are already alarmed by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency’s (AHPRA) joint statement with the Special Envoy for Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, that the regulator will apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in its handling of complaints.
Over 1,400 health workers and 60 medical organisations have signed an open letter to AHPRA calling on it to reverse its decision. They warn that AHPRA’s new position will have a “chilling effect” on practitioners advocating for Palestine and have called on the regulator to reverse its decision.
Their concerns are similar to those of the British Medical Association, which this week voted to drop the IHRA definition amid growing concerns that “healthcare workers are being punished for having views on international conflicts
Pursuit of Macdonald
This second ‘canceling’ of Macdonald provides evidence that some of those who wanted his suspension from St Vincent’s last year did not accept the resolution of the incident in his favour. Macdonald’s seven-week absence from his patients at St Vincents for doing nothing wrong was not enough.
An organisation called the Australian Zionist Health Alliance (AZHA) has been a key player in both last year’s attack on Macdonald and the campaign to get APHRA to adopt the IHRA definition.
The Alliance was formed in August 2025, and since early last year, it has been attacking APHRA for failing to take action against antisemitism.
Dr Jeremy Goldin is one of AZHA’s members. He is a sleep specialist at St Vincents Private Hospital and a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne.
Goldin was one of three named members of the Alliance Against Antisemitism in Health Care (AAAHC) who signed a letter calling for Macdonald to be immediately suspended and investigated following his comment at the Palestinian Justice Forum.
Goldin has welcomed APHRA’s decision on his LinkedIn account, on which he regularly reposts items supporting Israel, including a description of findings that Israel is committing genocide as a ‘fantasy.’
MWM asked both AZHA’s Public Affairs Officer, Sharon Stoliar, and Goldin if they had played any role in raising concerns about Macdonald’s planned lecture at the University of Melbourne. We received no reply from Stoliar, whose involvement in well-funded far-right political organisations, including the astro-turfing group Minority Impact Coalition, was revealed during last year’s Federal election.
Goldin responded, “You’d have to check with the University of Melbourne on this.”
Children and War event junked
Last September, another member of AZHA, Dr Doran Samuell, was involved in stopping a Grand Round on Children and War being held at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. In light of this week’s shocking UN Commission of Inquiry report, which found that Israel deliberately kills children, that cancellation is a glaring example of a poor decision to cancel.
According to Australian Jewish News, AZHA has been in overdrive collecting material for the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
It has developed an AI tool that uses prompts to help health professionals to prepare submissions and evaluate them against the IHRA definition. The AZHA considers promoting boycotts of Israel, chanting ‘From the River to sea, Palestine will be free’ or “lack of Zionist voices in senior or diversity leadership roles” as examples of antisemitism or anti-zionism.
This week, the Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW) wrote to AHPRA calling on it to reverse its adoption of the IHRA definition, which it described as “inappropriate, ill-conceived and divisive”. The IHRA definition … introduces an element of risk for health workers who speak out in relation to Israel’s actions, despite the widespread condemnation globally, including by governments, of those same actions,” wrote MAPW.
“This covert attack on Macdonald highlights those risks.“
If a senior and highly respected professor can be silenced in this way, what chance does a junior Palestinian or Lebanese health worker or student have?
1 This month
4 November – Will AUKUS keep us safe – at what cost?
the Commissioners of the AUKUS Public Inquiry present their findings at the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra. iview.abc.net.au/show/national-press-club-address
Submissions to the federal government’s new draft framework close on the 13th November 2026.
Australians deserve the truth
about
AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
