Becoming the latest recruit in a well-organised global program, Australia has joined the 24 nations which have appointed envoys to combat anti-Semitism. We still await an envoy for resisting Islamophobia.
On 9 July, Australia’s Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus weighed into the perennial debate about what constitutes anti-Semitism, telling the National Press Club that anti-Semitic statements are criticism of Israel made in a way that people ‘would not dream of applying to another country’. He may have been forgetting statements made about countries like Russia and China. But some Australians who weren’t anti-Semitic are now critical of the government of Israel for what it has done since October 2023. Others recall what Israelis have been saying and doing for 75 years to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel’s leaders make statements about Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank that they would not apply to others, such as calling them ‘human animals’, and crying ‘death to Arabs’. The National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir in August last year asserted that Jews’ right to safety overrode Palestinians’ freedom of movement: ‘Sorry Mohammed’, he told a Palestinian journalist, a resident of Israel. The expression went viral, and some suggested it for Israel’s new national anthem.
Meeting on 15 March, the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for measures against this phenomenon: the unreasonable dislike or fear of, and prejudice against Muslims or Islam. The day commemorates the 2022 Christchurch massacre of Muslims. The vote was 115 in favour (including Australia), none against, with 44 abstentions. The UNGA called upon Member States to take all necessary measures — including legislative and policy steps — to combat such hatred and violence and to prohibit by law incitement to violence against persons on the grounds of their religion or belief. It also asked the Secretary-General to appoint a United Nations Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia.
The Prime Minister’s response to Jewish demands, delivered at the Jewish Museum in Sydney, was to appoint Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism. The European Union has had a matching appointment since 2015, Canada made one in 2020, Romania in 2021, and Greece in 2022. Theresa May gave the UK a government advisor on anti-Semitism in 2019. Under the US Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2002, an American Special Envoy was appointed, although President Trump did not re-fill the position. For Australia, Jillian Segal’s Canberra-funded task is to combat the rise of anti-Semitism since 7 October 2023. She is not to inquire into the causes of that rise, nor to resolve them. Without explanation, the world has changed, she said.
Albanese’s idea of a matching appointment, of an Envoy to Combat Islamophobia, may have been an afterthought. We wait to know who is selected and how the role will be described. International human rights law protects individuals, not religions. The UN’s call is for governments to combat [any] hatred and prohibit [all] violence on the grounds of religious belief, which Australia already has laws to do. Islamophobia is hostility towards the religion of Islam and its adherents – and 1.9 billion or 24.9% of the world’s people are Muslims. However not all Australians who have Turkish, Somalian, Syrian, Iranian, or other national origins are Muslims. Islamophobia may affect non-Muslims, based on perceptions about their nationality, racial or ethnic background. Some experts prefer the label ‘anti-Muslim hatred’, because ‘Islamophobia’ may condemn any and all critiques of Islam.
The working definition of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) is: ‘Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities’. But the 2021 Jewish Declaration on Anti-Semitism (JDA) proposed simply that it is ‘discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)’. The JDA was supported in the US by some House Democrats, but the State Department stuck with the IHRA definition, concerned that it would undermine consensus and set back the US unilateral fight against anti-Semitism by merging it with the fight against all other forms of racism and discrimination.
Definitions aside, the battle lines are already drawn between Australia’s Palestinian and Jewish communities. The events of 7 October inspired the NSW government to display Israel’s flag on the Opera House, and before fact-checking, to accuse Palestinian marchers of shouting ‘Kill the Jews’. Supporters of the Palestinians who are being killed in much greater numbers by the IDF hung banners on Federal Parliament House. One listed Australia’s illegal wars over a caption ‘Enabled Here’, another stated ‘No Place on Stolen Land’, and a third ‘From the River to the Sea’. Repeated by Senator Fatima Payman in the Senate, that slogan defies what Israel’s leaders have also for years stated as their objective for Eretz Israel, to extend west from the Jordan to the Mediterranean and north into Lebanon and Syria. Now, a Palestinian burger chain owner, Hashem Tayeh, was arrested in Melbourne under Victoria’s Racial and Religious Tolerance Act for allegedly inciting hatred of Jewish people and protesting Israel’s siege of Gaza (The Age). Police heard he cited ‘All Zionists are terrorists’. In response to this and similar statements, Facebook owner Meta expanded its hate speech policy to remove more posts with the term ‘Zionist’ when it is used in conjunction with dehumanising rhetoric (CNN).
So the envoy against Islamophobia will need to be carefully named, and should not appear to be the counterpart of Jillian Segal. Her task is to combat hostility in Australia towards Jewish people, and she has not seen that as including consultations with hostile groups. Nor has she mentioned any influence of the policies of the government of Israel on Australians. Even among Jewish Australians there is dissent about anti-Semitism, voiced particularly by author Antony Loewenstein and by the Jewish Council of Australia, which deplores racialised confrontation between Jewish and other communities. The Prime Minister’s nomination will define where he stands.
Dr Alison Broinowski AM is a former Australian diplomat and a member of Australians fr War Powers Reform
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