In the light of the revelations in the Lattouf v ABC decision about the way in which the Israel lobby hounded the ABC, the judgment in the recently decided Federal Court case Wertheim & Goot v Haddad is both significant, “interesting” and certainly more than revelatory.

Since 7 October 2023, there have undoubtedly been troubling and egregious incidents of antisemitism, primarily in Sydney and Melbourne.

Peter Wertheim (co-chief executive officer of ECAJ ) and Robert Goot SC (deputy president of the ECAJ) recently took a case to the Federal Court against one Haddad for breaching Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (Cwth). The applicants, rightly, won their case. The judge was called on to consider and determine what constitutes antisemitism.

Significantly, in the judgment of Stewart J (delivered on 1 July) he states that Wertheim and Goot, through their counsel, accepted that “political criticism, however, inflammatory or adversarial, is not by its nature of Jews in general or based on Jewish racial or ethnic identity” (emphasis added) antisemitic when criticising Israel. The judge went on to say that “the conclusion that it is not antisemitic to criticise Israel is the corollary of the conclusion that to blame Jews for the actions of Israel is antisemitic; the one flows from the other” (emphasis added). So, those accused of speaking out about Israel as being antisemitic, anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist are not!

The big lie here is that what ECAJ and its fellow travellers say is not reflected in their actions. Non-Jew, or Jew alike, will be the subject of epithets, or even litigation, if they dare criticise Israel! Witness the venom and range of epithets and offensive labels attributed to even Jews a la messages which came to light in the the Lattouf case – Josh Bornstein, (Jewish) solicitor for Lattouf, being labelled as being a “traitor”. Or Mark Leibler (who heads AIJAC) in the tweet he posted on X (see J’accuse Mark 2 - The Israel Lobby)

In reporting what it says has been an alarming increase in antisemitic incidents, the ECAJ would have it that  something like a daubing on a wall “Free Palestine” constitutes an antisemitic incident and forms part of ECAJ’s numbers of incidents. So, ipso facto, for the ECAJ, and its fellow-travellers, being critical of Israel is antisemitic!

Also making news in the last week has been Creative Australia reversing its decision as to who was to represent Australia at the Venice Bienniale. For whatever reason, the board of Creative Australia reversed its earlier decision; the original decision reflected a pattern of boards and decision-makers such as the Sydney Theatre Company, galleries, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Adelaide Festive, Adelaide Writers Week, publishers and like organisations being put under relentless pressure by the Israel lobby or Jewish benefactors to pull a show, performance, appearance or not publish something. In the Lattouf case, it was the wrongful decision by the ABC to sack an employee.

That the Israel lobby has been in overdrive for many years going back to the early 2000s has been the subject of revelation and analysis by, among others, the likes of John Lyons and Sophie McNeil in their respective excellent books We Can’t Say We Didn’t Know (ABC Books) and Balcony Over Jerusalem (Harper Collins)

The judge in the Lattouf case decided not to reveal who the Israel lobby actors were. But we know who was involved from what came to light when the dismissal of Lattouf made headlines. One WhatsApp group was made up of some some 150 lawyers.

Typical of the messages was this one:

“I have basically written to them and told them I expect a proper response, not a generic one, by [close of business] today or I would look to engage a senior counsel. I know there is probably no actionable offence against ABC but I didn’t say I would be taking one – just investigating one. I have said that they should be terminating her employment immediately.”

Leaving to one side the question of whether a message framed as it was, by a lawyer, should be seen as professional misconduct, that the ABC took the messages seriously is reflected in what the previous chairman of the ABC, Ita Buttrose, said in her evidence at the trial. In effect, she said she was being bombarded by a constant stream of emails and messages. One has to ask how it was that the lobby in its various manifestations was privy to the personal email addresses of senior personnel at the ABC or that of the chairwoman of the board. Clearly a co-ordinated campaign was underway.

The bully-boy tactics of the Lobby are also evident in a case in the Federal Court — relying on Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cwth) — being pursued by an avowed Zionist and executive member of the Zionist Federation of Australia, one Alon Cassuto, against well-known and respected journalist and broadcaster Mary Kostakidis. In the amended statement of claim in the proceedings, it is alleged Kostakidis has, with two tweets, breached Section 18C of the Act and thereby was “reasonably likely” to have “offended, insulted, humiliated and/or intimidated Australian Jews and/or Israelis in Australia”.

Really? Are we to seriously believe, that two tweets in Australia are, amongst other things, going to “intimidate” Australians or for that matter, Israelis who might, for whatever reason, be in Australia?

The question then remains, why, and to what end, is it that the Lobby persistently attacks those, including Jews, who criticise Israel and call out out its actions or conduct – and in the process of doing so deploy their bully-boy tactics, in clear intimidatory fashion, as exposed in the Lattouf case, the Leibler tweet or the proceeding against Kostakidis. It is to say the least, shameless and and shameful – and even more so, as in some instances, invoking the Holocaust in support of doing so.

Finally, employing exaggerated, hysterical language in addressing antisemitism in Australia serves no one’s interests. On ABC Radio National’s Breakfast program on 7 July, the director of the Anti-Defamation Commission asserted that Australian Jews feared a “real life threat to our lives” and that Australia had a “tsunami of Jewish hate”. As shocking and appalling as the attack on the synagogue and a restaurant owned by an Israeli in Melbourne last weekend were, to suggest that, for example, the sole perpetrator, now arrested, for the fire-bombing of the synagogue was part of a bigger and calculated antisemitism push in Australia is just not credible.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.