A new grassroots study of Jewish Australians challenges the government-backed antisemitism report, exposing contradictions in its methodology and conclusions.

In November 2025, research commissioned by Australia's Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism (ASECA) – which this author reviewed in detail – became the basis for a sweeping government response: $159.5 million in security funding, an Antisemitism Education Taskforce, university ‘report cards’, visa cancellation powers, and the official adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

This week, a very different report appeared. Not in Our Name: Jewish Australians Speak Out, by Dr Leia Greenslade and Professor Linda Briskman, presents findings from a survey of 384 Jewish Australians and 30 in-depth interviews with those who oppose Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories.

Read together, the two documents reveal a contest over who gets to define antisemitism, Jewish identity, and the limits of speech in Australia. What they also reveal is that the government’s report does not withstand scrutiny – including from its own pages.

The ASECA report uses a ‘Generalised Antisemitism Scale’ that aggregates prejudice against Jewish people and political opposition to the Israeli state into a single metric, treating both as antisemitic per the IHRA definition. The instrument assumes anti-Zionist attitudes are antisemitic before it begins measuring, then discovers widespread antisemitism. The circularity is structural.

But the report’s most damaging flaw is that its own qualitative findings refute its quantitative framework. On page 7, focus group participants “did not perceive Jewish individuals as collectively responsible for the actions of the Israeli government.” On page 8: “many participants expressed support for Jewish communities while also criticising the actions of the Israeli state.” On page 10, the conclusions state it plainly: “Australians consistently draw a distinction between the Australian Jewish community and the actions of the Israeli government.”

The report records this distinction three times and then overrides it with a measurement tool that erases it. It classifies respondents’ ability to separate a people from a state as a “knowledge gap.” The only way this works is if knowledge is defined as agreement with the position that anti-Zionism is antisemitism – a political stance, not an empirical finding.

The report’s own data table deepens the problem. The gap between its two subscales is largest among students (0.50) and youngest adults (0.49), and smallest among older cohorts – evidence that education drives political opposition to Israel while leaving prejudice against Jewish people stable. Rather than address this, the report folds both into a single score and concludes that universities incubate antisemitism. This is the evidentiary basis for the recommendation to defund non-compliant universities.

The Not in Our Name respondents are 85 per cent university-educated – the very population the ASECA report classifies as most antisemitic. Yet here are Jewish Australians, raised in Zionist households, educated in Jewish schools, who have arrived at the same conclusions as the students the ASECA report pathologises.

Their dissent is not born of ignorance. One participant, Dale, describes growing up “as a Zionist” before it “unravelled when I went back to Israel at 19 and joined the army.” Another, Esther, traces a process of learning about “structural oppression and colonialism.” Lori, in her fifties, describes joining anti-Zionist Jewish groups and “making connections with the Jewish community probably for the first time.” These are people who have deepened their Jewishness, not abandoned it. As Leanne puts it: “I’ve never felt so connected to Jewish people in my life.”

On antisemitism, Not in Our Name respondents offer a contextual explanation the ASECA report refuses to provide. They link rising antisemitism to Israel’s military actions rather than treating it as a free-floating pathology. As Lesley observes: “every time Israel goes to war there’s an increase in antisemitism…and this war has been so extreme that there’s a more extreme reaction.” Several identify a mechanism the ASECA framework cannot see: the institutional insistence on conflating Judaism with the Israeli state itself generates the backlash it claims to measure.

The personal data is telling: 48 per cent of Not in Our Name respondents reported no increase in personal encounters with antisemitism since October 7. Only 14 per cent identified their educational institution as a source. Some reported more abuse from within the Jewish community than from outside it. As Noah observes: “I’ve seen way more anti-Semitic slurs coming from Zionist Jews than I’ve seen from even the neo-Nazis.”

The recommendations from each report make the political stakes explicit. The ASECA apparatus prescribes surveillance and punishment: funding cuts, media monitoring, an Education Taskforce from early childhood to university, and a hate crimes database built on the IHRA definition.

The Not in Our Name report recommends fostering pluralism within Jewish institutions, diversifying curricula to include Palestinian perspectives, and grounding ethical inquiry in Jewish values – Tikkun Olam (Repair the world), Chesed (Loving kindness), Tzedek (Justice). One sees dissent as a disease. The other sees it as a tradition.

It is worth noting that the ASECA apparatus operates on millions in public funding, while the Not in Our Name report was produced by two academics on virtually no budget. Yet it is the grassroots work that meets basic social science standards: transparent methodology, internal consistency, and conclusions that follow from the data. The ASECA report contradicts its own findings on pages eight and 10 and recommends enforcement anyway.

The government adopted all 13 recommendations without scrutiny, framing them as a response to the Bondi Beach massacre – despite the recommendations having been published five months before the attack, and none addressing the intelligence failures that allowed it.

The ASECA report’s own respondents know the difference between a people and a state. The Not in Our Name report’s Jewish Australian participants know it too. As one reminded us: “Being Jewish is in the heart. It’s not in the land.” Perhaps it is time our policymakers listened.