Independent Zoe Daniel tells supporters she is ‘not a risk’, stands by controversial letter on Israel

Climate 200-backed candidate Zoe Daniel is quizzed why she signed a letter accusing Israel of maintaining an ‘apartheid regime’.

Independent candidate for Goldstein Zoe Daniel. Picture: NCA NewsWire /Brendan Beckett

Climate 200-backed Goldstein candidate Zoe Daniel has told Jewish voters she is “not a risk”, after she was asked to publicly explain why she signed a controversial letter accusing Israel of maintaining an “apartheid regime against Palestinians”.

At a supporters’ event for Ms Daniel on Sunday in Melbourne’s southeast, a woman in the crowd who said she was Jewish questioned Ms Daniel as to why she did not condemn what was written in the open letter signed by dozens of journalists last year.

“For those of you who are part of the Jewish community, I want to say this to you, I am not a risk to you, I am safer than most people I would think in terms of someone who has empathy, who will listen, who will learn and genuinely engage with the Jewish community,” Ms Daniel told the attendees at the Bentleigh Bowls Club.

“My signing of the letter is no defence of terrorism coming out of the Palestinian territories, nor is it an innate criticism of the government of Israel, it is a narrow criticism of the government of Israel in relation to what was happening at that time.

“It is certainly not a broad criticism of our Jewish community.”

The former ABC journalist has refused to take her name off the controversial letter but the woman said to the audience, “If she (Ms Daniel) had integrity she would take her name off the letter.”

Ms Daniel conceded, “some people will not vote for me because of this letter”.

She went on to explain she had many Jewish people working on her campaign and said it was “not innately anti-Semitic to criticise the government of Israel over this one issue”.

The Australian revealed last month Ms Daniel was due to attend a local event on Shabbat on May 7 at the Blake St Shule in Caulfield South to celebrate Israel’s national holiday, but after angst within the community Ms Daniel and Liberal MP Tim Wilson were both told they were no longer welcome.

The principal of Melbourne’s largest Jewish school, Mount Scopus Memorial College, Rabbi James Kennard, also wrote a public Facebook post to Ms Daniel last month and labelled her stance on Israel as “dissembling and deliberately ambiguous.”.

Many members of the Jewish community remain outraged Ms Daniel refused to remove her name from the letter that she signed last year.

The Goldstein electorate has a large Jewish population of 6.8 per cent according to census data and has the third-largest Jewish population in Australia, behind neighbouring Macnamara and Wentworth in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

Ms Daniel was also forced to apologise recently after a series of controversial comments were made from her campaign ­manager Sue Barrett who used social media in 2020 to post: “Hitler altered reality with drugs and (Scott) Morrison uses ­religion”.