I’m pro-Palestine, but if I worked at Officeworks I’d serve Jews

When Professor Asmi Wood warned my Foundations of Australian Law class at the Australian National University that “ignorance of the law is not a defence”, my mostly empty 19-year-old head nodded along in solemn acceptance. I’d recently learnt this the hard way, having had my licence suspended for driving out of Sydney’s Cross City Tunnel unaware that the speed limit dropped suddenly from 80km/h to 60km/h.

Around that same time, I was accosted by a police officer on Moore Park Road for jaywalking, something I didn’t know was an accostable offence.

A poster carried in a pro-Palestinian rally in Sydney.Credit: AP

I’d entered the adult world, whose rules and means of enforcing them seemed unfair and overreaching. I wasn’t trying to break these laws. I felt punished, embarrassed and misrepresented. My knowledge and understanding (or lack thereof) of certain laws had nothing to do with their enforceability or their importance to the world beyond my carelessness and ignorance. My conception of myself as a law-abiding citizen had no bearing on the facts.

Asmi was right. Ignorance was, and remains, no defence.

A few years earlier, a teacher made an example of me in front of the class when she’d overheard me disparagingly refer to something as “gay”. Being publicly tarred and feathered for homophobia was one of the more humiliating moments of my adolescence, which says a lot. I felt despairingly misrepresented, having considered myself anything but homophobic.

We had gay family friends and I had friends who were coming out. I didn’t think referring to something as “gay” was that big of a deal, and I truly believed that considering myself an “ally” mitigated my actions. And although I was 16, it didn’t take long for that humiliation to subside and coalesce into an educational experience. You don’t have to be a homophobe to be capable of homophobia or to engage in homophobic language.

As an English tutor in my 20s, I had the privilege of working with one of the world’s most misunderstood cohorts: teenagers. Oscar, one of my favourites, arrived home one afternoon angry and emotional after having been accused of racism at school. His understanding of the incident was that he had attributed a classmate’s mathematical proficiency to their nationality. Oscar truly believed he had merely made a flippant and joking compliment, and I found myself explaining why this generalisation constituted racism.

Oscar eventually understood that he owed his fellow student an apology. He had unknowingly engaged in racist behaviour, stereotyping a fellow student, and attributing their grades not to hard work but to biological circumstance. I watched him suffer the consequences, and I have since watched him grow into a man.

You see, we are judged not on our intentions, but on our actions.

As Australians experience a dramatic increase in antisemitism, I’d like for us to ask ourselves whether we are as ready to separate antisemitic intentions from antisemitic actions and educate each other accordingly.

Now open … but it wasn’t to one Jewish customer. Credit: Rob Homer

Not all antizionism is antisemitic. Criticism of Israel is important, as is criticism of all states. Israel should be subject to the same level of scrutiny as any other state. The Jewish people, similarly, should be subject to the same level of respect and dignity as any other people. Given that so many are so careful to distinguish between antisemitism and antizionism, you’d think that when antisemitism does rear its head that it would be dealt with accordingly.

My social media feeds are ticking over with Australians justifying the refusal to serve a Jew at an Officeworks in Melbourne. I’m going to assume we’ve all seen this video by now. In keeping with the logic that not all antizionism is antisemitism, I can’t help but wonder: which one is this?

Is this Jew supposed to answer for a nation on the other side of the world? Does it matter that the article this gentleman wanted laminated was about Australian Jews helping Israelis who were affected by the events of October 7? The Officeworks manager cites her conscientious objection to the request because she is “pro-Palestine”. Well so am I, yet it neither renders me unable to feel empathy for Israeli citizens, nor does it compel me to invoke collective punishment upon the Jewish people worldwide.

Can you imagine a white Australian mechanic refusing to service a Chinese Australian’s MG or BYD on the grounds that they, the mechanic, are “pro-Uighur”? What if this movement was everywhere you went? A thinly veiled and well-organised fixation on Jews, masquerading as a social justice campaign to help Palestinian people? The left I know and love taught me how to stop seeing the world in binaries.

Does the Officeworks manager think that Jews, all over the world, are celebrating the slaughter of Palestinians? And that therefore she must “resist” us as a global cohort?

And are the rest of us going to sit back and excuse this ignorance as harmless and misguided, instead of giving it the highly educational kick up the rear end that so many of us benefited greatly from in questions pertaining to the language used and treatment towards other minority groups?

My social media feeds blew up with young Australians justifying the employee’s behaviour as “antizionism, not antisemitism”. My Jewish friends are at a loss, as am I. Non-Jews, we need you. Please, please don’t let ignorance excuse the mistreatment of my people.

Joshua Dabelstein is a freelance writer.