Before the attack on Israel, Covid conspiracies ‘fired up anti-Semitism,’ says Jayne Jagot

Days before Hamas’s violent attack on Israel, a High Court justice warned of a disturbing phenomenon the pandemic had unleashed in Australia.

An anti-vax freedom rally in Melbourne. Justice Jane Jagot says there is a connection between Covid conspiracies and anti-Semitic incidents. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Two days before Hamas’s attack on Israel, High Court judge Jayne Jagot delivered a speech about the “horrific” impacts of anti-Semitism, saying hate speech towards Jews was highly prevalent today, fuelled by conspiracy theories from the Covid-19 pandemic and enforced by “white supremacists”.

In the address, delivered as part of the Sir Zelman Cowen Lecture on October 5, Justice Jagot said anyone comparing Israeli policies towards Palestine to the actions of the Nazis was engaging in a form of anti-Semitism known as “Holocaust Inversion” which is “a standard part of hate speech”.

“Singling out or excluding a Jewish person because of disagreement with the policies of Israel involves the anti-Semitic fallacy that Jews are an indivisible and non-individuated whole that can be somehow equated with and held collectively responsible for every action of Israel,” she said.

Justice Jagot said anti-Semitism was not only about an “irrational hatred” but also about “a way of explaining the world that enables a person to channel all their most powerful negative emotions and instincts – about how the world is, about how people are, about their place in the world and in relation to other people – and displace them onto some other people who, by reason of long history, can be lumped together as a perceived monolith.”

The Sir Zelman Cowen Lecture is dedicated to the former governor-general, who was the second person of Jewish descent to hold the role. He died in 2011 after a struggle with Parkinson’s disease.

Quoting statistics from the Executive Council of the Australian Jewry, Justice Jagot said there was a 35 per cent increase in recording anti-Semitic incidents between 2020 and 2022, mainly in the form of hate speech in posters and stickers.

She attributed this to the pandemic, saying conspiracy theories were rife throughout lockdowns, and the historic persecution of Jews during the Holocaust was “co-opted by some illegitimately and irrationally comparing that history to public health measures”.

“Tellingly, the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic provided the conditions of uncertainty and division in which anti-Semitism could emerge from hiding and flourish,” she said.

“Research shows that as early as March 2020, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories related to Covid-19 emerged. Anti-Semitic disinformation about Covid-19 flooded social media, and the historic persecution of Jews, particularly under the Nazi regime during the Holocaust, was co-opted by some illegitimately and irrationally comparing that history to public health measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Justice Jayne Jagot. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.

She said anti-Semitism increased in the presence of social, economic and political pressure.

“In this ideological conception, negative feelings and beliefs about, and actions towards, Jewish people are able to be understood as a consequence of, or response to, the perceived world problems said to be caused by or as a result of Jewish people,” she said.

She also said a resurgence of the “Jews will not replace us” ideology pedalled by white supre­macists in the US was an example of a “false ideology” that one minority was responsible for the world not being as it should be.

Editor’s note: This article has been amended to accurately reflect Justice Jagot’s comments that anti-Semitism is an irrational hatred.