Jewish lawyers at HSF allege Damien Hazard tweet attacking Jeremy Leibler wasn’t isolated
Jewish lawyers at Herbert Smith Freehills have signed a letter of complaint to the firm’s leadership over the alleged conduct of longstanding partner Damien Hazard, citing numerous online posts revealing a “singular and obsessive focus on Israel” which exhibit the “classic traits of antisemitism”.
Hazard has been directed not to attend the HSF office while the firm conducts an internal investigation into his output on social media.
The investigation was prompted by what HSF described this week as a “deeply offensive” tweet targeting Jeremy Leibler, a partner at law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler and president of the Zionist Federation of Australia.
Hazard accused Leibler of politicising an arson attack on Melbourne’s Adass Israel synagogue and having the temerity to link the fire, designated by authorities as a terrorism event, to the weekly parade of anti-Israel rhetoric that’s been shouted shrill through the streets of Melbourne (and Sydney) over the past year.
In response, a number of Hazard’s Jewish colleagues at HSF have gone on to write a collective letter to Executive Partner Kristin Stammer and Director of Culture and Inclusion Danielle Kelly alleging that the tweet attacking Leibler was no isolated matter. The letter was sent in reply to a welfare check conducted by Stammer and Kelly among Jewish staff.
“While Damien has since renamed his X (formerly known as Twitter) account and restricted the privacy settings, his posts are still available on Google,” says the letter, which we’ve obtained.
“While legitimate criticism of the Israeli government is not, of course, antisemitism, it is clear from Damien’s numerous posts that his particular brand of anti-Zionism is symptomatic of the latest variety of antisemitism, masquerading as anti-Zionism.”
Google has, indeed, archived a number of Hazard’s posts, and they’re all being dragged into the rude glare of a national discussion taking place around antisemitism, helpfully kicked along (this discussion) by an illiterate scrote who paid a visit to Woollahra overnight.
You know the situation’s bad when Anthony Albanese’s gatecrashing bar mitzvahs and scrambling to slap a yarmulke on his dome, as he did on Tuesday, the sight of which (if we may murder James Baldwin) was as unsettling and unexpected as a mermaid on a mountaintop.
And this business with Hazard is all going down just as HSF plans a merger with Jewish law firm Kramer Levin, founded by Jews, based in New York City, and snugly situated in the bagel district of midtown Manhattan.
Hazard’s tweets, according to the letter, allegedly demonstrate not only a “singular and obsessive focus on Israel” but the “classic traits” of anti-Semitic slurs, including expressions of “Jewish power”, “Jews as murderous and blood thirsty”, “Holocaust inversion”, “conspiracy theories” and Israel as a “genocidal state”. We hear HSF’s investigation is centred around verifying these very claims.
Hazard has since categorically denied he is anti-Semitic and that he published social media posts expressing themes of "Jewish power" or "Jews as murderous and bloodthirsty".
Meanwhile, some of Hazard’s direct reports are Jewish, not that they received a welfare-check from him in the aftermath of Friday’s synagogue attack.
“Instead,” the letter says, “before the embers of the burning synagogue had even cooled, Damien posted on X, referencing the ongoing situation in Gaza with inflammatory and harmful language. The callousness of his post and its timing is really concerning to us.”
There are obvious career implications in calling out the behaviour of a senior partner like Hazard, who joined Freehills (as it was known pre-merger) in 1996, became partner in 2006, and who served for a time as HSF’s client relationship partner with Goldman Sachs Australia (a detail oddly missing from HSF’s website in recent days).
And who chairs GSA? Josh Frydenberg!
Can’t imagine Josh, a leading Jewish community figure, would feel much love for Hazard’s alleged retweeting of Nasser Mashni, president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network and a guy who’s downright enthusiastic about the annihilation of Israel. He also opposes the government’s classification of Hamas as a terrorist group.
“This is not a political issue for us,” the letter states, “it is an issue that goes to our identity, our heritage and our personal and community’s safety. To see a sacred place, so connected with our Jewish identity, targeted in a way reminiscent of 1938 has been very difficult. To then see Damien link it to rhetoric about genocide, in what can be described as Holocaust inversion, has been harmful to our psychological safety.”
HSF, in response, told us that it’s communicating with its “Jewish community daily, including today, to reiterate our strong support,” and that its focus “continues to be on their welfare and safety”. Staff involved confirmed that the firm “responded swiftly and effectively, taking steps that were genuinely aimed at protecting and supporting us”.
Per an HSF spokesman: “Upon learning about the post on Friday evening, we have moved quickly and decisively - including removing that post and initiating an internal investigation. The partner has been directed to not attend the office. We continue to treat this situation with the utmost seriousness.”
No doubt, especially when a handful of important clients have been writing to HSF management with their concerns, as we keep hearing.
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