It is a reluctant but unavoidable conclusion – after eight months anti-Semitism is being normalised in Australia given entrenched hate language, encouragement to violence, intimidation of Jewish people and students, and the sad failure of institutional elites.
Australia is being changed as a country. It is possible this will become one of the most important cultural changes in recent decades shattering the integrity of multiculturalism that is now defended with pious declarations riddled with hypocrisy and impotence.
The delegitimisation of Israel is gaining global momentum, driven by dual motives: those who seek to terminate the Jewish state and those who campaign against the brutality of its war in Gaza. The anti-Israel campaign will be hyper-charged by a moral extremism fanned by the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor seeking arrest warrants in relation to “war crimes” against Israel’s leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, along with three leaders of the terrorist organisation Hamas.
While US President Joe Biden attacked the prosecutor’s decision as “outrageous” and said there was “no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas” and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton backed Biden and attacked Anthony Albanese for his initial silence, the Prime Minister’s reticence was predictable.
For eight months the Albanese government has chopped and changed its domestic response to the unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism in this country. Labor is divided within and without.
The left of the Labor Party is deeply hostile to Israel and pressures the government to take a more pro-Palestinian stand, while Labor MPs with high proportions of Muslim voters are silent or faint-hearted in the teeth of anti-Semitism.
This intractable politics has destroyed Labor’s ability to lead. It is rendered incapable of the moral authority that Australia needs at this time. Sadly, Labor is obsessed about itself and its voting base. As the political contradiction deepens, the failure of Labor’s leadership will become more pronounced. Labor purports to defend multiculturalism while it allows multiculturalism to be traduced.
Racial and religious divisions are becoming the fault lines of our politics. The Albanese cabinet cannot get above this to exercise moral sway – instead it is part of the tribal politics, adjusting this way and that way to minimise the damage, to itself above all.
Albanese is trapped between the demands of the left – now stretching across the full spectrum from the Greens into the heartland of his own party – and the taunts from Dutton that Albanese is a weak leader, unable to stand on principle, with an incendiary implication that at each turning point he aligns against Israel and with the Palestinian cause.
These tensions are now guaranteed to escalate. The tide of anti-Semitism is growing, fuelled in part by the moral fervour of the pro-Palestinian cause, Netanyahu’s disastrous policies and now the ICC action. Witness the sad spectacle at the Victoria ALP conference last weekend with Premier Jacinta Allan attacking demonstrators for “violence, homophobia and anti-Semitism” while the conference passed a series of resolutions deeply hostile to Israel. Much of the Labor Left will be applauding the ICC action.
Presumably Albanese, when he makes a considered statement, will support the independence of the ICC. But he will need to deny any equivalence between Israel’s leaders and Hamas terrorists, and this distinction will be critical. He cannot merely use support for the ICC as a political cover or cop-out. Unless Albanese criticises the ICC’s action or rejects any sense of equivalence, he will brand the Labor Party and Australia.
Criticism of the Netanyahu government is completely justified but much criticism is manifestly hate language and anti-Semitism; witness the violations of multiculturalism, with Jewish Australians being held responsible for the sins of the Netanyahu government – as if Chinese, Russian or Iranian Australians are held to account for the massive atrocities conducted by the governments of those countries.
Last week Dutton, in conjunction with opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson and several crossbenchers, wrote to Albanese seeking a judicial inquiry into anti-Semitism on university campuses or, as a fallback, a Senate inquiry. The letter says university leaders “have repeatedly failed” to create a safe environment for Jewish students and staff.
Labor is opposed to any action that just deals with anti-Semitism. It won’t risk that. It’s frightened. It wants wider political cover. Liberal MP Julian Leeser intends to introduce a bill for a judicial inquiry into anti-Semitism. The upshot, however, is that the Australian Human Rights Commission will conduct a study into racism at universities that is planned to be “comprehensive” but with a strong focus on First Nations students and staff.
In reality, this is an act of insolence towards Jewish students. Leeser said: “This is a body that has a terrible track record dealing with anti-Semitism. Since 7 October, for six months, they said absolutely nothing about it. If an institution charged with protecting Australians from racism and hate is not fulfilling its mandate then Australians should question why it exists. How can the government think the Jewish community and students are going to get a fair and reasonable hearing before this kangaroo court?”
Albanese did the right thing denouncing the slogan “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free”. Last Thursday the Senate in a 56-12 vote on a resolution moved by opposition leader Simon Birmingham – carried with the Coalition and Labor voting together – condemned the slogan and said the current university protests were an example of “what is hatred, what is ignorance, what is divisive” and that “it doesn’t have a place”.
Sounds definitive. Not apparently. The failure of university leaders – with some conspicuous exceptions – is now a national liability with University of Melbourne chancellor Jane Hansen suggesting that questioning university responses is “looking for division” and University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott saying phrases such as “intifada” and “From the river to the sea” are open to different interpretation.
When even Albanese has condemned “From the river to the sea”, agreeing with former Defence Department chief Dennis Richardson that it is “a very violent statement” that could “easily flow into actions of violence” in this country, then at this stage university leaders forfeit their excuses. This is not about free speech. It has nothing to do with the section 18C debate years ago about language that might “offend” or “insult” – this is about intimidation, hate and encouraging violence.
For years universities have said the feelings of students must be respected above all else, even when it comes to pronouns. How is that idea travelling these days? Hundreds of Jewish students have said they feel unsafe and intimidated. What about their feelings? Evidently the dictum is selective – feelings don’t have the same meaning when the issue is anti-Semitism. The hypocrisy is a moral infamy.
It took Western Sydney University chancellor Jennifer Westacott to state the obvious truth: “The hate speech and anti-Semitism occurring on our campuses is a direct assault on Australia’s multiculturalism and its principles. Now is the time to call out growing division and creeping anti-Semitism.”
She won the backing of a few university leaders. Scott said in his opinion piece in this paper there was “no difference” between himself and Westacott. That’s not tenable. Just read their articles; the differences are obvious, you can’t miss them.
Leeser said of the universities: “This is a sector-wide problem. It’s a cultural problem that exists among our university leaders and that’s why it’s not quarantined to one place. University leaders have let these anti-Semitic demonstrations run for far too long and some are still content to let them run.”
Looking at the sad condition of the Labor Party on this issue, the plight of our universities and the ICC, you realise there is another big narrative at work – the damage being done by this crisis to the integrity of institutions at home and around the world. That’s the abject failure of elites.
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