Accusations of ‘weaponising anti-Semitism’ aim to silence

Labor shrinks itself to the occasion with a grubby tactic that plays to the Israel-haters.

A member of the Jewish community tends to the damaged Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne after it had been set ablaze in December. Picture: Martin Keep/AFP

As the federal election looms against the background of an eruption in Jew-hate, the Albanese government has been honing an attack line: the Coalition is “weaponising anti-Semitism”.

The phrase is insensitive given the literal weaponising of anti-Semitism in the firebombing of synagogues and a children’s centre, and the vandalising of Jewish homes and businesses, but at least it fits within the government’s established pattern of insensitivity where Australia’s Jews are concerned. Consistency ought to count for something in these turbulent times.

Before the rupture of the October 7 attacks, Jewish community leaders would praise the bipartisan consensus on Israel and warn that Australian Jews must never become “a political football”. Well, the match has started in earnest and we’ve seen grubby tactics on the field from both major parties, never mind the Greens. But that doesn’t mean Labor and the Coalition are equally soiled. They’re not.

In this week’s rumble, Coalition senator James McGrath asked Foreign Minister Penny Wong if Anthony Albanese took responsibility for Jewish Australians feeling less safe. She responded: “I’m very happy and so is the Prime Minister to work with you against prejudice including anti-Semitism.” But “what is not helpful is the way in which you try to weaponise this”. Note her choice of words.

McGrath hadn’t quizzed her about the government’s manifesto on stamping out “prejudice including anti-Semitism”, only about anti-Semitism.

Again, at least the government is consistent. Time and again its ministers telegraph that of all categories of bigotry, only anti-Semitism is unworthy of stand-alone discussion.

As for Peter Dutton, he exploits anti-Semitism for political gain as naturally as all rivers run to the sea. His habitual overreach has thus far included a personalised attack on Jewish MP Josh Burns, lashed for not speaking up enough about anti-Semitism, even though Burns has spoken more on the subject than any other federal Labor MP, a low bar admittedly, and unfounded claims Labor had fast-tracked Australian citizenship for Gazan refugees so it could harvest votes for the upcoming poll.

Meanwhile, Michael Sukkar, newly appointed manager of opposition business, last week unleashed the nuclear bomb of parliamentary rules when he sought to gag Mark Dreyfus just as the Attorney-General and descendant of Holocaust survivors was midstream in an impassioned speech about Auschwitz, the Nova festival slaughter and the “abhorrent and shocking rise” in anti-Semitism.

“But those opposite,” Dreyfus said, “have taken every opportunity since the 7th of October, 2023, to politicise the trauma and the experiences of the Jewish people” – and then Sukkar mounted his disproportionate response, arguably proving Dreyfus’s point.

Yet 10 days earlier, during a parliamentary debate on anti-Semitism, it was Labor in performative outrage.

As the Opposition Leader rose to speak, the Prime Minister led a walkout of his senior ministers. Dreyfus remained in the chamber – because he’s a Jew, or is that reading too much into things? – and turned his back on Dutton just as the latter was lamenting that some Jewish Australians were planning to leave the country, so bad had Jew-hatred become. Such conduct is not entirely consistent with a government professing visceral disgust about politicising anti-Semitism.

Nor, for that matter, was Dreyfus’s address at the Sky News anti-Semitism summit, where he not only again accused the opposition of “weaponising” anti-Semitism but accused certain media outlets of doing likewise in pursuit of newspaper sales and TV ratings, the latter widely interpreted as a swipe at Sky itself (as well as the masthead you’re reading now). It was a stunning display of chutzpah.

Fire rips through the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, just one of a growing number of anit-Semitic attacks in Australia

Hypocrisy aside, the government’s accusation of hyper-partisanship on the part of the Coalition and certain media outlets ignores that both regularly heap praise on NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns for his strong leadership against Jew-hate, from his searing response to the infamous “F..k the Jews” protest outside the Sydney Opera House to his government’s swoop on the Bankstown Hospital nurses – one of whom now is charged with offences over her remarks in the viral video. The difference is not so much about Minns’s actions: the federal government can likewise boast, and it does, of a checklist of new laws on doxxing, hateful speech, the display of extremist symbols and so on.

It’s just sometimes words speak louder than actions. No one can doubt that Minns is enraged at the resurgence of the oldest hatred, that he grasps the broader threat anti-Semitism poses to liberal democracy and that he refuses to flinch at calling out the evil. His grim determination trickles down to the police and state authorities.

This moment calls for straight shooters – even when blunt honesty invites a backlash. Consider the statement from a coalition of Muslim groups, including mainstream bodies, decrying the response to what they describe as the nurses’ “inappropriate” remarks.

“The speed, intensity and uniformity of responses from certain political leaders and media outlets was revealing. The same voices that condemned the nurses had provided active diplomatic and journalistic cover for ongoing crimes by the Zionists.”

By “Zionists” they mean Israel, a state so irredeemable in this telling that we should see the nurses’ airing of their bloodthirsty fantasies in context – or something like that. At least we must constantly change the subject to the Zionists and their crimes. (On October 12, 2023, a call from 54 Australian Muslim groups to “end double standards in the commentary on Palestine” made no explicit mention of the massacre five days earl­ier.) The statement also decried the “weaponisation of anti-Semitism to silence dissent”.

There’s that phrase again: the “weaponisation of anti-Semitism”. The government uses it against the opposition and Israel-haters use it against “Zionists”. In both cases the phrase seeks to deter robust discussion about anti-Jewish prejudice by insinuating that the subject is being raised for a cynical or improper purpose.

In the activist version, “Zionists” are accused of exploiting – “weaponising” – Jew-hatred to silence perfectly measured criticism of Israel as a genocidal state.

As a conspiracy theory about Jews nefariously using their vast power to sinister ends, it’s textbook anti-Semitism, and these days you’re as likely to encounter such ideas at a taxpayer-funded “anti-racism” conference as in a fringe sermon in western Sydney.

So when the organs of state, including the Australian Human Rights Commission, pair Jew-hatred with Islamophobia; when the government refuses to address genuine concerns about whether the Gazan refugees it’s letting in by the thousands may hold the same racist views as the Bankstown Hospital nurses; when the Foreign Minister, asked about anti-Semitism, invokes all forms of prejudice; when the federal government sometimes appears more concerned about not giving offence to Israel-haters than about defending Jews, we get a dangerous vacuum of leadership.

Whether Labor’s shrinking to the occasion stems from electoral considerations in western Sydney or from a default belief that Muslims can be only victims and never oppressors is a riddle for another time. If the Coalition is politicising anti-Semitism it’s because Labor has provided it with ample opportunity to do so.

Accusing Dutton of “weaponising” anti-Semitism is the government’s pitiful and transparent attempt to shield from criticism its breathtaking moral failure.

Julie Szego is a Melbourne-based freelancer.