How did our anti-racist left become so openly anti-Jew?

University staff member, Elizabeth, at a pro-Palestinian rally and tent city at the University of Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Swift

I have never before felt shame in my country. Frustration, irritation and incomprehension, occasionally, but never shame.

Now I am ashamed of our opportunist anti-Semitism, cynically tolerating Hamas murders by weaponising the appalling plight of ordinary Palestinians in Gaza. I am ashamed of fellow citizens, openly or snidely anti-Jew; of universities too frightened to let Jews speak; and Pontius Pilate governments, washing their hands of dead Jews out of political convenience or fear.

What really bemuses me is that modern anti-Semitism in Australia comes from the left when it traditionally has been a product of the populist right. After all, Adolf Hitler was no social liberal.

But our own Jew-baiters now cluster visibly on the left. Bits of the Labor Party, various trade unions and innumerable faux-Trotskyist committees peddle propaganda, supposedly just anti-Israel but founded in a deeper racial and religious loathing. Most visibly the correct thought that offspring of privilege demonstrate enjoyably on university campuses, routinely eliding the old convenient distinction between Israel and Jewry.

This progressive anti-Semitism is easy to observe but much harder to explain. Why are people who endlessly propound human rights, revile racism and foster gender diversity so negatively obsessed – at best – with one of the smallest, historically most persecuted minorities in the world?

Part of understanding is to accept that, while Australia and its British tradition have inflicted less persecution on Jews than almost any other Western society, our record is not perfect. Way back, the Plantagenet kings milked, murdered and banished Jews. The Victorians who produced our liberal Constitution also manufactured that Semitic monster Fagin.

But in the new colonies of Australia anti-Semitism was beside the point. The troops were much more worried about Indigenous guerrillas, convicts and the feckless Irish. They may not positively have liked Jews but had little interest or energy to persecute them.

Famously, by the 1930s Australia had enjoyed a Jewish army commander in John Monash, a Jewish chief justice of the High Court in Isaac Isaacs, and a Jewish governor-general, also the irrepressible Isaacs. What was left was a limited, legacy anti-Semitism. Some people thought the Jews were too clever, too grasping, too sharp. But as the nation developed, it became reprehensible to talk like this. Good, ordinary people were not even passive anti-Semites.

A critical factor here was the Holocaust. The two Great Generations saw its consequences live on horrific newsreels. They were revolted beyond revulsion. They passed their horror to their children, and they to theirs. Anti-Semitism was a brand name for mass murder. But, incredibly, even the Holocaust has faded. A 66-year-old Australian (like me) was born only a decade and a bit after Auschwitz, and was minutely instructed in its meaning. Younger millennials were born 50 years after the Holocaust. It is remote history, not part of ethical family upbringing.

The consequence is that younger people do not understand the Jews as a nation reared in utter horror. They are just another minority, to be liked or deprecated as circumstances demand. Which contributes to our current confronting circumstances.

A pro-Israel protest at Sydney University to address the safety of Jewish students. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Swift

First, anti-Semitism is entrenched in the left as an instinctive, sometimes unwitting default position. Second, with the horrific chaos in Gaza, anti-Semitism suddenly is chic. People now routinely utter race libels that until recently would have had them ejected from any decent cocktail party. Correspondingly, anyone contradicting them will be abused or frozen into silence. Third, and chillingly, anti-Semitism is strongest among those who are young, trendy and left.

The same university students who ostentatiously agonise over climate change and social housing protest about the Jews. They do this through a self-confirming lens on the horrors of Gaza. If questioned, they smile pityingly, wave their banners and move on to the couscous. As the mayor of Gomorrah doubtless remarked on that fatal night, what on earth is going on? When did being left mean being an anti-Semite?

One obvious point is that if the state of Israel is conflated with the Jews, both are natural targets of the left as proxies for the US. Rent-a-Trots wanting to condemn the evils of modern liberal capitalism can take Israel and its difficulties as a bitter case in point.

Interestingly, the old nostrum that “I’m not anti-Semitic, just anti-Israel” seems to be waning. In the current Gazan atmosphere of fear and loathing, the claim is not only implausible but unnecessary. Casual anti-Semitism is the new black.

The other odd thing about targeting Israel as the servant of the Great Satan is that other running dogs receive far less attention. Washington has numerous client states around the world. What, other than the obvious, automatically selects Israel?

For many years Israel could counter this type of argument with an entirely different narrative. What we saw was a band of plucky Jews in army uniforms, repeatedly invaded by bully larger nations, yet invariably victorious in improbable circumstances. But as Israel has succeeded, not only militarily but economically, its status as a David against Goliath has dissipated. As demonstrated in Gaza, right or wrong, Israel is a superpower in the Middle East. Yes, it is beset by intractable enemies such as Iran, and yes, groups such as Hamas are vicious murderers who hold the whole Palestinian people as hostages. But Israel as the underdog is a slogan that no longer flies.

The reality of Israel’s success is that it has augmented the armoury of the left. If Israel is no longer the 97-pound weakling, it can be portrayed as a bully. The international terms for a nation-state bully are invader, oppressor and aggressor.

Jews must wonder at these terms, all of which are highly personal. Not only states but people can be aggressors and oppressors. If Israel has these qualities, it follows that its people have the same, and most of those people are Jews.

Everyone loves to hate a stereotype. In the Middle Ages, Jews were thieves, cheaters, carriers of disease and killers of Christian babies. Today they are rightist brutes, genocidal murderers and ethnic cleansers. The current language of the left is a recognisable translation of medieval charge sheets. Where are the Protocols of the Elders of Zion when you need them?

Funnily enough, the idea of Israel as rogue state primarily composed of recently arrived Jews feeds directly into the grand obsession of the Australian crazy left. This is the devalidation of the Australian nation-state.

You know the trope. The first Europeans in Australia were mere invaders who warped into settlers. They had no right to inhabit the continent. Crucially, their collective posterity was no better, as they were tainted settlers by blood. The result was a perpetual settler state.

It follows that nothing done by our own settler state – such as making a constitution, let alone uncongenial laws – can be valid. Where this deconstruction of Australia leads is hard to guess but it certainly means that European Australians collectively are perpetually nasty, brutal, exploitative invaders. We are racially invalid occupants of the continent. Sound familiar?

Israel is constantly derided as a settler state. The Jews who came to their historic homeland during the past two centuries are dismissed as invaders. As articulated by Hamas, Israel should be destroyed and “the Jews”, not the Israelis, driven into the sea. This narrative is deeply attractive to the loopier Australian left because it validates their own national narrative.

This type of analysis is greatly assisted by the collapse of substantive education in our schools and our universities. Into the 1970s, kids would come out of school with at least a smattering of history and geography. They would know which river and which sea, and the reality of a historic Israel. Today, most students have never heard of King David, let alone Philistines or Moabites. They could not point out Jerusalem on a map. In this puddle of ignorance, prejudice and shallow leftism can wallow together.

In Mosman and Paddington, we can discuss the Jews and Israel quite free of content. It helps that the Carlton set’s dislike of the Jewish state is exactly the type of cause that delights the cultural left. They have no actual skin in the game. There is lots of flag-waving, lots of chanting. Naturally, there is no risk you will ever have to do anything.

But there are satisfyingly identifiable enemies. As Jewish students and speakers are harassed at universities, and Jewish schools have armed guards at their gates, the argument that this is all anti-Israel but not anti-Semitic is as implausible as the Loch Ness monster.

All of these intellectual failures are standard components of the leftist rejection of Jews, Jewishness and a Jewish state. But there are at least three concepts grounding the structure of Australian progressive anti-Semitism that are rarely identified. The first has been mentioned: the direct identification of European Australians and European Australia with Jews living in Israel and a Jewish state.

This is not playing for peanuts. In Australia, there are people who routinely deny our nation and nationality. Lidia Thorpe is merely a technicolour example. But these sorts of views are expressed routinely in most universities and sympathetic parts of the media.

This type of rhetoric has the potential to undermine national confidence when we need to confront a new and dangerous world. When we hear there is no valid state of Israel, that Jews in Israel are merely settlers, and Jews generally are problematic, we should understand that the bell tolls for us, too.

The second confronting reality is that there are some fundamental characteristics of Jews and Jewishness that are abhorrent to the left – including the Australian left – and will never be accepted by “progressives”. The point of being a progressive is a desire for constant, sweeping change. Everything is wrong and I know how to fix it. From climate change to home ownership, our country is detestable, but I am here to help you.

Psychologically and practically, however, Judaism is adamantly opposed to a culture of constant goyim transformation. Despite the best efforts of Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Richard the Lionheart, Jews have remained Jews. If the laws of the Medes altereth not, the law of Moses is unkillable. This is an enormous ideological difficulty for progressives. The concept of values and teachings that are immutable is an assault on their existence. Jews are a problem for progressives in much the same way as the Catholic Church: each exists outside time and temporary relevance. Little wonder that when the Australian Catholic Church was deservedly flattened by its child abuse scandal, ordinary Catholics who patently had no role in the horror were astonished by the personal vilification they received. Now, with Israel in Gaza, our local Jews can receive just punishment.

The third crucial element in the disdain of the Australian left for all things Jewish has been the development of a soft anti-Semitism. Particularly mastered around the conflict in Gaza, this is the practice of constantly professing sympathy for Jews, in the Middle East or domestically, but consistently refusing to recognise their rights, interests, realities and sensibilities.

This technique is important for governments as it allows them to avoid charges of anti-Semitism while holding and occasionally expressing views fundamentally hostile to Jews. It is particularly important in practical politics, where some electorates are dominated by large numbers of people hostile to Israel, and realistically to Jews. But you cannot simply come out and yell “Three cheers for Hamas!” The Albanese government, occasional wriggling aside, has been a master of this sort of calculated nuance. Nervously condemning the Hamas murders, it seems almost relieved whenever some semi-plausible account of Israeli atrocities emerges.

With the horrifying deaths through an Israeli drone strike on aid workers delivering desperately needed food in Gaza, genuine horror seemed faintly tinged with relief that Israel finally had attracted a degree of opprobrium. That Foreign Minister Penny Wong almost simultaneously was ventilating the possibility of a two-state solution, without current practicality or principle, was entirely fitting. It certainly was a thoughtful Easter gift for Hamas.

Perhaps it is unfair to call these behaviours even soft anti-Semitism. Probably we need a new term, such as “Asemitism”. This describes a dead-eyed refusal even to see Jews in any dire situation such as Gaza. Just as agnostics and atheists disbelieve in God, Asemites cannot accommodate the actual possibility of a Jew. If I were an Australian Jew, I would be musing along this same dirty track.

Greg Craven is a constitutional lawyer and former vice-chancellor of Australian Catholic University.