Anti-Semitism ‘takes hold on political left in Australia’

Australia faces a growing problem of anti-Semitism, an academic has warned.

Peter Kurti is a senior research fellow at the University of Notre Dame Australia.

Australia faces a growing problem of anti-Semitism as vocal critics of Israel from the political left embrace a “toxic mutation” of centuries-old hatred directed at Jews, an academic has warned.

Peter Kurti said rising anti-Semitism in Britain and the US was at risk of becoming “commonplace” in Australia as well ­because of obsessive left-wing ­attacks on the legitimacy of the Israeli state, “which can be a mask for anti-Semitism”.

Mr Kurti said a 2018 report by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry presented a bleak picture of the Australian experience, noting there were 366 recorded anti-­Semitic incidents, a rise of 59 per cent on the 12 months ­before. He highlighted how the federal election this year was marred by several anti-Semitic ­incidents, ­including the defacing of the campaign material of three Jewish candidates — Liberal MPs Julian Leeser, Jason Falinski and Josh Frydenberg — with dollar signs, devil’s horns and Hitler moustaches.

Independent candidate Kerryn Phelps, who is Jewish, was the subject of anti-Semitic emails, while her successful Liberal rival in the Sydney eastern suburbs seat of Wentworth, Dave Sharma, had many posters defaced.

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Mr Leeser, who represents ­Berowra in Sydney’s north, said the campaign was “singularly the dirtiest and nastiest election” he had encountered. “It really left a disgusting feeling,” he said.

In a policy paper for the conservative-leaning Centre for ­Independent Studies, Mr Kurti argued that anti-Semitism, while long a part of human history and perpetrated by Nazis during World War II, had mutated into a new “toxic” form among the post-modern left-wing.

“This new form is often dressed up in the language of human rights,” he said. “It adopts the language of international human rights groups and NGOs in criticising Israel’s ‘neo-colonial ambitions’ and campaigning for liberation of the ‘long oppressed’ Palestinian people.

“This new left-wing anti-Semitism casts itself in moral terms as opposition to alleged colonialism, imperialism and capitalism.”

Mr Kurti, a senior research fellow at the University of Notre Dame Australia, argued that the modern left’s anti-Zionism had origins in the former Soviet Union’s hostility to Israel.

The most prominent contemporary example of anti-Semitism in mainstream politics was a “toxic brew” affecting the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, he said. Mr Kurti said the Labor Party in Australia had, for the most part, been “spared the travails” of its British counterpart or some in the US Democratic Party. “However, voices critical of ­Israel, and suspicious of supposed Jewish influence in finance, ­politics and the media are becoming increasingly prominent on the political left in Australia,” he said.