On Jillian Segal’s Report into Combating Antisemitism

THERMIDOR: CULTURAL COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN THE AGE OF TRUMP

On Jillian Segal’s Report into Combating Antisemitism

Several excellent critiques of Jillian Segal’s “Special Envoy’s Plan to Combat Antisemitism” have appeared, by Louise Adler (The Guardian), Henry Reynolds (Pearls and Irritations), Nick Feik (substack), Guy Rundle (substack) and Jeffrey Loewenstein (Pearls and Irritations). I would like to add a few additional words.

Segal suggests, at the very least by inference, that antisemitism is the most dangerous form of racism in contemporary Australia. Accordingly, her report calls for action against antisemitism in ways that go beyond any protections offered any other group. This “privileging” of antisemitism is absurd. The most dangerous form of racism in Australian history and in contemporary Australia is anti-indigenous racism, something one still reads about every day.

The settlement of Australia involved the near-destruction of Aboriginal society. By contrast there is probably no country in the world—including even the United States—where Jews have been treated more justly and equally than Australia. Isaac Isaacs, a Jew, was one of the original High Court judges. Later he became Australian Governor-General. Our most revered soldier is probably John Monash, a Jew. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, following the vicious anti-Jewish action in Germany, “Kristallnacht”, and the German annexation of Austria, Australia offered refuge for up to 15,000 refugees from Germany and Austria. The chief sponsor of this offer was the Australian High Commissioner in London, the former old-fashioned “liberal” Prime Minister, Stanley Bruce. Both my parents, who met in Australia, were beneficiaries.

If I might speak personally, even though I was involved in two controversies that concerned Australia and the Jews—the Helen Demidenko Affair and the question of the Hawke Government’s War Crimes legislation—I have experienced antisemitic attacks in my life only twice.

The first occasion occurred when I was in my late teens. I part-owned a rental house. One of the tenants, who was a criminal, called me a “Jewboy” when I came around to collect unpaid rent.

The second occasion occurred in 1989 when I was co-editor of Quadrant. After I wrote “Left of the Urals”, a short article opposing the Hawke Government’s War Crimes legislation, principally on the grounds that Japanese war criminals were excluded, I was accused of being a (Jewish) antisemite by Isi Leibler, the most powerful figure in the Jewish community at that time.

I know from talking to Jewish friends that others’ experience of antisemitism was greater than mine. Nonetheless I’m sure that the antisemitic-free air I have breathed in throughout my life in Australia was by no means unique. The most reliable index of social attitudes in Australia—the Scanlon Report—shows that following October 7 and its aftermath negative images of Jews have risen from 9% to 13%.

It is obviously true, as the Segal report suggests, that over the past twenty months there has been a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents. The putatively most important instance of post-October 7 antisemitism was a hoax. The two other important actions so far have been two arson attacks on synagogues. Thankfully, so far as I am aware, there has not been even one case of a physical attack on a Jew. What however is remarkable about the Segal report is that in its entirety there is not one word about the cause of this rise in antisemitic incidents following the Israeli response to the vicious Hamas-led attack on Israelis of October 7 2023.

On October 7 1200 Israeli Jews were murdered and 250 taken as hostages. In response the Israeli armed forces have slaughtered at least 60,000 Gazan Palestinians, and more likely 100,000, the majority of whom were entirely innocent women and children and also men. More than double that number have been seriously wounded with only the slimmest hope of medical aid. The modus operandi of the Israeli armed forces, the self-congratulatory supposed “most moral army” in the world, has been ratios of 20 or 50 innocent Gazans killed, as regrettable “collateral damage”, in pursuit of one member of Hamas. Food, fuel, water, medical supplies have been cut off for significant periods of time. Seventy percent of buildings in Gaza, including hospitals, universities, schools and administrative facilities have been systematically reduced to rubble.

Australians have been able to observe what Israel has done to Gaza on social media and on their television screens, even though journalists are forbidden entry into Gaza, for their protection of course. The more politically engaged or savvy among them will have noticed that not one of the many powerful Jewish organisations in Australia—including the Executive Council of Australian Jewry on whose Board Jillian Segal once served as President—has condemned or even questioned the almost unbelievably pitiless brutality of the post-October 7 Israeli destruction of Gaza.

Having failed to mention the self-evident cause of the relatively modest rise in antisemitic feeling, antisemitism is treated in Segal’s report as the most dangerous and insidious form of racism in contemporary Australia. Accordingly, the Segal report suggests measures whose censoriousness goes beyond anything in Australian legal history.

Australian law outlines powerful and once controversial protection against all forms of hate speech in article 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act. This is not sufficient protection according to Segal. What she proposes is not only individual but also organisational responsibility for any antisemitism in speech or action discovered on their turf. According to her proposal some unidentified body, perhaps made up of members of the Jewish community, should monitor both public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, and every university and cultural institution in Australia, for any instance of antisemitism. Segal proposes that some of their government funding be taken away from public broadcasters or universities (including protests) or cultural institutions if some so far unidentified body decides that in action or speech such an incident has occurred. So far as I am aware, nothing like this has ever before been proposed in Australian history. It comes straight from the contemporary playbook of President Donald Trump.

There is no suggestion in the Segal report that government funding should also be stripped from universities, public broadcasters and cultural institutions if instances of First Nations’ racism, Islamophobia, misogyny or homophobia are discovered there. The choice Segal offers is stark. Either the only form of bigotry to be monitored and punished in universities, public broadcasters and cultural institutions by loss of government funds is antisemitism, or bigotry directed against indigenous Australians, Muslims, women and gays should also be monitored in publicly-funded institutions and where appropriate punished. According to Segal either antisemitism is the only truly serious form of bigotry in Australia, or universities, public broadcasters and cultural institutions will become subject to a regime of censoriousness without parallel in Australian history.

As we have recently discovered because of the investigative journalism of the independent online media platform, The Klaxon, the man to whom Jillian Segal is married is the partner with his brother of a Trust that in 2023 and 2024 donated $50,000 to “Advance”, the most significant mainstream far right movement in Australia, that led the campaign against the indigenous Voice to Parliament and that has described Prime Minister Albanese as “weak, woke and broke”. Taking cover behind political correctness, Segal has claimed she had nothing to do with her husband’s political activities or he with hers, and that it was outrageous to suggest otherwise. She refused to tell The Guardian whether she knew about the $50,000 donation or what she thinks about “Advance”.

Segal’s thoughts about “Advance” and her husband’s $50,000 donation matter. Segal’s desire to monitor the ABC and SBS and to strip funds from them if they are found to have allowed antisemitic content onto their programs is consistent with one of the most conspicuous perennial demands of the mainstream far right in Australia, the attack on the ABC. I am now a devoted listener to the most politically sophisticated arm of the ABC, Radio National. In several years I have not even once encountered a program that could even remotely be regarded as antisemitic.

How will the existence of antisemitic content be discovered? Here we arrive at another novel and extraordinary suggestion. Segal believes that a 2016 definition of antisemitism, developed at a conference in Bucharest—"the IHRA non-legally binding definition of antisemitism”—should become mandatory for all individuals and organisations in Australia. So far as I am aware we do not live in a totalitarian country. Accordingly, we are free to decide for ourselves our own definition of what constitutes antisemitism and even to decide that definitions are not the best way of deciding whether an antisemitic incident in speech or action has occurred.

As it happens, the IHRA definition, which was drafted six years before October 7 and its aftermath, is replete with references to the relation of antisemitism and Israel. The definition concedes that “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”. However it then asserts that it is antisemitic to claim that Israel invents or exaggerates the Holocaust; that it is antisemitic to claim that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the country where they live; that it is antisemitic to compare the actions of Israel to the actions of the Nazis; and that it is antisemitic to deny “the Jewish people their right to self-determination e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.”

In general, I agree with these claims and the other parts of the definition. However, I believe that it is wrong to make such a definition mandatory on individuals and organisations and to go beyond the 2016 Bucharest conference participants by rendering the definition “legally binding”. There is more than enough wriggle room in the IHRA definition to allow a clever lawyer to present a case that an entirely legitimate discussion about Israel in general and, in particular, Israel-in-Gaza is antisemitic.

Let one example suffice. There are scores of genocide scholars who believe, as I do, that since the Hamas atrocity of October 7 2023 Israel has been carrying out policies of both ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Palestinian peoples of Gaza.

By slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children; by withholding altogether or restricting radically supplies of food, water, fuel, medicines and medical supplies; by reducing to rubble most of the buildings in Gaza—what Israel is telling the Palestinians of Gaza by its unmistakable action is: you have no future in Gaza. President Trump’s fleeting fancy about transforming Gaza into the Middle Eastern Riviera was music to Israeli ears. The current ethnic cleansing fantasy action plan is to collect all the Palestinian people of Gaza inside a massive tent city on the ruins of Rafah where they might find food and medicine and freedom from bomb attack but from where, until transported to another country, they would not be permitted to leave. Even as it pulverises Gaza, Israel prides itself on having the world’s “most moral army”. In a rare example of black humour, Israel’s great oppositional newspaper, Ha’aretz, recently described this latest means for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza as “the world’s most moral concentration camp”.

The second half of this claim—the overlapping claim of genocide—is also strong. According to the international convention, the crime of genocide occurs when a state attempts to eliminate or destroy a nation, race, ethnicity or religion “in whole or in part”. The Palestinian nation is principally concentrated in two localities—in Gaza and on the West Bank. To eliminate Palestinian existence in Gaza involves the destruction of the Palestinian people “in part”. Unlike ethnic cleansing, the charge of genocide relies on intentions as well as actions. For the crime of genocide to be proven what must be demonstrated is that beyond the actions taken to ethnically cleanse Gaza the intention to destroy the Palestinian people in whole or in part can be found. Especially in the early days, following October 7, the President, Isaac Herzog; the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; the Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant; and the two far right members of the Cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, all spoke in ways that unambiguously suggested genocidal intent, as did scores of Israeli commentators. The Israeli public was now frequently reminded that God had required his people to exterminate the enemy of the Israelites, the Amalekites.

Because concentration camps and genocide are (wrongly) associated in the public mind almost exclusively with the Holocaust, I believe a clever lawyer would be able to use one detail of the mandatory IHRA definition—“Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”—to “prove” that anyone who argues that Israel is establishing concentration camps in preparation for ethnic cleansing in Gaza or that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is an antisemite.

Another kind of discussion, one concerned not with the IHRA definition but with the difficult issue of “balance”, might lead to a similar outcome. During the debate about climate change a seminal article showed how “balance” could be “bias”. Similarly in a discussion of, say, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, balance does not mean putting the case for Russia and for Ukraine in equal measure. It involves condemnation of the unprovoked Russian invasion. Balance does not rest on false equivalences but on judgment. In my judgment, any discussion of October 7 and its aftermath which denied the evil of the Hamas attack on the Israeli Jews and that concentrated exclusively on the Israeli actions since the Hamas atrocity could reasonably be said to lack balance and even be open to the charge of antisemitism. However, an unvarnished discussion of the evil that Israel has done to the innocent people of Gaza following but also preceding the horror of October 7 is not antisemitic but the truth. These include the occupation policies of 1967 to 2005; the short military interventions that Israelis call “mowing the grass” after their supposed departure in 2005; and the ethnic cleansing and the genocide post-October 2023 in the war/slaughter against Hamas. It is the evil of these policies that climaxed following the horror of October 7 that Jillian Segal’s report into combating antisemitism is trying to deny, with the apparent support of most of the organised Jewish community in Australia. If her report is adopted by the Albanese Government, it will not only strike the most serious blow against both freedom of speech and academic freedom in Australia in recent decades. It will also almost certainly strengthen rather than combat the post-October 7 growth of antisemitism in Australia.

Hannah Arendt once confessed that the crimes and mistakes of her own people, the Jews, were more painful to her than the crimes and mistakes of others. That is how I feel. The former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, who is certainly no dove, recently wrote that the actions of Israel-in-Gaza caused him to feel “heart-broken and ashamed”. That is also precisely how I feel.

Robert Manne AO, FASSA, is Emeritus Professor of Politics and a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at La Trobe University. His most recent book is A Political Memoir: Intellectual Combat in the Cold War and the Culture Wars (La Trobe University Press).