Thornier questions lie ahead for antisemitism royal commission

The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has wrapped up its first block of hearings. (ABC News: Liam Patrick) Link copiedShareShare articleOver the past two weeks, dozens of Jewish Australians have walked into a room in Sydney's CBD and told a former High Court justice what it felt like to be Jewish in this country. They described being threatened with hunting knives and verbally abused at bus stops. One woman said a driver deliberately aimed their car at her pram while hurling antisemitic slurs. Another said she was "paralysed with fear" when footage emerged of nurses at a Sydney hospital allegedly saying they would kill Israeli patients. The opening hearings of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion packed an emotional punch. But what emerged was broader than individual acts of hatred, and the thornier questions still lie ahead. Antisemitic incidents in Australia remain at almost five times the average annual number recorded before October 7, 2023, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Many of those incidents are not overt acts of violence. Witnesses described a quieter, more persistent problem that had been festering long before two gunmen opened fired at Bondi Beach, killing 15 people in December. Slurs in school corridors, children joking about dressing up as Hitler or the Bondi shooters for muck-up day, or hostility in hospital wards and in GP clinics. Trade unionist Stephanie Cunio told the inquiry she felt "completely gaslit" by colleagues who offered no support after 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. Musician Joshua Moshe said police told him nothing could be done after his personal details were leaked online, leaving him exposed to death threats. A man was charged for allegedly wearing a swastika T-shirt outside the royal commission. (ABC News: Liam Patrick) Witness after witness said anti-Jewish racism had left the fringes of Australian society and become normalised, spreading into universities, workplaces, healthcare and the arts and that authorities had failed to act. The most contested question before the inquiry is also its most difficult — where does criticism of Israel end and antisemitism begin? Commissioner Virginia Bell has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which describes it as "a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews". Counsel assisting Richard Lancaster and Commissioner Virginia Bell. (ABC News: Abubakr Sajid) But the definition is contested, with civil liberty groups arguing it could blur the line between racial hatred and political speech. That tension played out in the hearing room during the second week of hearings. Peggy Dwyer SC, representing the Jewish Council of Australia, put it to expert witness Dave Rich that criticising Israel for the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza was not inherently antisemitic. He also agreed people could reasonably be angry and upset about the number of children killed in the war. UNICEF figures, which he accepted as broadly accurate, put the toll at more than 21,000. Dwyer then turned to whether comparing Israeli conduct to Nazi propaganda could ever be legitimate. "Why reach for that comparison?" he said. The royal commission is examining the definition of antisemitism. (ABC News: Liam Patrick) He said such comparisons were deliberately playing on Jewish sensitivities. Dwyer argued that the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism was a preferable framework, saying it provided clearer guidelines. The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network also raised concerns about the IHRA definition but was refused leave to appear at the royal commission to cross-examine expert witnesses. Executive Council of Australian Jewry research director Julie Nathan told the commission she did not treat all criticism of Israel as antisemitic, even when she found it "incredibly offensive". But she said a line was crossed when anti-Israel material was used to target individual Jewish people or Jewish institutions. "Stickers of Free Palestine are not antisemitic," she said. The more fundamental question looming over the inquiry is whether it should exist in its current form at all. When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese established the commission in January, his government had argued the key questions about the Bondi attack could be answered more quickly through an internal review led by former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson. Some of sessions in the next block of public hearings could be heard behind closed doors. (AAP: Dean Lewis) That review was folded into the commission's terms of reference, before Richardson resigned after less than three months of the inquiry. The challenge for Bell is now balancing public interest against the need to protect ongoing criminal proceedings against accused shooter Naveed Akram. That tension seemed to appear during the

Thornier questions lie ahead for antisemitism royal commission

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