Antisemitism Report 2009 - World Jewish Congress

1.2 Racism in Australia and Antisemitism
The Australian Jewish community has been an integral part of Australia's population since
the first days of European settlement. While there have been incidents of anti-Jewish
activity occurring throughout the different periods of the development of modern Australia,
opposition to antisemitism has also been present and, perhaps more importantly, the
question of the place of Jews within Australian society has generally not been an issue
which has excited the Australian population.
Although Jewish Australians have twice been appointed Governors-General, our military
forces have included Jewish Australians in their senior leadership ranks and the community
has been able to build an impressive network of institutions to serve its needs, an
unacceptably high number of Australian Jews can provide evidence of instances of
discrimination, harassment and racial defamation.
Some anti-Jewish behaviour has found apologists who portray it as culturally innate, simple
ignorance, a legitimate reaction to the behaviour of Jews themselves or as the poor
expression of otherwise legitimate views. In recent years, with increasing antisemitism
emanating from left-wing sources there has been an additional issue of figures close to the
political and social mainstream rationalising or justifying antisemitism by misrepresenting it
as legitimate political expression. In a recurring pattern, the false charge that all, or most,
critics of any Israeli policy or action is called antisemitic, is levelled.
One development in antisemitism in Australia in the period in review was the way in which
individuals who identify themselves, or were identified, as Jews were given high profiles
who engaged in defamation of Judaism and/or Israel. A number of extreme right-wing
groups published contributions from, or items by, Gilad Atzmon, Ilan Pappe and Neturei
Karta. Norman Finkelstein and Antony Lowenstein were cited by Islamic sources with
maximalist anti-Jewish agendas. Far left groups cited a number of different individuals with
the suggestion that a person‘s birth as a Jew gave them special authority to condemn Israel,
Judaism and Jews. At an anti-Israel demonstration in Sydney, a Jewish academic claimed he
was wearing a Palestinian badge because ―the Nazis made Jews wear a yellow Star of
David‖ (18/1/09), much to the delight of the antisemitic elements in the crowd.
An 11-year study of attitudes of 16,000 Australians, released in June 2009, found that
Australians strongly supported cultural diversity with only 6.5% of respondents declaring
themselves against multiculturalism. However, the writer of this paper believes there is
strong anecdotal evidence that there exists in Australia an under-current of racism.It is
difficult to objectively assess the place of antisemitism in Australian racism as no
comprehensive statistics exist on the subject of general racist violence, vilification,
harassment and intimidation, which would supplement or give context to the data-collection
and analysis of the Jewish community. It is disappointing that, despite considerable public
funding aimed at redressing anti-Muslim and/or anti-Arab discrimination and prejudice,
there has been no comprehensive documentation of incidents of harassment or intimidation
which would assist in both analysis and formulation of policy response. While some clues
as to the level of concern at racism can be discerned from indicators such as the volume of
complaints to bodies such as the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Australian Press
Council, the Australian Broadcasting Authority and State-based anti-discrimination boards,
7