Jillian Segal’s push for the federal government to adopt a contested definition of antisemitism will face pushback from some concerned Labor MPs and party members, as Anthony Albanese mulls a response to his envoy’s 49 recommendations to stamp out anti-Jewish hate.
Amnesty International Australia has strongly rebuked the recommendations of Segal, the government’s antisemitism envoy, claiming they could have a “chilling effect stifling rights to protest and freedom of speech”.
In a statement, the charity criticised the recommendations as “vague and repressive” and said they risked “deepening community divisions”.
“The plan risks weaponising criticism of Israel and its commission of war crimes and genocide,” it said
Segal has downplayed some of her more wide-ranging recommendations, saying stripping universities of funding would be a “last resort”, and declining to provide specific examples of media coverage that she would see her office as having a role to “monitor”.
Cool and normal.
Jillian Segal’s politics are abhorrent, as is the conflation of anti-Zionism with racism or any kind of bigotry. This appeasement by Labor of a foreign backed, racist and supremacist movement and its championed Apartheid Regime needs to stop. I think Australians want it to stop. Jews have never been oppressed or especially targeted in Australia, by Australians, certainly not compared to aboriginal Australians, or even Muslims or Asians. Remember Bondi was by Pakistani ISIS (who, if you know little about Islam and history, probably couldn’t care less about Palestinians). This positive-segregation Zionists are pushing for is not just unjustified and unfair, but will promote antisemitism, which is of course what Israel and Zionists want. Australian Jews, mostly fine people like so many Australians I’m sure, do not need their own special protection laws or special privileged treatment at the behest of Zionists and Israel. They deserve the same protections as the rest of us, proportional to realistic threat. Australian Jews are not like Aboriginal Australians, for who we do have special laws, we have those because we colonised their country and wrecked their ancient culture, deliberately. Indeed, Israel could learn from Australia how to do better by their indigenous people, , the Palestinians, even after the fact of settler colonisation.
What antisemitism there is in Australia, outside of Israeli-model admiring Neo-Nazi groups, is caused by the crimes of Israel and the deliberate and dishonest conflation of Judaism and Israel and Zionism, by Zionists themselves.