Far right Israel lobby group campaigning hard against the Greens in Queensland

A new political group with far-right links is campaigning to put the Greens last in the Queensland state election this weekend for ‘promoting terrorism and genocide’. Wendy Bacon investigates the Queensland Jewish Collective and the rise of foreign politics in Australian elections.

Over recent months, the Queensland Jewish Collective (QJC) has funded large billboards and delivered 30,000 leaflets to households in Inner Brisbane. On Thursday, volunteers appeared for the first time on pre-poll booths and announced they would be stationed at booths on election day.

QJC states on its website, “Our goal is to support Queenslanders in making informed decisions when voting for our leaders”. It claims to be a “non-partisan and not left or right-wing” organisation that is committed to promoting freedom while calling out “undemocratic, illogical and exploitative ideologies and policies”.

In fact, QJC is a collection of far right-wing activists with a focus on global politics and conservative nationalist causes.

The QJC’s key message is crude: “Once a party that stood for environmental action, the Greens are now promoting terrorism in the Middle East, genocide of Jews and persecution of minorities elsewhere.”

Even when the Greens explicitly deny these allegations by pointing to policies that state the opposite, the QJC has continued to post a series of highly misleading statements about the Greens and shows no interest in the Greens’ domestic policies in Queensland or any other election. Independents such as David Pocock have also been targeted for their views on Gaza and Israel.

As reported here last month, a right-wing astroturfing group Better Councils was active in NSW local council elections specifically targeting Greens party local candidates. It is fair to assume that the Greens will also come under heavy fire at the Federal Election next year by similar interests. The recent defection of Senator Fatima Payman from the Labor Party – she has announced she is starting her own party – was due to her disaffection with government policy on Gaza.

Right-wing astroturfers infiltrate local councils, fire up Labor v Greens unrest over Israel

Meanwhile, the Muslim Vote Matter movement has gone national. It intends to campaign in Federal 25 seats where it contends the Muslim vote can make a difference. Describing itself as a ‘grassroots political group, Muslim Votes has come about as a result of the failure of the government and the opposition to address concerns of Australia’s Muslim community over policy towards Israel.

With these forces at play and high concern in the community about the Middle East, there is likely to be a fierce campaign at the Federal Election next year.

Advance Australia connection?

The Queensland Jewish Collective has stated on its website that they are not connected to far right campaign group Advance Australia.

Advance Australia has moved on from its campaign to defeat The Voice referendum to a fresh campaign resourced with $1m and 35 staff to diminish the Greens by putting them at the bottom of ballots at next year’s Federal election. Although there are no formal organisational links, the QJC approach mirrors the strategies of Advance Australia.

QJC has partnered with the far right Australian Jewish Association (AJA) for its Queensland State election campaign. AJA President David Adler is on the Advisory Board of Advance. The AJA is opposed to any state for Palestinians. The AJA has boasted of its links to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party.

In July, the Australian Jewish Association held a webinar to promote and introduce to its members the Advance campaign to destroy the Greens. The image used by the AJA to promote its July webinar to promote the Advance campaign is the same one used in one of the QJC billboards.

Targeting Greens MP

QJC is focusing its efforts on the seat of Maiwar that has been held by Michael Berkman for the Greens since 2017. In 2020, he won 41% of the primary vote with a huge swing to him of 13.5%. Berkman has always campaigned on a broad set of policies. In 2017, he campaigned on lower cost public transport, free childcare and housing for the homeless.

This year, Berkman is campaigning on cheaper rents, the cost of mortgages and groceries, real climate action, against the privatisation of public land and fully funded public services.

QJC is also campaigning to stop the seat of Moggill from falling to the Greens. This seat was once considered the most conservative seat in Brisbane, but the LNP’s winning margin has been steadily narrowing and in 2020 Labor won 28% of the vote and the Greens 20%. Although the seat is not one of those most favoured to fall to the Greens, it is on the party’s list of ten targeted seats. Its candidate, Andrew Kidd, is a high school teacher and long-term local.

Lack of transparency

The Queensland Jewish Collective claims to be a grassroots group but, in fact, is a small organisation that is not fully transparent. It registered as a company in July this year and as a third-party campaigning organisation for the Queensland state election in June.

The company has three directors and members. They are Hava Mendelle, who is also authorising its election material, her wife Rosyln Mandelle, and Joshu Turier.

Roslyn Mandelle was born in the United States and migrated to Israel where she met Australian Hava Mandelle who had also moved to Israel. After marrying, they moved back to Australia.She is an experienced “strategic communications and stakeholder initiatives” manager who joined the LVCUp Consulting firm in August.

Turier has made a stream of Facebook posts demonstrating that he is an extreme right-wing supporter of Israel and its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He also called the progressive Lord Mayor of Sydney Clover Moore, the “most evil and reprehensible bitch in Australia” for not wanting to take sides in a conflict by lighting the Opera House in Israeli colours in October 2023 when many women had been raped to death” (a claim that has not been supported by evidence).

According to its constitution, the sole object of QJC is to be a “Jewish body to lobby government for changes to laws in order to stop antisemitism.”

The company’s registered office is based at the office of Insolvency Company Accountants on Hilton Avenue, Tewantin, near Noosa Heads.

MWM contacted this office. An accountancy partner who declined to be named said that hundreds of companies are registered at that address, and another ‘tax partner’ deals with the group. He suggested that we contact them through the Jewish Board of Deputies He was surprised that the three directors would use the address in Hilton Avenue Tewantin as their address when it is not.

In fact, the directors all live in Brisbane. (MWM has chosen not to disclose their personal addresses.) MWM attempted to contact the Jewish Board of Deputies, but the message bank was full. We are not suggesting that the Board supports the activities of the QJC.

In June, the QJC launched its activities with what was advertised as the first of its ‘multicultural impact network meetings. Speakers included a speaker from each of the Zionist, pro-Israeli, conservative Iranian Novim Party and the Hindu Council of Australia. An alliance was formed between the QJC, a group called the Hindu Media Association and the Iran Novim Party in Brisbane to campaign in the election. No further Multicultural Impact meetings have been advertised.

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Misinformation abounds

On October 21, Hava Mendelle wrote an article for the right-wing online magazine Spectator Australia, which was republished by the Times of Israel, that she was “shocked and disappointed to see the level of support given to pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Australia.”

“I am Jewish. I am Australian. I am Israeli. I am a wife. I am a mother. I am a great many things. But right now, the thing I am the most, is unsafe.”

She accused protesters chanting “End the occupation of Palestine” or “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” of “supporting the killing of Jews. They might condemn Hamas in public, and they might be peaceful (sometimes), but these demonstrators have shifted the attention away from the murder of our children, parents, and grandparents to an argument about land.

“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is not a rallying cry for peace; it is a rallying cry to wipe Israel off the map.” (In fact, many of those who chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” are supporters of a one-state solution with equal rights for all citizens.)

Mendelle wrote that she did feel support from the Federal government but felt unsafe because her own Greens MP Amy McMahon was supporting pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

In a response to a letter from Mendelle, McMahon wrote, “The Greens and I condemn all forms of violence against civilians, including the attacks perpetrated by Hamas. We believe it is necessary to talk about the causes and context of these events and the need for the occupation of Palestinian territories to end.”

Further, she stated, “The Greens will always support the right to protest peacefully; it is fundamental to our democracy.”

While Hava Mandelle’s sense of Jewish identity equates with an unwavering support for Israel, her view is rejected by many Jews around the world, including those who have joined the Jewish Council of Australia, the Jewish Voices for Peace and Justice and the Tzedek Collective, an intergenerational leftist anti-Zionist Jewish community and action group based in Sydney.

Tzedek supports the BDS Movement and today was hailing the decision of the Australian government to review its defence contracts with Israel as a victory. It has an active X (Twitter) presence, where it has been tracking and mocking the QJC.

This outfit @qldjewish is looking more like 3 Advance interns in a trenchcoat with every day.

They have non-Jewish Josh Turier authorizing campaign material saying “I’m Jewish”

Given they’re a diverse group, their material also has an AI ‘representative’ image of a Hindu woman pic.twitter.com/kb0fGTJi8n

— Tzedek Collective (@tzedekcollectiv) October 15, 2024

Hava Mendelle declined to be interviewed by MWM – and to her photo being taken for in article for the Australian. However she did appear on a show for  “cultural warriors” on  Spectator TV in February 2024. Spectator TV has a regular show on the right wing online channel ADV begun by Alan Jones after he was sacked by Sky TV and which is backed financially by James Packer.

This followed a series of articles that Mendelle published in Spectator Australia critiquing Wikipedia for its left wing editing bias on international affairs and its posting on the anti- transgender activist and famous author J.K. Rowling.

On October 3, the QJC appeared on the Chris Smith show, another regular show on ADV. The group was represented by Iranian Hesam Orouji and an Israeli Australian Ayelet Rinon. The entire discussion was based on Chris Smith’s assumption that the Greens celebrate extremism. 

Orouji runs a construction company in Brisbane and is an Iranian Australian supporter of the Iran Novin Party and Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah of Iran who was exiled by the Islamic Revolution in 1979. He attended the recent Australian Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Brisbane. He strongly supports Opposition Leader Peter Dutton declaring on Facebook recently that “we need strong leaders and politicians like @PeterDuttonMP during this critical period of history.

“This is a fight between light and darkness.The ideology of terrorism receives support from the Islamic regime in Australia while the Labor government remains inactive.”  Recently, he reposted  images of the leaders of the United Emirates and Saudi Arabia along with Netanhayu and Prince Pahlavi – “One day we will witness their gathering at a single table.“

Chris Smith framed the interview on the assumption that the Greens support extremists. Orouji then spoke for several minutes during which he accused the Greens of endorsing and supporting terrorist groups including the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp. Ayelet Rinon then spoke about how scared she felt with a banner across the screen ‘get rid of the Greens’.

Orouji’s suggestion that the Greens in any sense endorse or support  the  Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is false, as this media release by Senator Jordan-Steele clearly shows. In fact, they have called for the listing of the IRGC as a terrorist group and oppose “unfair trials, egregious executions and continued removal of the rights of women and girls” in Iran and called for the  Australia government to maintain pressure on Iranian authorities to free peaceful protestors who are demanding freedom for their country.

Deputy Greens Leader Senator Mehreen Faruqi said the QJF claims about the Greens being racist “by far-right groups are false and offensive.”

“The Greens are the only party with a standalone anti-racism portfolio and we stand up against racism in all its forms, here and everywhere. These desperate and deceptive tactics will not stop us from speaking out and strongly opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, ” she said. 

A spokesperson for the Queensland Greens said the individuals associated with the QLD had “presented no evidence whatsoever for their outrageous and politically motivated claims.

“In criticising the war crimes of the far-right government of Israel, the Greens stand with Jewish people in Queensland and across the world who do not want to watch a genocide unfold, who want to see the hostages returned and want a ceasefire.”

 Local, now state, federal to come

In recent Facebook posts, the QJC seems uncertain of their impact in Brisbane. They wrote last week, “ We are learning and improving as we go, all we can hope for is that we make a dent in this massive systemic toxic culture that has hijacked a perfectly good environmental party.” They did not have volunteers on pre-pols earlier last week.

It is one thing to claim you are a ‘grassroots’, it’s another to organise people to cover voting booths for entire days. They are also confronting Greens MPs in Brisbane who have been organising regular community events including free breakfasts for years. It may be harder than QJC thought to convince Brisbane voters that these same people are threatening their safety rather than supporting their right to housing and food.

The QJC campaign is less well resourced and professionally organised than the Better Councils’ Campaign, a Labor/Liberal astro-turfing exercise that MWC media recently investigated. While it is not possible to know how successful the Better Councils campaign was, it is likely to have cost the Greens some votes in eastern Sydney where the Greens from two Councillors to one in Woollahra LGA and four to three in Randwick.

The Greens maintained five councillors in Inner West with Labor maintaining its control over Council on a small number of preferences. Across the state, the Greens won more councillors than ever before, including in Western Sydney.

Both QJC and Better Councils are part of a wider strategy that is spearheaded by Advance’s promised relentless focus on destroying the Greens at the Federal election. Each campaign was a standalone organisation that wanted to claim independence from Advance. But both have relied on support from explicitly far-right organisations, including Advance Australia and pro-Israeli companion organisation Never Again is Now. These broader campaigns have strong Islamophobic undertones. 

While QJC claims to be a grassroots movement, the QJC have struggled to build a social media following with their biggest boosts coming from supportive posts by Advance and AJA. But this support is more reflective of wider target audiences around Australia and even the US, than the voters of Inner Brisbane. While these local campaigns may or may not prove to be individually successful in dinting the Greens vote, they are part of a bigger longer term game of growing a far right voting constituency in Australia based on disinformation and fear. This is what is at stake.

Coming next: Who is backing Queensland Jewish Collective?

Right-wing astroturfers infiltrate local councils, fire up Labor v Greens unrest over Israel