Antisemitic or anti-Zionist? The Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s (ECAJ) report claims a 316% rise in antisemitic incidents. Yaakov Aharon checks the facts.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s (ECAJ) Antisemitism Report for 2024 lists a total of 2062 incidents in the last year. This is a 316% increase compared to the incidents logged by ECAJ in 2023, marking the sharpest rise since the annual Antisemitism Reports began, and the fifth consecutive year of increasing antisemitism.
The publication date of the report is a day by which you can set your calendar. The Murdoch press and Liberal Party have op-eds and statements ready to go the moment it drops, and it still gets a few more runs in the headlines after that.
But how many of these incidents are serious, and how many are legitimate criticisms of Israel?
Logged incidents unclear
The ECAJ report clarifies that criticism of Israel is not necessarily antisemitic. “While many anti-Israel incidents are offensive and consist of false and libellous claims,” the report states, “ECAJ does not include such incidents as anti-Jewish unless there is a clear and specific anti-Jewish element.”
Despite this, there are countless logged incidents where it is unclear what the specific anti-Jewish element was, and ECAJ makes little to no attempt at elaborating. Therefore, the report becomes instructional as to which criticisms of Israel ECAJ considers to be antisemitic.
It is not clear if ECAJ has made any attempt at questioning the validity of each incident or whether they made any serious attempts at gaining evidence.
In October, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus MP told a crowd of pro-Israel faithfuls that:
“When critics use that word [Zionist], they actually mean Jew. They’re not really saying Zionist, they’re saying Jew because they know that they cannot say Jew, so they say Zionist.”
Dreyfus’ statement accurately reflects the view of the mainstream Jewish-Australian organisations.
Antisemitic or anti-zionist?
How are the readers of the report to know if an incident of ‘antisemitic abuse’ actually concerned anti-Zionism? What if – like Dreyfus had said – a person was called a ‘Zionist’, but had interpreted it and reported it as abuse for being a ‘Jew’?
If a person draped in an Israeli flag reported that they were abused, would ECAJ have logged it as an incident targeting a visibly Jewish person? If they were a Christian Zionist draped in the flag, would ECAJ have considered this a case of mistaken Jewish identity resulting in antisemitism?
Michael West Media reached out to ECAJ for clarification as to their criteria, but we did not receive a reply.
Dr Max Kaiser, Executive Officer at Jewish Council of Australia, said:
“While the ECAJ report appears to document a very real and worrying increase in antisemitic incidents, the amateurish and ideologically driven nature of the report makes it hard to take seriously. The report deliberately conflates antisemitism and anti-zionism – skewing the statistics and furthering a narrative about pro-Palestine protests which stirs up racism and unnecessarily scares Jews.
At a time when antisemitism is clearly on the rise, Jews need to join with other racialised groups to fight racism together. The Jewish community deserves better than this shonky report.”
Antisemitism – a real problem
Caption: ‘Anti-Jewish Incidents in Australia 2024 – by category 1 Oct 2023-30 Sep 2024’ Source: ECAJ Antisemitism Report 2024.
“If I see you motherfuckers with that [Israeli] flag, I’ll fucking kill you all!” a man yelled at several Jewish teenagers with the flag displayed on their car. While this is a criminal threat of violence, it’s unclear if the abuse included any references to Jews.
Three percent of the incidents are listed as ‘assault’.
Baseless claims
The report also cites the protest at Sydney Opera House on 9th October 2023 in the introduction, repeating the baseless claims that witnesses had heard chants of ‘Gas the Jews’.
The report does not acknowledge the NSW Police investigation, which found “no evidence” of these chants. In other words, the witnesses cited by ECAJ were either deemed by police to not be credible, or these witnesses did not come forward to assist the investigation.
It was found that some protestors chanted ‘Fuck the Jews’ and ‘Where’s the Jews’. Antisemitism is a real problem, just like any other form of discrimination.
However, it is not trivial to differentiate between the chants that we know had occurred and the fake chants from a doctored and viral video. The difference is whether these were simply antisemitic chants worthy of media condemnation, or whether these were racial incitements to violence worthy of criminal conviction.
Sh*tpost reporting
ECAJ claims to have logged 2062 antisemitic incidents in the past year, but has only disclosed details of 150 incidents in the publication. It would be reasonable to expect that only the most disturbing cases made the final cut.
One incident is a literal shitpost: antisemitic graffiti on the back of a door in a men’s public toilet at a fast-food chain.
A protest outside Israeli state-funded arms manufacturer Elbit System’s Melbourne office is also alleged to have been antisemitic. The protestors had brought a banner that said ‘From the River to the Sea.’
ECAJ Co-CEO, Alex Ryvchin, has argued that this is “an old Arab supremacist slogan calling for the destruction of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of its Jewish population.”
A sticker with the slogan was found on Elizabeth Street near Hyde Park, one of Sydney CBD’s most busy roads. The report alleges this incident targeted Jews as it had occurred opposite The Great Synagogue.
There are further incidents related to graffiti, a banner, a placard, and a chant of this slogan.
“Israel = Genocide” was graffitied in a Melbourne park in December 2023, just a month before the International Court of Justice found that there is a plausible genocide and that the graffiti, therefore, has intellectual merit.
Stickers and sticklers
Another sticker of “Zionists not welcome here. Zionism = Nazism” was found on a pole outside of a Jewish-owned studio. It’s unclear if the Jewish identity of the studio owner was known to the larrikin who had placed the sticker.
Caption: Stickers considered antisemitic by the report. Source: ECAJ Antisemitism Report 2024
The report regularly refers to incidents involving stickers in shorthand, without always referencing the content on them. The report does, however, provide images of stickers that were in regular circulation across Australia. It is unclear if each occasion that these stickers were logged with ECAJ involves a separate antisemitic incident.
ECAJ calls one sticker the ‘stealing Jew’, an allusion to classically antisemitic tropes of greed. The sticker is a direct quote from Jacob Fauci (pictured), a Jew from New York, who was caught on camera in the act of stealing a home in East Jerusalem.
Anti-Zionist Jews erased
Source: ‘The enemies within – Australian Jews are endangered by hostile agents’, published by Australian Jewish News
According to the Gen17 survey by Monash University, only 69% of Australian Jews identify as Zionist.
However, ECAJ’s report offers no details of incidents occurring against anti-Zionist Jews, despite that these Jews are most likely to have had interactions with the Palestinian movement.
The report makes no mention of intra-Jewish antisemitism within the community nor of ‘self-hating Jews’.
Unbelievable! The Israel bashing Jew Haters Council of Australia actually takes pride in falsely accusing Israel of genocide! Fortunately they are a tiny minority who are shunned overwhelmingly by all self respecting Jews.
— Mark Leibler (@LeiblerMark) April 30, 2024
In June 2024, CEO of Australian Jewish Association, Robert Gregory, published an article ‘The Enemies Within’ about anti-Zionist Jews. The chairman of Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council, Mark Leibler, agrees that anti-Zionist Jews who have betrayed their community pose a serious antisemitic problem. But does this door open both ways?
Was Gregory’s headline a reference to medieval tropes that Jews poison the city’s wells and open the gates for the enemy?
Is ‘self-hating Jew’ a pathological diagnosis or a slur?
This is insane…
Sydney police: There is antisemitic material in the car
Person: What is the antisemitic material?
Police: There is a small image of a watermelon
— Tiberius (@ecomarxi) November 30, 2024
Yaakov Aharon is a Jewish-Australian living in Wollongong. He enjoys long walks on Wollongong Beach, unimpeded by Port Kembla smoke fumes and AUKUS submarines.