Deborah Conway stunned by pro-Palestinian protesters
The Royal Commission into Antisemitism has heard that singer-songwriter Deborah Conway was shouted at and hissed at during her concerts and writers’ festivals over her support for Israel, while another musician feared for her safety after a Jewish WhatsApp group revealed her personal information.
The royal commission also heard a Perth teenager give evidence under a pseudonym, describing a series of hate comments directed at him on Discord while playing Minecraft in 2024. Comments were written by other students at the high school.
One comment described the teenager as a “rabid, filthy, rotten, heartbreaking, strange Rabbi, a yarmulke-wearing, bank-owning, iron-domed, Hashem-following Jew.”
Former Supreme Court judge Virginia Bell heard more harrowing stories of lived experiences of antisemitism as the commission sat for its sixth day of public hearings in Sydney on Monday.
Conway told the commission that he viewed anti-Zionism as a “genocidal impulse” and said he had lost many performance bookings because of the backlash to his views.
“I think it’s really important to say that I support Israel’s right to exist. I do not support the Israeli government’s methods of continuing the war,” he said. “But, you know, we didn’t want America broken up because it handled the war in Afghanistan or Vietnam or Iraq badly… I think the idea of anti-Zionism is actually an impulse toward genocide.”
Conway also detailed an incident that occurred while he was on stage in Western Australia: “All these people stood up in the auditorium, held up their banners and started shouting things at me and I was shocked”.
The interviewer at the writers’ festival pulled away and “one person hissed ‘shame on me’ at me. And I thought, wow, you know, [that’s] a very strange thing to find at a writers’ festival in a regional town”.
Conway also described her horror as she watched pro-Palestinian protests at the Sydney Opera House on October 9, 2023, where the sails of the iconic building were illuminated in blue and white in support of Israel. He said he was overwhelmed by the “joy and joy” of the protesters.
“I thought, am I living in 2023 Australia, or is this 1933 Berlin?” said Conway.
Asked how his bookings were going in 2026, he replied: “There aren’t many.”
Jewish saxophonist Joshua Moshe told the commission about the fallout from the 2024 leak of a WhatsApp group for Jewish creators he was a part of, leading to the band he played with for seven years expelling him from the group.
Following the leak, a caller threatened the North Melbourne home goods store Moshe runs with his wife, told the couple to watch their backs and sent a photo of their son taken on social media.
After reporting online posts about him and his family to the police, an officer told Moshe that they could investigate the vandalism of their store and the threat involving his son, but could not investigate other posts targeting Moshe because those posts “did not cross the line” for antisemitism.
Moshe, who was affected by the abusive messages, said: “From my press photos, there were photos taken as a musician, saying that I was a Zionist or Zio and that I was conspiring for the Zionist entity.”
“We were getting emails, Google reviews and Facebook messages. It was relentless.”
Rabbi Daniel Rabin of Melbourne’s Caulfield Shule said many members of his community had asked him whether they should leave Australia.
“I think the biggest shock for me was people asking me should they really leave Australia? Is that the writing on the wall?” He told the commission.
Rabin said it reminded him of stories of his Jewish ancestors asking similar questions of their own in pre-Holocaust Europe. “And of course we know the outcome. So it’s very confronting to hear those kinds of questions,” he said.
Sydney Rabbi Menachem Dadon told the commission his 14-year-old daughter was “strong” after she was shot and injured at a Hanukkah event during the Bondi terror attack.
However, he asked himself “Why?” He said he was crying when asked. [do] Do they hate us that much? From where [do] Do they want to kill us?”
“As a society, we have to think about how we got to this point. [a] “The father has no answer for his daughter,” Dadon said.
Tahli Blicblau, executive director of the Dor Foundation, which aims to combat antisemitism on university campuses and online, said antisemitism had increased long before October 7, 2023.
Blicblau, a former counter-terrorism expert at the NSW Crime Commission, told the commission that most Australians failed to recognize anti-Semitic tropes and that people were increasingly less willing to have Jewish friends.
He said the events in Australia on October 8, the day after the Hamas attack on Israel, were a pivotal moment.
“A protest meeting was held that evening in Western Sydney, where the events of 7 October were described as a day of pride, courage and joy,” he said.
“Cars were driving through Western Sydney, setting off fireworks. The glorification of violence that night, at a time when Israel was still counting its dead, really set the tone for a tolerant environment where the glorification of violence was accepted and allowed.”
Julie Nathan, director of research at the Executive Council of Australian Jews, told the commission that much of the criticism of Israel is not antisemitic in itself, “although much of it is incredibly offensive”. Nathan is responsible for compiling antisemitism incidents.
The commission was presented with an anti-Semitic and sexualized caricature of Nathan posted online as an example of the attacks directed at him following the publication of the council’s reports on anti-Semitic incidents.
“It was terrible to see,” Nathan said. But as a researcher, he told himself to “pull yourself together… you have to catch this.”
He also told the commission that any criticism evoking Nazi Germany or anti-Semitic tropes should be counted as antisemitic.
“I have very strict rules for determining when something anti-Israeli is anti-Semitic,” Nathan said.
The hearing will continue on Tuesday.
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