Antisemitism crisis. What is real and what is not

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a Royal Commission into the Bondi Beach Attacks and antisemitism. Andrew Brown It considers the evidence about Australia’s ‘antisemitism crisis’.

Australia is said to be facing an unprecedented wave of antisemitism, a crisis that requires extraordinary measures, including a Royal Commission. But police data, court findings and parliamentary evidence tell a very different story.

This is not a story about denying antisemitism. It’s about how exaggerated claims are used to silence criticism of Israel, criminalize protests, and narrow democratic space.

Australia is said to be facing a moral emergency serious enough to justify extraordinary measures. An unprecedented broad wave of antisemitism is said to have gripped the country, demanding greater police scrutiny, massive public funding and now a Commonwealth Royal Commission.

Is it a manufactured narrative?

The claim has been repeated so often that it has become common sense. However, when examined based on evidence rather than repetition, the crisis begins to resolve. What remains is not the escalation of anti-Semitic violence, but the production of a narrative.

and his rapid rise to state doctrine.

This is not a rejection of antisemitism. Antisemitism is real, it is dangerous, and it must be combated wherever it occurs. What is challenged here is the scale, framework and political use of the claim. The alleged crisis collapses when slogans replace evidence.

Start with numbers. Australians have been repeatedly told there have been around 1,200 anti-Semitic incidents in New South Wales and more than 2,000 across the country. These figures are considered established facts by politicians and the media.

They are nothing like that.

Facts and evidence missing from claims that antisemitism is on the rise

These are not police statistics. These are not court results.

These are self-reported records of incidents compiled by advocacy organizations that use broad definitions that reduce political discourse to racial hatred. Protest slogans, Palestinian flags, stickers, online criticism of Israel, anti-Zionism, and support for Boycott Divestments and Sanctions are among the truly hateful behaviors.

Dissent was counted as hatred

When dissent is counted as hatred, the number increases and its meaning evaporates.

When these claims were tested through official government processes, the picture changed radically. Evidence from the New South Wales Upper House inquiry into antisemitism showed that only approximately 13 to 14 incidents met the threshold for potential criminal prosecution. New South Wales Police did not object.

The number of 1,200 incidents to low double-digit fee incidents is not a rounding error. This is a categorical difference. If Australia were facing a real wave of anti-Semitic violence, police data and court proceedings would reflect it. They don’t.

Fake terrorist plans

The panic was sustained by a series of high-profile incidents that did not stand up to scrutiny. In Sydney, the so-called caravan plot and multiple incidents of graffiti and vehicle fires were initially framed as anti-Semitic attacks. Later reports revealed hoaxes, staged events, or criminal activity unrelated to antisemitism as a social phenomenon. The fixes came quietly, long after the alarm had taken effect.

The Melbourne Synagogue fire was said to be the work of Iran, so it cannot be seen as a result of local antisemitism.

Worse still was evidence from police investigations that hundreds of reports of antisemitic incidents were generated by a single person, identified as a Jewish teenager, who made more than 500 calls alleging threats and attacks. These reports were recorded, counted, and publicly relied upon as indicators of a statewide and national surge before being identified as fake or self-generated.

This is not a footnote. It reveals a systemic malfunction. A reporting framework that allows one to materially inflate incident figures does not measure societal harm. He produces it. When this data is amplified by the media and cited by politicians as evidence of the crisis, the error ceases to be technical. It becomes political.

Political expansion was decisive. Senior leaders made the allegations before the facts emerged. The media followed him. The first allegations made headlines. Explanations barely whispered.

Social memory preserved fear, not correction.

What is unfolding follows the pattern described decades ago by Noam Chomsky, who observed that modern democracies rarely suppress dissent by force. Instead, they manage perception by narrowing the range of acceptable views while maintaining the appearance of open debate.

Australians are still allowed to speak. They are encouraged to condemn antisemitism in the abstract. But questioning the extent of the alleged crisis, questioning the figures, or insisting on a distinction between Jew-hatred and criticism of Israel is treated as suspect. This is not censorship. This is calibration.

Narrative of fake protesters

The results were most visible in the handling of protests. Australia has witnessed one of the largest sustained protest movements in its modern history; Tens of thousands of people attended weekly demonstrations in support of Palestine.

Jewish Australians are marching openly.

Jewish speakers address the crowd. Jewish banners appear next to Palestinian banners. The focus is on ceasefire and accountability.

But these protests are relentlessly framed as incubators of anti-Semitism.

The misrepresentation following the meeting near the Sydney Opera House on 8 October was symbolic. Allegations of chanting genocide slogans were published nationally and internationally. Those present openly disputed the account. The controversial version has been strengthened. Those who refused were marginalized. A controversial moment has been frozen in its most provocative interpretation and repurposed as an origin myth.

Sydney Harbor Bridge propaganda

The rupture became impossible to ignore after the Harbor Bridge march, one of the largest demonstrations in Australian history. There is no violence. No arrests. Australian Jews are marching openly. But the event was branded a hate march by the government’s ambassador for antisemitism.

If a peaceful protest on this scale can be declared hate without evidence, then antisemitism is no longer defined. It is reported. And once declared, it can be weaponized.

This weaponization has a clear purpose: to stop criticism of Israel.

As Israel’s war in Gaza intensified and the occupation of the West Bank deepened, international conversations shifted towards allegations of genocide, apartheid and war crimes. Instead of responding to these accusations, Israel’s defenders have sought to redefine the debate itself. The problem is no longer what Israel does. The problem is with those who say this.

Criticism of Israel is being reframed as antisemitism. Anti-Zionism is reframed as racist hatred. Support for Palestinian rights is reframed as extremism. Pro-Palestinian protest is being reframed as an internal security issue rather than a human rights movement responding to mass civilian harm.

end game

This brings us to the end of the game. The government is now free to establish a Commonwealth Royal Commission into antisemitism. The question is not whether there is a wave of anti-Semitism across the country. It assumes there is one.

The mission proceeds from the opening statement on the basis that antisemitism is pervasive in Australian society and institutions and that protest, education and political expression require scrutiny. These are not hypotheses to be tested. These are already conclusions.

This is not a fact-finding exercise. This is an application study.

Many Australian Jews reject this strategy and openly side with the Palestinians. The problem is not Jewish identity. This is the instrumentalization of allegations of antisemitism to silence dissenters, suppress protests, and protect a foreign state from accountability.

If anti-Semitism exists, it should always be combated.

But evidence must come before power.

Anything less is theatre.

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