NSW antisemitism hearings drowned in the Bondi Royal Commission

The NSW Parliament’s report on antisemitism was sent to the Bondi Royal Commission, avoiding conflicting views and rigorous questioning. StephenLawrence It says MLC.

Throughout 2025, I served on Australia’s first parliamentary inquiry into society-wide antisemitism. We had not yet completed a report when the Bondi terrorist atrocity occurred and I supported the decision to send our evidence to the Royal Commission.

A notable feature of our research was the care taken to test evidence and claims through robust questioning.

This involved vigorous testing of key witnesses on the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel and other key claims and demands of Jewish representative groups with a Zionist perspective.

This did not please all the witnesses; for example, leading Lynda Ben-Menashe, President of the National Council of Jewish Women, to later publicly label me the “Gaslighter of NSW”. This was to dare to suggest that false conflation of Israel with the Australian Jewish community could lead to antisemitism.

In my limited observations of the Royal Commission so far, this level of scrutiny does not appear to exist, especially

witnesses attempted to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

The evidence in our investigation made clear the absolute centrality of this association to Zionist advocacy in Australia; This is not a new phenomenon, as former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban famously said regarding his work, “The fundamental task of any dialogue with the non-Jewish world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not really a distinction.”

But this merger appears to make antisemitism worse.

We do not criticize Israel as antisemitic

In its evidence, the Jewish Council of Australia cited “a politicized and divisive discourse that seeks to label any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, thereby increasing antisemitism by linking Jewish identities to the state of Israel and its human rights abuses.”

The key insight I gained from the research is that political leaders must exercise restraint and responsibility in not treating the Jewish community as a monolith (itself an anti-Semitic trope), but they must also exercise restraint and responsibility in how we respond to the political demands of pro-Israel Jewish representative groups.

Of course, we should treat these groups as important voices and witnesses on antisemitism and recognize their right to lobby, but if we delegate policy development to them,

Inefficient policies focused on criticizing Israel will inevitably be the result.

This was certainly the case with the appointment of Jillian Segal, who, as I pointed out to her in our investigation, had no clear expertise on the fundamental question of how to reduce racism in a community.

Special Envoy Jillian Segal admits Harbor Bridge march not anti-Semitic

Long before Bondi, Ms. Segal played a central role in calling for a ban on pro-Palestinian protests in major cities, undoubtedly contributing to the divisive and unconstitutional ban on post-Bondi protests.

I disagreed with Ms. Segal in the investigation into whether this request was truly harmful because such bans would be unconstitutional and calls for such bans created fear and argued that the Jewish community was not being deliberately protected. Unsurprisingly, he disagreed.

Shared understanding is missing

Another theme of the inquiry was the importance of dialogue at the community level, building common understanding between communities on both sides of the conflict.

I explained to several witnesses that maybe this should be a two-way street.

On the one hand, non-Jewish communities are gaining an understanding of Jewish history, why Israel is so important to so many Jews, and why tropes of antisemitism are wrong.

On the other hand, Jewish people gaining an understanding of Palestinian history could perhaps reduce the perception of antisemitism resulting from Palestinian activism.

In this context, I asked Ms. Segal, “Could there be a role for education within the Jewish community about the history of the Palestinian people?” “Education is always valuable, but the focus of the plan is on protecting Australians from hate, not asking vulnerable communities to adjust their sensitivity to it.”

Similar evidence emerged from Jewish community advocate Mr. Joshua Kirsch, and I asked him:

“Do you think there are ways to deepen the understanding of community on both “sides,” if I may use that term, to create greater harmony between understandings or to better understand the other’s point of view? We have heard evidence that there are perceptions that antisemitism themselves have a detrimental effect, and that people are interpreting events in a literal way as antisemitism that is not the purpose of antisemitism, such as what Palestinians might say about their situation.”

He replied: “I think my priority as a Jew and as a person involved with Jewish organizations is not to educate the Jewish people about why their feelings are not valid.”

Indeed, what is clear from the evidence is that many of the political demands of pro-Israel groups are actively

preventing the development of anything resembling a common understanding of history.

This emerged directly at the inquiry when I questioned Will Nemesh, the Mayor of Waverley, whose council had adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which suggests that labeling Israel as a ‘racist endeavour’ is antisemitic.

“If you had a Palestinian resident who came to you and said, ‘I was deported from what is now Israel in 1967. I was denied the right to return. I think Israel is a racist enterprise,’ was that person an anti-Semite?”

Namesh replied, “There are strong views on Israel and Palestine. The important thing is to understand that there are two peoples and both claim to be connected to the land. I think both are very valid.”

It seemed to me that the IHRA definition was hardly tenable in this public exchange, because to do so would be to deny Palestinian history and identity in an absurdly direct and reckless manner.

But it will inevitably continue to be defended by many Jewish representative groups.

Zionist denials

In this context, prominent Australian Zionist Alex Ryvchin joined the investigation and directly denied that any ethnic cleansing took place during the founding of Israel.

A level of denialism that is at odds with the historical record and is difficult to reconcile with a dedicated commitment to intercommunal dialogue. The evidence from our investigation has convinced me that ensuring our Jewish community is not confused with Israel is central to combating rising antisemitism.

Future Australian political leaders may return from Israel impressed by unpaid study tours; but the difficult, albeit obvious, truth is that Israel is an Apartheid state based on ethnic cleansing, a premeditated determination to create a Jewish super-majority, and subsequent denial of the right of return.

The world’s expert human rights organizations do not have this misconception.

These facts, the criminality of the destruction of Gaza and Israel’s increasingly expansionist tendencies, mean that Israel will continue to attract a growing storm of criticism.

But Australia is a free society and our Jewish community is allowed to support Israel and Zionism as much as it wishes. No other community in Australia would be expected to distance themselves from a country with which they identify, no matter how illiberal and criminal its government, and this should never be demanded of any section of our Jewish community.

Ultimately, the only responsible for the actions of the State of Israel are the officials of that state.

While most people agree on this statement, the difficulty arises in how broader narratives and policies affect society, including the conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

It is in this fiendishly difficult context that we look to Royal Commissioner Bell to show us a way out of the downward and divisive spiral we are in.

He will really need the wisdom of Solomon to unravel the growing knot of antisemitism in Australia.

Bondi Royal Commission. Telling the truth and indisputable lies