Royal Commission on cohesion hears only half the story

Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion is in danger of undermining its own cause by excluding evidence of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, writes Wayne Hawkins.

OF AUSTRALIA Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion It is currently in its third block of hearings in Sydney, continuing until July 10.

happened Founded in Januaryafter Bondi Beach attack The incident killed 15 people on a celebratory night. No one disputes that the Commission has real work to do. The increase in anti-Semitic incidents recorded since October 2023 is documented, serious, and deserves the strictest scrutiny our institutions can offer.

But an investigation into hatred reveals something about the person he decided not to hear from. And so this Commission has already answered the question.

In May, Noisy Jewish Collective applied for permission to appear at the first hearing to testify about its own members’ experiences of antisemitism. They were rejected; The Commissioner was “not satisfied” by the wording used to dismiss them that they had a direct and significant interest in the matter.

Australian Palestine Advocacy Network He met the same fate. Two organisations, both of which had members who had directly experienced antisemitism or anti-Palestinian racism, were both judged to be outside the scope of the hate and social cohesion inquiry in Australia.

I have a hard time reading this as anything other than a decision by Australians to define what harmony means.

Earlier this year I wrote a parliamentary submission arguing that Islamophobia is racism; I have argued that the same thing happened to a different group, not by analogy or as a lesser cousin of anti-Semitism, but structurally and mechanically. Collective blame. The demand that an entire community constantly prove its commitment only through the actions of those who share its faith. Recasting legitimate political victimization (in this case, mass civilian death in Gaza) as evidence of a danger from civilization.

These are not two separate phenomena that never talk to each other and require separate inquiries. They are often the same mechanism, directed in two directions simultaneously by the same actors in the same news cycle.

The Commission’s own proceedings have revealed the problem it was never asked to examine. Commissioner Virginia Bell described 7 October attackpassing by, a “Hamas occupation”A definition that quietly recasts a population that has been occupied for decades as an occupying force in its own territory.

Witnesses a SBS News The report in the second block of hearings said they were “tired” of seeing Palestinian flags at cultural events, overhearing artists’ calls for a free Palestine, and having to browse images of starvation in Gaza on their phones.

These are real discomforts and I do not ignore them. But an inquiry that treated the 45-second elevator ride past the harrowing news as significant harm, and denied entry to people experiencing the underlying disaster before a single recommendation was written, showed us where his sympathies lay.

This is not a call to rediscuss the Commission’s right to exist, or to alleviate the suffering of Australian Jews since the Bondi attack and long before it. This is a call to notice asymmetry, because asymmetry is the story itself.

No one asked Christian Australians to declare Christian nationalist violence as the price for speaking out on social cohesion. No one is demanding that Buddhist or Hindu Australians distance themselves from the documented nationalist violence against Muslim minorities in Myanmar and India before their statements are taken seriously. Only one aspect of scrutiny in this country currently requires the entire community to prove beforehand and as a condition of entry that it is not a latent threat.

I am not saying this to score points for the Commission. I say this because the same evening news that accurately reports, and without my objection, rising antisemitism in Australia, fails to report the parallel rise in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian abuse, mosques vandalized, women afraid to wear hijab in public, children who are implicitly told their faith makes them suspicious.

A Royal Commission with “social harmony” in its title, which is structurally unable to hear from the second largest group experiencing religious and racial hostility in this country, does not examine social harmony. It is examining half of a single problem and calling the result the whole.

The solution here is not complicated and does not require abandoning the Commission’s core purpose. The Commissioner must recognize that anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia are included in the same concept terms of reference as antisemitism, not outside of them; because they are produced by the same mechanism of collective blame, and a finding of “social cohesion” that investigates the cohesion of only one part of the country is not a finding at all.

Bell still has time to widen the door rather than defend its current width before his final report in December.

Naming a mechanism prematurely is not alarmism; this is the only thing that interrupts him before he completes his own course. Every Australian whose synagogue is vandalized, a mosque bombed, or their headscarf snatched in the street deserves the same seriousness from the institutions that seek to protect them. Research that extends this seriousness in only one direction does not constitute harmony. He chooses sides while insisting that he is not.