The Australian Gov’t Must Answer for Antisemitism
A Royal Commission into antisemitism will have little credibility if it investigates everyone except those who were responsible for Australia’s response to the worst surge in anti-Jewish hatred since the Second World War.
Since October 7, Jewish schools have become fortresses, synagogues have required unprecedented security, businesses have been vandalized, individuals harassed, doxed and attached and many Australian Jews have come to question whether their own government truly appreciated the scale of the crisis.
That should concern every Australian. History has repeatedly shown that antisemitism is rarely confined to Jews alone. It is often the first indicator that a society’s democratic values and social cohesion are beginning to erode.
If the Commission is serious about identifying how Australia reached this point, it cannot simply catalogue antisemitic incidents or prosecute individual offenders. It must examine whether government decisions, public messaging and institutional leadership adequately responded to the warning signs.
That means hearing from the people who led the Government’s response: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.
Former Australia Jewish Association president David Adler has argued that the Albanese Government should answer for decisions that “significantly incited antisemitism and emboldened activists.” He has singled out Albanese, Wong and Burke as the ministers he believes bear the greatest political responsibility for the Government’s response.
I certainly agree with Adler’s assessment but that’s beside the point. His criticism raises questions that a Royal Commission exists to answer, not through political argument, but through evidence.
One example deserving close scrutiny is the Government’s response to the explosion at the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza in October 2023. Hamas-run authorities immediately claimed that an Israeli airstrike had killed around 500 people. Those allegations spread rapidly around the world and prompted swift international condemnation of Israel, including harsh statements from Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong.
In the days that followed, assessments by Western governments and independent analysts concluded that the explosion was most likely caused by a misfired rocket launched from within Gaza, widely attributed to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They also concluded that the initial casualty figures had been significantly overstated and that the explosion occurred in the hospital’s car park rather than destroying the hospital itself.
The issue is not whether ministers acted in good faith. It is whether sufficient caution was exercised before publicly responding to one of the most contested incidents of the war and whether the Government gave comparable prominence to correcting the public narrative once credible evidence emerged challenging the original claims. In an age of information warfare, governments have a responsibility not only to speak quickly but to speak accurately.
The Commission should also consider how Australia’s rhetoric was perceived beyond our own borders.
Hamas is not merely another political actor. It is a listed terrorist organization that wages propaganda as aggressively as it wages war, even against its own people. It has consistently sought to portray growing international criticism of Israel as vindication of its own strategy. When a terrorist organization publicly welcomes developments it believes advance its objectives, alarm bells should ring.
The Government’s handling of the first days after October 7 also deserves close examination. On 9 October 2023, the sails of the Sydney Opera House were illuminated in solidarity with Israel following Hamas’s massacre. Instead of becoming a moment of national unity after the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, the precinct became the scene of a hostile anti-Israel protest with chants to “gas the Jews” and “F*** the Jews” recorded. Police advised members of the Jewish community to avoid the area because of security concerns, and allegations of antisemitic chanting quickly became the focus of national attention.
For many Jewish Australians, that night became symbolic of something much larger than a single protest. It was an early indication that antisemitism was no longer confined to the political fringe. The Royal Commission should examine whether governments recognised the significance of that moment and whether it prompted the level of national response the circumstances demanded.
The Commission should also examine the Government’s response to the sustained pro-Palestinian demonstrations that dominated Australia’s cities in the months that followed.
Australians have every right to peaceful protest. But that right does not extend to glorifying terrorist organisations, intimidating minority communities or normalising rhetoric that many regard as incitement to violence.
As demonstrations continued, slogans invoking a “global intifada” became increasingly commonplace. For many Australians that phrase may sound like a call for resistance. It’s not! For Jews, it evokes memories of 2 intifadas where suicide bombings, buses destroyed by explosives, cafés reduced to rubble and civilians murdered simply because they were Jewish or Israeli. At the time of the second intifada, Albanese was leading anti-Israel protests yelling into his megaphone.
Many Jewish organizations repeatedly warned that extremist rhetoric was becoming normalized. Whether governments, police and security agencies responded with sufficient urgency is a question the Royal Commission should answer.
The inquiry should also examine whether Australia’s immigration powers were applied consistently. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has exercised his discretion to cancel or refuse visas for a number of Israeli public figures on the basis that their presence could undermine social cohesion or public order. While listening to loud pro-Palestinian activists, he allowed Islamic hate preachers to enter the country.
Whether those individual decisions were justified is not the central question. The broader issue is whether the same standards were consistently applied to foreign nationals alleged to have promoted antisemitism, glorified terrorist organisations or preached religious hatred. If the threshold for excluding Israeli speakers was the risk of inflaming community tensions, the Royal Commission should examine whether that threshold was applied equally to all forms of extremism.
Throughout this period, Australia’s security agencies warned of a deteriorating threat environment. Those warnings should have prompted an equally visible political response. The first duty of government is to protect its citizens. The Jewish community has long been described as the canary in the coal mine. When antisemitism escalates, history suggests it is often a warning that broader democratic norms and social cohesion are under threat.
Ultimately, this is not about assigning blame before evidence is heard. It is about accountability.
Royal Commissions routinely compel ministers, senior public servants and institutional leaders to explain decisions made under their authority. Governments do not establish Royal Commissions in order to exempt themselves from scrutiny.
If Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong and Tony Burke believe their leadership strengthened social cohesion and helped combat Australia’s antisemitism crisis, they should welcome the opportunity to explain and defend that record under oath.
If the Royal Commission is unwilling to ask difficult questions of those who exercised the greatest authority, it risks becoming an inquiry into symptoms rather than causes.
Australia deserves better than that.