The Question That Must Precede The Royal Commission
The Australian Government has just announced it will hold a Royal Commission in response to the Bondi terrorist attack. Jewish Australians are being encouraged to see this as a serious step.
Before anything moves forward, before terms of reference are drafted, before scope or timeframes are agreed, Jewish organisations need to insist on one thing. Without it, any Royal Commission risks being structurally incapable of addressing the problem it is meant to examine.
In Australia today, contemporary Jew-hatred most commonly presents as antizionism. It involves the targeting, delegitimisation and collective vilification of Jews through hostility to Israel’s right to exist.
This is no longer marginal. Slogans such as “from the river to the sea”, which explicitly call for the destruction of the Jewish state, are now commonplace at protests, on campuses, in workplaces and online. These are not abstract political critiques. They are eliminationist demands, and Jewish communities experience them as such.
The Bondi attack did not occur in isolation. It followed years in which this form of hostility has been normalised and left largely unaddressed. That failure makes one question unavoidable: whether Australian law even recognises this form of discrimination.
Before agreeing to participate in, endorse, or legitimise any Royal Commission, Jewish organisations should require the Australian Government to seek and publish a clear answer from the Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissions, at both state and federal level, to a simple question:
Is Zionism a protected attribute under Australian anti-discrimination and equal opportunity law?
This is not a technical detail to be resolved later. It is the threshold issue.
If Zionism is a protected attribute, because it is central to Jewish identity for most Jews, then existing laws are not being enforced. Discrimination is occurring openly across universities, healthcare, unions, professional bodies and other public institutions.
If Zionism is not protected, then Jewish Australians are being told that a core part of their identity falls outside legal protection altogether.
Either conclusion carries serious consequences. Proceeding to terms of reference without clarity avoids them.
An inquiry cannot meaningfully assess institutional failure if it has not first established whether the harm being experienced is even recognised in law.
Any Royal Commission would also need to clearly define Zionism in its terms of reference. That definition must reflect how Jews understand the concept, not how it is framed by those hostile to it.
Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to live as a people in their own country, where they govern themselves and determine their own future. It is not a political party, a government, or a set of policies. It is the application of a principle accepted for other peoples around the world: that a people has the right to exist collectively and shape its own destiny.
Denying that right to Jews, while affirming it for others, applies a standard to Jews that is applied to no one else. When hostility to Zionism takes the form of denying Jews this right, while supporting it for others, it is not a political disagreement. It is discrimination, and in Australia today, it has become a central expression of contemporary Jew-hatred.
If Zionism is left undefined, or if its meaning is shaped by those who oppose it, the outcome of any inquiry is predictable. Incidents may be documented, but their underlying ideology will remain unnamed.
Is Zionism a protected attribute under Australian anti-discrimination and equal opportunity law?
This problem is already visible. After Bondi, the government committed to implementing the Special Envoy’s Plan to Combat antisemitism. Yet Zionism appears only briefly in that plan, and antizionism not at all. What is not explicitly named cannot be systematically measured or addressed.
Royal Commissions are shaped by their terms of reference. Once set, they rarely expand. Gaps at the beginning tend to carry through to the end.
Jewish Australians should not be asked to agree to the terms of reference of a Royal Commission without first knowing whether the law protects them, or whether the core principle under sustained attack, Zionism, will even be recognised within the inquiry.
Before any terms of reference are finalised, the government must answer this question. Jewish organisations should insist on it.
Anything less risks repeating the failures of the past.
