When the Media Put Jewish Witnesses on Trial

There is something wrong with the way parts of the media are approaching antisemitism.

A recent article in Deepcut News made the problem plain in its own title: “If the Royal Commission is serious about antisemitism, it should look at the Israel lobby.” It was written by Louise Adler, a prominent figure in Australian cultural life: former CEO and Publisher in Chief of Melbourne University Publishing, former director of Adelaide Writers’ Week, former publisher at large at Hachette Australia, and a long-standing voice in Australian letters.

That background matters.

This was not an anonymous social media post. It was a serious intervention by a well-known cultural figure, published at a moment when Jewish Australians are giving evidence to a Royal Commission established after the Bondi terrorist attack. And its effect was to shift attention away from antisemitism and towards the Jewish organisations and advocates speaking about it.

That is the pattern.

It begins by assuring readers that antisemitism is wrong and that Jewish Australians should be safe. Then, almost immediately, it turns away from antisemitism itself and towards the Jews who are naming it.

The witness is no longer quite a witness. Fear becomes anxiety. Evidence becomes lobbying. The Jewish connection to Israel, which for many Jews is bound up with family, history, faith, memory, and survival, is treated as a political defect.

That is not serious scrutiny. It is part of the problem.

The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion was created because something in this country has gone badly wrong. Since October 7, Jewish Australians have felt the atmosphere change around them. On campuses, in schools, in workplaces, in hospitals, in the arts, on the street and online, many have found themselves treated not as Australians, but as stand ins for a foreign government, a war, an army or a conflict they do not control.

Then came Bondi, and no one could pretend this was theoretical.

Yet as Jewish Australians give evidence before a national inquiry, some media voices have chosen to turn the process back on them. Not by testing evidence, which any Royal Commission should allow, but by sneering at the very act of giving evidence.

A Jewish person describes fear, and the response is to ask whether that fear is exaggerated. A Jewish student describes exclusion, and the response is to suggest they are really just a Zionist activist. A Jewish professional describes hostility at work, and the response is to imply their politics invited it.

It is a neat little trap.

If Jews speak about Israel, they are told they have made themselves responsible for everything Israel does. If they say they are not responsible, they are accused of hypocrisy. If they speak about antisemitism, they are accused of weaponising it. If they stay quiet, their silence is treated as consent.

At the centre of this framing is an ugly idea: that Zionist Jews cannot be trusted as witnesses to antisemitism.

That should alarm anyone who cares about democratic life.

Zionism, in its simplest form, is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. It is not a fringe obsession within Jewish life. Israeli governments can be criticised. Israelis criticise them every day. Jews criticise them every day.

But treating Jewish attachment to Israel as evidence of bad faith is something else entirely. It tells a large part of the Jewish community they are disqualified from being believed before they have even spoken.

That is not scrutiny. It is exclusion dressed up as sophistication.

The Royal Commission has heard from people describing a rupture in Australian Jewish life: abuse, exclusion, professional isolation, fear, and the quieter collapse of trust in institutions that once felt safe. These stories will not all fit neatly into a legal definition. That is why a Royal Commission exists: to hear, test and understand evidence in a serious way.

But there is a difference between testing evidence and mocking the people who provide it.

There is something particularly cruel about ridiculing Jews for describing fear. Fear is not always irrational. Sometimes fear is memory doing its job. Jewish history teaches people to notice shifts in language, atmosphere, slogans, symbols, and silence.

That does not mean every uncomfortable moment is antisemitism. It does not mean every criticism of Israel is antisemitism. It does not mean every claim made to the Royal Commission should pass without examination.

But examination is not contempt.

When media commentary dismisses Jewish evidence as lobbying, or Jewish fear as paranoia, it draws from one of the oldest and most corrosive ideas about Jews: that when Jews ask for protection, what they are really doing is exercising power.

This is how antisemitism protects itself in polite society. It does not always deny Jewish suffering outright. Sometimes it says the suffering has been exaggerated. Sometimes it says Jews brought it on themselves. Sometimes it says the real problem is not antisemitism, but the Jews who keep talking about it.

A free press should interrogate power. It should test claims. It should scrutinise institutions, including Royal Commissions. But it should not casually humiliate witnesses. It should not frame Jewish citizens who give evidence as political operatives. It should not turn a national inquiry into antisemitism into a story about supposed Jewish influence.

No community should be asked to amputate part of its identity in order to be heard.

Jewish Australians are entitled to care about Australia and Israel. They are entitled to oppose antisemitism and support Jewish self-determination. They are entitled to grieve Israeli victims and Palestinian suffering. They are entitled to hold complex views without being reduced to caricatures.

Most of all, they are entitled to give evidence without being publicly shamed for it.

It is easy to oppose antisemitism in the abstract. It is much harder to listen when Jews explain how it appears in Australian life.

It appears when Jewish students are told their identity makes others unsafe. It appears when Jewish professionals feel pressure to hide part of themselves at work. It appears when “Zionist” is spat out as an insult. It appears when Jewish fear is treated not as evidence of a problem, but as proof of Jewish paranoia.

And it appears when witnesses to antisemitism are turned into the accused.

Australia should be better than this. Its media should be better than this.

The Royal Commission is a test of whether Australia can allow Jewish citizens to describe antisemitism without punishing them for doing so. It is also a test of whether the media can report on Jewish pain without turning it into another occasion for suspicion.

Because if even a Royal Commission cannot hear Jewish witnesses without media voices trying to discredit them, then the problem is not imagined.