📰 Volltext
tags: [palestine]
📝 Zusammenfassung
Shahram Akbarzadeh (Deakin University) kritisiert die australische Royal Commission zu Antisemitismus: Die Übernahme der IHRA-Definition, die Kritik an Israel als antisemitisch einstuft, erstickt die Debatte über Gaza und das Westjordanland. Er argumentiert für eine klare Trennung: Hass gegen Juden ist Antisemitismus -- Kritik an einer ausländischen Regierung ist es nicht. Die Kommission riskiere, den Antisemitismus zu verstärken, den sie bekämpfen soll.
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tags: [palestine]
📰 Volltext (Al Jazeera) -- Shahram Akbarzadeh, 2. Juni 2026
Suggestions that criticism of the State of Israel is anti-Semitic in Australia risk hardwiring a dangerous confusion. Questioning the behaviour of a foreign state is not the same as denigrating or attacking a people who may have links with that state.
On December 14, 2025, as Jewish families gathered near Sydney's Bondi Beach to celebrate Hanukkah, two gunmen opened fire, killing 15 people. In response, the federal government set up a Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, led by former High Court justice Virginia Bell. On April 30, 2026, the commission delivered its interim report, raising serious concerns about how we define anti-Semitism.
The commission has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism. The IHRA offers examples that include criticism of Israel as evidence of anti-Semitism. But such a broad definition collapses critical commentary on Israel's policy in Gaza, its treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Israeli officials' dehumanising comments about Palestinians into a racist attack on Australia's Jews.
This is not an abstract question. The blurring of these categories acts as a brake on public debate. It narrows the range of permissible language used to describe Israel's conduct in Gaza, where Australians have watched entire neighbourhoods destroyed and tens of thousands of civilians killed.
The official line from governments in relation to Israel is that Israel has a "right to exist" and an obligation to defend its citizens, which appears to give Israel carte blanche to decimate the entire Gaza Strip. But no other state enjoys this exceptional treatment. Australia has that right, but that right has never shielded governments in Canberra from fierce criticism.
When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to the Stolen Generations in 2008, Australia's legitimacy as a state was not under threat. Yet in debates about Israel, the invocation of the "right to exist" and anti-Semitism operates as a conversation stopper. We cannot talk about occupation, apartheid and war crimes because that is anti-Semitic.
The commission was established in response to a real and deeply upsetting surge in anti-Semitic violence. But its framework could cast suspicion on genuine inquiry into the behaviour of Israel. It entrenches a form of exceptionalism that actually weakens Australia's democratic norms.
A liberal society must be able to draw a clear line: hatred, discrimination or violence against Jews is anti-Semitic and unacceptable; criticism of a foreign government is not.
There is also a cost to Jewish Australians when that line is blurred. Public debate routinely treats "the Jewish community" as a single, pro-Israel bloc. Many Australian Jews are alarmed to see the destruction of Gaza in their name. Some have mobilised against Israel's actions.
To assume unanimous Jewish support for Israeli actions is to deny Jewish Australians their agency. Worse, it risks casting Jewish dissenters as inauthentic. If policy settings cast such voices as anti-Semitic, they will be erased twice over: excluded from the definition of the community and penalised for speaking up.
If public institutions reinforce the idea that criticism of Israel is criticism of Jews, they risk feeding anti-Semitism.
Images of Gaza's destruction on the news have galvanised global public opinion. Many young Australians have marched for an end to Israeli policies. The message that such protests are anti-Semitic could not be any more counter-productive. That will only breed resentment against the Australian political system and, dangerously, feed the very anti-Semitic narratives the commission should be challenging.
Here are the standards the commission needs to uphold: First, an unambiguous distinction between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel. Second, a recognition of the diversity of Jewish opinion, including those who oppose Israel's actions. Third, a defence of political space for Palestinians and their allies to describe their experiences of occupation, dispossession and siege in their own terms.
Anti-Semitism in Australia is a threat to the Jewish community and the very foundation of our social cohesion. But seeking to address it by conflating critical views of the State of Israel with hatred of Jews will only make matters worse. Such approach will suppress debate, limit freedom of speech and entrench the very confusion that sustains anti-Semitism.
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tags: [palestine]