Anger at Jewish corruption jibe

THE makers of a YouTube video urging Australians not to vote for the federal Liberal Party have apologised for using an antisemitic trope about Jews, money and power.

The 10-minute film, published by Australian organisation the Pragmatic and Empirically Guided Solutions Institute (PEGS), on June 21, addresses what it describes as negative points about the Liberals since they came to power in 2013, among them allegations of corruption.

The corruption issue is illustrated by a sequence featuring two pairs of hands, one passing banknotes to the other.

In an early version that remained online for several days, the man receiving the money is wearing a tallit (prayer shawl). A voiceover states, “The Liberal government dropped Australia from seventh least corruptible country to 13th by 2018.”

After The AJN approached the PEGS Institute, the creators blurred out the tallit scene. PEGS editor Jackson Winter stated, “I would like to offer my sincere apologies for any contribution to stereotypes the use of this clip has made.

“We did take care in sourcing clips to avoid harmful connections where possible, but I have clearly missed this one. I have reviewed this clip and I can see now that in context of other clips from that stock footage producer, the tallit is obvious. I sincerely didn’t identify any Jewish imagery while putting this video together … This clip was chosen as the figures are wearing suits and they were intended to illustrate politicians. No connection to Judaism was intended at all.”

Executive Council of Australian Jewry research director Julie Nathan told The AJN the segment “not only invoked the insidious stereotype of Jews and money, but went further and presented an image of ‘the Jew’ as being the corrupter of politics and society”.

“It is commendable, once informed of the anti-Jewish content in its video, that the PEGS Institute has blurred the image of the tallit … and has apologised in an email to The AJN,” she said.

But she added that the organisation “now needs to publicly apologise and undertake to ensure that anti-Jewish vilification in its content does not occur again”.

Nathan noted this was not the first such incident – a video from Monash University last year portrayed a cheating character as a Jewish man, identified with skullcap and beard.

Monash University later edited the character in the video and issued an apology.