Antisemitism and Islamophobia are not the same
Antisemitism and Islamophobia have very different histories, reasons, intensities, culprits and victims.
Recently a 16-year-old boy was arrested following an alleged online threat to a Sydney mosque that referenced the 2019 Christchurch mosque attack in which over 50 worshippers were murdered. The Prime Minister condemned the alleged threat saying, “Islamophobia will not be tolerated.”
There were also recent attacks on two hijab-wearing women in the Melbourne suburb of Epping. It is to be condemned. Anthony Albanese’s mantra speaks a truth: Islamophobia and antisemitism are both unacceptable. But he has created a false equivalence: the two are very different.
Antisemitism is distinct and more complex. It’s the oldest and the deadliest group hatred. Jews are targeted not only as a religion but also as a race, ethnicity and nation. Jews are this country’s principal hate target: synagogue arson, car firebombings, home and office vandalism, doxxing and hate speech are all intended to intimidate Australian Jews.
In Islamophobia, the “phobia” is a fear of societal violence. This isn’t mere irrational prejudice. Islam is associated with terrorism because a small but significant proportion of Muslims support it as global resistance to Zionist and Western oppression or as the path to sharia rule. Terrorism is intended to cause fear.
Australian politicians are also afraid. When they mention antisemitism, they also mention Islamophobia for fear of disregarding our Muslim communities. Police commissioners practise “pragmatic policing” that avoids enforcement against hate speech and public disorder at public rallies.
Senator Fatima Payman and cricketer Usman Khawaja both argued the Epping attacks showed that Islamophobia should be our focus at least as much as antisemitism. But this just serves a deceptive red herring. It diverts attention away from the culprits perpetrating antisemitic acts. Antisemitism is preached in some Australian mosques, and some Islamic leaders welcomed the October 7 Hamas massacre. It’s so normalised that Muslim organisations defend nurses who brag on social media about murdering Jews in their care.
A year ago, ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said pro-Palestine rallies were a useful pressure release. But he pointed out in his 2025 Annual Threat Assessment that narratives that originally focused on “freeing Palestine” had expanded to include incitements to kill Jews.
Even talking about antisemitism is seen as Islamophobic and is subjected to gaslighting. Now we have Australian Sheik Ibrahim Dadoun absurdly claiming that the wave of antisemitism here was likely manufactured by a Mossad conspiracy.
Sydney Jews were expected to take comfort from the news last week that violent antisemitic attacks in Sydney were not primarily a grassroots phenomenon. Yet, how much comfort is there in the new knowledge that, instead, Muslim organised crime with access to firearms, explosives, criminal networks and methods is using petty criminals to target Sydney Jews? Were the mixed motives of the lead criminals less antisemitic?
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has been keeping statistics on formally reported antisemitic attacks for decades. ECAJ’s definition of an attack excludes speech and social media posts that don’t contain specific threats of violence. It captured 2062 incidents in 2024. If online antisemitic abuse were included, the number would be closer to 6700.
The Islamophobia Register of Australia claimed 932 incidents during 2024, including online abuse. It has just released a report on the increase in Islamophobia since the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre.
According to the 2021 Census, 813,000 Muslims made up 3.2 per cent of the population, which is likely to be 900,000 today. Taking into consideration that Australia’s 115,000 Jews are about an eighth of the size of our Muslim population, it’s possible to see the relative intensity of the two problems: for Jews it’s worse by about 60 to one.
Senator James Paterson has pointed out that one of the reasons we talk more about antisemitism than about violence against Australian Muslims is because it’s far more prevalent and prolific.
Moreover, no rabbi in Australia has preached hate against Muslim communities and Jews aren’t a significant source of Islamophobic attacks.
Yet the ABC would have us think that antisemitism and Islamophobia are equivalent. It’s to the great shame of our national broadcaster that it has failed to cover antisemitism in Australia in any meaningful way. Similarly, the Australian Human Rights Commission buries antisemitism under tired concepts of intersectional and structural racism.
National resolve and firm action are needed to respond to both Islamophobia and antisemitism. But the two illnesses have very different histories, reasons, intensities, culprits, victims and even cures. The first step is to understand the differences between them.
Greg Rose is co-author of Two States For Two Peoples: The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. Anthony Bergin is a senior fellow at Strategic Analysis Australia. A version of this article first appeared in the Australian Financial Review.
comments