Australia leads fight against vilification

A DOCUMENT being prepared in Australia will hopefully change the face of racial vilification globally.

Peter Wertheim, the executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), has drafted a new international treaty to combat racial vilification, including anti-Semitism, particularly that found online and on satellite TV.

He plans to present the draft at the 2010 Conference on Combatting Anti-Semitism next week in Canada.

He will be joined at the conference by an Australian delegation, which includes Labor MP Michael Danby, Liberal senator Scott Ryan and community advocates Jeremy Jones, Andre Oboler and James Altman.

“The original international treaty that dealt with the subject of racial vilification was drafted in 1965, decades before that technology,” Wertheim said, referring to the United Nations’ International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Vilification.

Virulent websites, which remain unmoderated, and satellite television, such as Hezbollah’s Al-Manar network, are today some of the worst disseminators of anti-Semitism globally.

The proposed convention, which has already been raised with conference chair and Canadian MP Irwin Cotler, would aim to prevent the dissemination of racist material across borders. Ideally, it would be ratified by all UN member states.

Among the Australian delegation, the only non-Jewish representative is Senator Ryan. While not attending in an official representative capacity, the Victorian senator said anti-Semitism is a topic he feels very strongly about.

“It being the first time I’ve gone, I’ll be listening more than talking,” he told The AJN.

A vigilance about anti-Semitism, particularly the security-related implications of extreme anti-Semitism, are at the top of his mind, he said.

Asked why he was interested in going, Senator Ryan explained that despite growing up in cosmopolitan Melbourne, he had never knowingly met a Jewish person until going to university.

As a history student, he was appalled to learn about the Holocaust, and said the knowledge of what had happened during that time sparked him to find out more and eventually tour Eastern Europe to see the remnants for himself.

Since then, the senator has become a keen friend of the Jewish community and has taken an interest in ensuring students are taught the Holocaust.

Asked on the eve of his departure for the Ottawa conference whether he thought racism was a problem in Australia, Senator Ryan was optimistic.

“I think Australia’s track record is very good,” he said. “I wouldn’t say Australia is a racist society at all.” But he added, “you always need to remain vigilant about it”.

The three-day 2010 Conference on Combatting Anti-Semitism is hosted by the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism. Parliamentarians and experts from 40 countries are expected to attend and recommendations from the conference will be used to try and stop one of the world’s most enduring forms of discrimination.

PHOTO: Peter Wertheim

NAOMI LEVIN