Avoiding fundamentals will mean an opportunity lost

Liberal NSW Senator Dave Sharma recently pointed out in an interview with The AJN that the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion had already achieved important things, especially providing insights for non-Jewish Australians into the lived experience of Jewish Australians. It was important for the rest of Australians to hear these things, because they realise “how unacceptable and intolerable it is” he said.

We can be confident that Royal Commissioner Virginia Bell will make some useful recommendations. The government will adopt some of them. The truth telling aspect of the Commission’s work, as Sharma notes, has been important. Easy recommendations will be made on school education, university culture, healthcare, extremism and social media. Overall, the commission’s work will have been a net plus.

But I worry that the commissioner will avoid more difficult recommendations that go to the fundamentals. I’d nominate the following six areas that I fear may not receive the central attention they deserve in the commission’s final report.

First, the commissioner must demonstrate she understands the links between criticism of Israel, antizionism and antisemitism. If she comes down on the side that “antizionism is merely a political position” and that it “can’t be antisemitism” then that would be a terrible outcome. If she doesn’t understand the linkages or misinterprets them, she’ll do damage to Australian society. That’s because it’s here that one of the principal modus of modern antisemitism can be found.

The second area that should be considered by the commission is Islamic antisemitism. It’s a wide field but ranges from the rejection of Israel’s legitimacy, the Koranic/Hadith roots of antisemitism, and looking at issues of foreign funding and propaganda organisations such as al Jazeera. Bondi didn’t occur in a vacuum: the commission should set out the Islamic State’s sustained call to target Jewish targets and what was done in response to this.

The Bondi attack was informed by the concept of violent jihad and the glorification of Muslim heroes who died for jihad. It was the deadliest jihadi attack in a western country since the Manchester Arena bombing of 2017. It was unprecedented in the history of jihadi activity in Australia. Two Islamic state supporters carried out this mass casualty attack. The views of those who committed the acts are sincerely held religious views based on fundamentalist Islamic ideas. The Commission shouldn’t just dismiss these beliefs as distorting Islam. It should carefully consider matters like competing trends in the Islamic community on the duty to wage jihad, restore the caliphate and martyrdom in combat that invite fundamentalism. As former ASIO chief Dennis Richardson recently argued, the sources of antisemitism must include open discussion about extremist Islamists.

The third area is the financial operations underpinning antisemitism here, including the role of Iran and Qatari funding. The United States and United Kingdom are both investigating alleged ties between China social media amplification and pro-Palestinian protest groups. It’s hoped that the Commission will investigate foreign influence and interference when it comes to antisemitism.

Fourth, the commissioner must provide an analysis of the weaknesses in our counter-terrorism architecture, funding, capability and how other national security issues have impacted on our counter-terrorism efforts. The final report should examine the technical capabilities of our security agencies, why the Counter-Terrorism Coordinator was part-time at the Department of Home Affairs, who made that decision, and why. It needs to unpack why ASIO’s chief was removed from the national security committee of cabinet. It needs to examine problems of sharing information across agencies that were raised in the commission’s interim report. It should explain why the slowness to act in designating the radical Hizb ut-Tahrir as a prohibited hate group.

Fifth, the commission should consider the repeated failures of the ABC to meet its charter of obligation on neutrality and the need for external accountability, especially on issues like genocide accusations, the role and activities of Hamas and overall factual accuracy. A recent report prepared by Dr Bren Carlill for the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council recommends the ABC hand its internal guide for reporting on Israel to independent reviewers. The report found the guide leads journalists away from impartiality and undermines the ABC’s own standards.

Finally, the Royal Commission should examine antisemitic elements in the nation’s biggest unions and anti-Jewish content they disseminated before and after the Bondi massacre. No leader from the wider union movement appeared before the commission. One of Labor’s most renowned fighters against internal party corruption, Peter Baldwin, has declared unions had delivered a “conspicuous failure” on antisemitism as well as holding terror group Hamas accountable for its crimes, by bolstering and organising years of protests. Ex-Australian Council of Trade Unions president Jennie George said the union movement’s role “should be explored” by the commission as part of a broader interrogation of the Labor leadership.

The establishment of the Royal Commission was hard fought for. If the final report avoids the fundamentals, it will be an opportunity lost.

Dr Anthony Bergin is an expert associate at the ANU’s National Security College.