Government moves to terminate OnePath grant

Multicultural Affairs Minister Anne Aly told Parliament on Wednesday that the Department of Home Affairs has issued OnePath Network a notice of intention to terminate its grant, beginning the process of revoking the funding.

The Islamic media organisation received around $300,000 under a program intended to strengthen social cohesion.

“The decision that the member refers to was a decision that was made by the department,” Aly said in response to a question from shadow education minister Julian Leeser.

She said the government had funded new technology in this year’s budget to scan the public statements of visa applicants, and that she had directed the department to explore whether it could also be used in grant applications.

Leeser had asked why the government gave taxpayer funding to “a group spilling hate-filled lies about Jews”, noting the organisation had compared Israel to Nazi Germany and claimed the firebombing of a Sydney Jewish childcare centre was staged.

The Daily Telegraph, which first reported the grant, has detailed videos in which presenter Kamal Saleh described a string of antisemitic attacks in Sydney — including the childcare centre firebombing, swastikas on cars and synagogue graffiti — as “all a sham”, and compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Holocaust.

An analysis published by AIJAC in September documented OnePath’s output in detail, finding its content on Jews and Israel was often openly hateful and recycled antisemitic tropes.

Researcher Ran Porat wrote that the network, founded in 2014, had surpassed a million YouTube subscribers by 2023 and claimed more than 110 million cumulative views across platforms in over 200 countries, making it one of the most widely distributed English-language Islamic media organisations in the world.

The analysis documented videos promoting the Greater Israel conspiracy theory, describing prominent Jewish figures as harbouring dark intentions, and framing the Israeli lobby in Australia as a foreign influence operation. One video carried an image of Benjamin Netanyahu with his hands on Anthony Albanese, which Porat said echoed antisemitic caricatures of Jews controlling puppet world leaders.

OnePath also hosted guests who argued that Arabs are the real Semites, and promoted claims denying the historical record of the Mufti of Jerusalem’s wartime collaboration with the Nazis.

“What makes OnePath dangerous is not that its message is new, but that it is delivered in polished English to a global audience of millions, under a veneer of mainstream respectability,” Porat wrote.

“It launders antisemitic tropes — Jewish control over politics, puppet-master billionaires, plans for world domination, conspiracy theories — into ‘values-based’ content, and passes off the demonisation of Jews as mere criticism of Israel.”