Jillian Segal: ‘I don’t know that we’re safer’

Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal has declined to say the Jewish community is safer than it was two years ago, despite listing progress across universities, health, the arts and the public service.

Pointing to ASIO’s assessment that the risk of a terror attack remains probable, Segal told The AJN this week, “I don’t know that we’re safer, but we have to keep going, and we have to educate people, and we also have to ensure that people understand that they should not bring overseas hatreds to Australia.”

Segal was speaking after releasing ASECA Priorities, an updated roadmap that identifies modern, progressive antisemitism as the most pervasive form facing Australia, alongside Islamic extremism, far-left and far-right antisemitism. It says the phenomenon has taken root in universities, media, arts organisations and human rights non-government organisations.

She was careful to distinguish the target of that finding. “It’s absolutely not a dig at everyone who’s progressive,” she said. “Antisemitism is this virus that keeps morphing, and that’s what we’ve seen today. It takes the hostility of the Islamist extremism and far-left antisemitism, and puts through it all the antisemitic tropes, and then gives it a respectable face through the language of social justice and human rights.

“A lot of progressive people would be shocked that their take on life and their very commendable view of working for human rights and social justice has been almost captured by the language that they use, but really to foment hate and to push antisemitism.”