Royal Commission witnesses targeted
Dor Foundation found RC witnesses faced a wave of antisemitic abuse after giving evidence.
Witnesses who testified during Hearing Block One of the Royal Commission were subsequently subjected to a wave of online abuse, according to evidence presented to the inquiry by Dor Foundation CEO Tahli Blicblau on Tuesday.
Blicblau told the commission her foundation had monitored online responses to witnesses and compiled a report as evidence.
“They were targeted and abused online at volume and across social media platforms, and that was true both for witnesses who held positions within the Jewish community, and also witnesses who chose to give evidence under a pseudonym.”
The report documented 275 examples of antisemitic or abusive posts across seven platforms, drawn from a far larger dataset of “many hundreds more”.
Key themes included explicit calls for violence, dehumanising comparisons to “cockroaches, vermin and parasites”, Holocaust glorification and denial, and accusations that witnesses were “crisis actors”.
Blicblau said only a small fraction of posts assessed had been removed by platforms. “I will say that that was less than 10 [removed] out of a batch of over 1000,” she said.
Other documented themes included calls for the expulsion of Jewish Australians – invoking the antisemitic “109” trope, and claims that the Bondi terrorist attack was “fake”.
The foundation shared the dataset with the eSafety Commissioner, the AFP and community security groups, Blicblau said, adding that “very few comments … have been removed by the platforms.”
She concluded that the platforms’ response was “grossly inadequate”, noting: “It is clear that the platform response is entirely out of step with normal communal expectations of how people should treat one another, and I think it is fair to say that either the legislation or policies are not effective or are not being effectively enforced.”