The winds of change are starting to blow

A powerful gust of transformation is sweeping through institutions that once cloaked bias in legitimacy. And while it may have begun abroad, the winds of change are fast approaching Australia.

Just days ago, on July 9, 2025, the United States imposed financial sanctions, and travel bans on Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories. This unprecedented move—authorised under Executive Order 14203 and signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio—cited Albanese’s antisemitic rhetoric and her abuse of legal mechanisms to target American and Israeli nationals through the International Criminal Court. The designation is serious: it freezes any U.S.-based assets and restricts her access to the United States. It marks the first time a UN special rapporteur has faced such penalties from a Western democracy. But beyond its legal force, the decision signals something deeper: a growing intolerance for bigotry disguised as human rights advocacy.

Albanese is no outlier. She is simply the most extreme face of a system that, for years, has misused its moral authority to demonise the world’s only Jewish state. But this month, that system began to fracture. On 14 July 2025, three central figures in the UN’s so-called Commission of Inquiry into Israel—Navi Pillay, Miloon Kothari, and Chris Sidoti—resigned en masse.

These are not marginal characters. Pillay is a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Kothari previously invoked antisemitic tropes about Jewish control of the media and questioned Israel’s very legitimacy. Sidoti, an Australian, gave intellectual cover to a process so brazenly biased that its conclusions were often dismissed before the ink had dried.

The inquiry itself was always a farce—a permanent, open-ended investigation against a single state, launched by a Human Rights Council that includes some of the world’s worst human rights abusers. The resignations are welcome. But they do not mark the end of the rot. They are merely the first visible cracks in a façade that has long shielded hatred behind the veneer of international respectability.

And here’s where the story turns sharply toward home.

Australia now faces its own reckoning with the same moral hypocrisy. Our Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal AO, recently released a national strategy aimed at tackling antisemitism with urgency and clarity. Among her key recommendations: that public funding be reviewed—or withheld—from institutions such as broadcasters, universities, and cultural bodies that tolerate or enable antisemitism.

The response from the ABC was nothing short of disgraceful. Rather than engage with the strategy on its merits, the national broadcaster leaned into insinuation—the kind that would never be tolerated were the target any other minority group. It platformed critics who framed the strategy as a threat to free speech, while barely acknowledging the reality of rising antisemitism—particularly in spaces funded by the taxpayer.

The parallel with the United States is impossible to ignore. Washington is now making clear that public funds and diplomatic legitimacy should not be granted to individuals or organisations that weaponise human rights frameworks to promote hatred. That is precisely what Segal’s strategy proposes here. Her message is clear: institutions that permit bigotry should not be subsidised by a society that claims to stand for decency and justice.

On any given weekend in Australia, it’s now common to see protestors marching through our cities chanting “Death to the IDF”—not just fringe agitators, but sometimes individuals from professional sectors, including healthcare staff, educators, and others who otherwise present respectably during the week. These contradictions should disturb every fair-minded Australian. They expose a society at risk of forgetting that freedom of expression is not freedom from consequence.

We must ask ourselves: what are we willing to tolerate in the name of tolerance? If Albanese’s conduct was enough to warrant U.S. sanctions, how can we justify continued funding to Australian institutions that excuse or enable the same sentiments—under the veil of academic freedom or journalistic neutrality?

We must not allow a double standard to take hold—one that punishes every other form of hate, but makes excuses for antisemitism. And we must not allow our public institutions to remain complicit.

The resignations in Geneva and the sanctions from Washington are not isolated events. They are signals. The world is beginning to wake up to the institutional decay that has allowed antisemitism to flourish under the guise of advocacy. Now is the time for Australia to do the same.

The winds of change are here. They’ve blown through Turtle Bay and Geneva. And just as the Scorpions once sang of freedom sweeping through Eastern Europe, today’s winds demand a reckoning of our own—across Canberra, Ultimo, and every institution that has looked the other way.

Michael Scott CSC is the CEO and Founder of The 2023 Foundation, a charity focused on combatting antisemitism through lived experience. Michael is not Jewish. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the official positions of the Australian Defence Force or the Commonwealth Government of Australia.