Australia’s Zionist ‘Antisemitism’ Special Envoy: Policing Protest, Shielding Genocide
By Jeremy Salt
Zionist claims of an epidemic of antisemitism in Australia have been repeated by Albanese and the media without any independent examination.
Only an official representative of the Israeli government could be worse than Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s appointment of a leading Zionist to the new position of ‘special envoy’ to combat antisemitism.
Albanese’s choice, Jillian Segal, is an immediate past president of the peak Israeli lobby group, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), which naturally received news of her appointment with “delight.”
Since October 7 2023, Segal has repeated the lies put out by the Israeli government about beheaded babies and has justified the bombing of Gaza’s hospitals by repeating the further lie that Hamas had bases underneath them.
In November 2023, by which time Israel was already committing war crimes, she claimed that there was “no evidence that Israel is not obeying the laws of armed conflict.”
Despite more than a year of genocide, including the slaughter of thousands of children, Segal could still say in November 2024 that “despite the dark times, Israel continues to exemplify light over darkness.”
Against international law, she has tried to justify the occupation of the West Bank by arguing that the description of Gaza, east Jerusalem and the West Bank as occupied Palestinian territories “effectively denies any Jewish claim to the West Bank and Jerusalem.”
As Segal conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, she will clearly be striving to suppress all public criticism of Israel beyond the most anodyne.
According to the plan she has just released, should universities and individual members of the academic staff not heed her rulings, she will recommend their defunding. The same sanctions will apply to artists, writers, public broadcasters, the media, organizers of music festivals, and virtually anyone who stands against Israel.
Anti-genocide student encampments would be banned from campuses and public rallies in city centers. She wants the government to apply the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism, which also conflates it with anti-Zionism, at all levels of government as well as public institutions and registered bodies.
Antisemitism and holocaust education would be embedded in school curricula. Segal clearly means only the Nazi holocaust of the Jews, of course, and not all the other holocausts in history, including the current holocaust being carried out by Israel in Gaza and its roots in the Nakba of 1948.
‘Non-citizens’ involved in antisemitic actions, according to Segal’s definition, would face visa cancellation “and removal from Australia”.
Examination of her claims of a massive increase in antisemitism has to begin with where the claims come from. One source is ECAJ and another the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS), whose recent survey of university Jewish students was backed by the Zionist Federation of Australia and the World Zionist Organization. The complaints by students include the ‘antisemitic’ comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany, which is not only backed by the savagery of Israel’s behaviour but scholarly research into the links between Zionists and the Nazi state in the 1930s.
The survey response puts chants of ‘from the river to the sea Palestine will be free’ and references to Israel as a colonial settler state into the same category of antisemitism. The university group, Students for Palestine, is described as “an anti-Jewish club” when in fact many Jews are standing alongside the Palestinians in their opposition to Israel and its genocide. Antisemitism is anathema to the global Palestinian movement and benefits only Zionism.
Segal claims that “young people raised on a diet of disinformation and misinformation about Jews today will become full-fledged anti-semites tomorrow.” In fact, the disinformation and misinformation are Israeli and Zionist.
The problem for Israel’s lobbyists is that young Jews in increasing numbers around the world are waking up to the fact that that they have been deceived and are detaching themselves from a toxic ideology and the foundation of an apartheid colonial settler state on the ruins of Palestine that has brought nothing but devastation to the Middle East. If Jewish students who support Israel feel uncomfortable amidst campus protests, that is hardly surprising because they are supporting what is morally and legally unsupportable.
Zionist claims of an epidemic of antisemitism in Australia have been repeated by Albanese and the media without any independent examination. Given the deliberate attempt by Zionists, including Jillian Segal, to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, no findings coming out of any Israel-supporting institution can be taken at face value.
Segal is setting out to intimidate virtually the whole of Australian society with her fascistic proposals. With incredible arrogance, she plans to issue a ‘report card’ on how effectively universities are adopting her recommendations, as if the universities are primary schools and she is the teacher. Not surprisingly, her appointment and her plan have been received with widespread opposition.
Amongst her other hats, Segal is the current president of the Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce (AICC) and thus interacts with its ‘sister’ organization, the Israel Australia Chamber of Commerce (IACC) on trade matters, which would include the sale to or purchase from Israel of ‘defence’ material.
Australia has been deeply involved in the arms trade with Israel, both selling and buying, over many years. Israel recently purchased an anti-drone remote weapon system developed by an Australian company, while according to the Australian Centre for International Justice, Australia has been exporting weapons parts through third-party channels to evade export control.
Until 2016, Segal was a director and board member of the National Australia Bank during the greatest banking scandal in Australia’s history. Four banks were involved in large-scale theft from their customers.
The NAB alone admitted to charging customers more than $600 million over nine years in fees for services they did not receive. Segal resigned from the NAB board in 2016, a year before a royal commission launched an inquiry into banking misconduct over previous years. The entire board clearly failed in its oversight responsibilities.
Recently, it has been revealed that, in 2024, Henroth Investments, the investment arm of the Henroth Discretionary Trust, a family trust set up by Segal’s husband, John, and his brother Stanley, contributed $50,000 to Advance Australia, a right-wing organization heavily based on anti-immigration.
Segal claims to have no involvement in her husband’s donations, but ‘involvement’ does not preclude knowing of or discussing these donations within the family circle or knowing of her husband’s involvement with Advance Australia. If she did know, did she support it or oppose it? So far, a question has not been asked.
A photo montage on the Advance Australia site shows a cluster of dark-skinned individuals and hijab-wearing women converging on a house that Advance Australia says Australians can’t afford to buy, and presumably, refugees and other recent arrivals can. Segal is herself an immigrant, from South Africa, but a white-skinned one, which makes all the difference for AA.
Advance Australia’s platform notes that pro-Palestine protests “continue to grow in size, ferocity and extremism every week.”
It believes Australians “strongly resent” the use of public space for protests. It claims Palestinians are a risk to Australia and attacks the “barbaric, murderous actions of Hamas” on October 7, 2023, and the Greens Party, which “took the side of Hamas after they invaded Israel and massacred men, women and children (including babies.”
The site responded to an advertisement for a community services Palestinian settlement and development officer by asking, “Why do we have to pay for this?” AA’s recent social media posts include “If you chant ‘globalize the intifada’ on the street, you should be deported. End of story” and “if you hate our country, why don’t you go and live in Palestine?”
The organization is opposed to the teaching of critical race theory and placed a pre-election full-page ad in the Murdoch-owned Herald Sun newspaper, abusing 40 recently released immigration detainees, without providing any evidence, as rapists, paedophiles and murderers.
Needless to say, there has been no mention by this organization or Segal of the tens of thousands of Palestinian men, women,n and children (including babies) massacred by Israel just since October 7, 2023, not to mention the thousands massacred beforehand all the way back to 1948.
Only rarely does the Australian government vary from a pro-Israel policy, but now the lobby, as represented by Segal, has the brass to attempt to police free speech in Australia through an open policy of intimidation.
It is not likely to succeed and far from stopping antisemitism, is likely to incite it, as Australians become more aware and resentful of the attempts by the Israeli lobby to manipulate foreign and now domestic policy. Albanese has not yet accepted the Segal plan and, against a background of public opposition, is likely at least to water it down.
Finally, Australia has a raft of anti-hate laws at the federal and state levels. They are perfectly adequate to deal with hate crimes, whether of speech or action, including genuine antisemitism.
There is no need for Jillian Segal and a plan of action whose overriding purpose is the suppression of anti-Israel/anti-genocide public and campus protests that are fully warranted by Israel’s barbaric behaviour.
If action is needed, it is against the Zionist lobby groups and individuals, including Segal, who support a genocidal state committing the worst war crimes and crimes against humanity in modern history.
– Jeremy Salt taught at the University of Melbourne, at Bosporus University in Istanbul and Bilkent University in Ankara for many years, specializing in the modern history of the Middle East. Among his recent publications is his 2008 book, The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (University of California Press) and The Last Ottoman Wars. The Human Cost 1877-1923 (University of Utah Press, 2019). He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
The views expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Palestine Chronicle.