Greens capitulate to right-wing campaign against the Palestine movement

The Greens this week welcomed the government’s announcement of a royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion. After a month-long vitriolic campaign against the Palestine movement, the Labor government and the right to protest, the Greens have followed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in capitulating to the ruling-class demand for a federal inquiry.

Reading the media release of acting leader Sarah Hanson-Young makes you wonder what planet Greens leaders are living on: “A balanced, careful and powerful royal commission is a chance to learn hard lessons while minimising divisive politics in crafting a national response to the anti-Semitic Bondi mass shooting”.

The idea that this royal commission could be “balanced” is pure fantasy. Those pushing for it have little interest in learning “hard lessons” about the Bondi attack. They made their minds up on day one, evidence be damned, that blame for the shooting should be pinned on the Palestine solidarity movement. Those who call the legitimacy of this argument into question will never be given a fair hearing—as evidenced by the fate of Age cartoonist Cathy Wilcox, who has faced a barrage of attacks for a cartoon that correctly criticised the royal commission call as an “astroturf” campaign driven by the pro-Israel establishment.

Hanson-Young’s media release continued: “The strongest national response will be based on bringing together multicultural Australia to reinforce our values of tolerance, democracy and respect”.

But democracy is precisely what is threatened by the royal commission. Already, the Bondi attack has been cynically weaponised as a pretext to ban protests in NSW. The Albanese government has agreed to implement one of antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal’s most Trumpian and authoritarian proposals: to threaten funding to universities that don’t clamp down on Palestine solidarity activism. The drivers of the royal commission—the Liberal Party, Jillian Segal, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Murdoch press—want to use it to extend and deepen this authoritarian and anti-democratic push.

The Greens urged the commission to tackle “all forms of racism ... as part of the Commission’s social cohesion mandate”. But the terms of reference for the royal commission make clear that it will be focused solely on antisemitism, which is code in the twisted lexicon of the pro-genocide establishment for criticism of Israel’s genocidal war.

Beyond this, the invocation of “social cohesion” has only ever been about silencing some voices to the advantages of others. Opponents of Israel’s war have been told to stop marching, self-censor and shut up in the name of national unity, while vocal promoters of Israel’s genocide are never accused of disrupting “social cohesion”.

The suffering of the families and friends of Palestinians and Lebanese murdered by Israel simply don’t count in this calculation of “cohesion”. They are told that their outrage and grief is racist and hurtful to members and supporters of the oppressor nation carrying out genocide.

The left has a responsibility to call out the cynicism and hypocrisy of this campaign and rally our side to defend the Palestine solidarity movement and basic civil liberties such as freedom of speech. Instead, the Greens are giving the royal commission a progressive paintjob, attempting to spin it as a process that could be fair and balanced.

This isn’t just the product of political confusion—it’s reflective of the Greens’ desire to go with the flow. The Greens are a party of small l-liberals. Their strategy for achieving a more just world is to act as a right-on but “respectable” and “reasonable” wing of capitalist politics.

This is why the Greens have a long-established practice of mouthing criticisms of government policy and then lining up behind it. They rightly argued that Labor’s 2023 and 2025 environment bills would worsen climate catastrophe by entrenching fossil fuel use, but then voted for both bills. While positioning themselves as the “party of renters” under Adam Bandt’s leadership, they passed Labor’s bogus housing bill, which has done nothing to address the rental crisis.

These actions are all about proving to the ruling class that the Greens, for all their progressive policies, can be constructive players in the Canberra game rather than disrupters of the system.

Greens members and MPs who buck this trend of collaboration and compromise have been marginalised and excluded by the party hierarchy. When left-wing Greens in NSW’s Marrickville council created a political firestorm by adopting a BDS policy in 2010, Greens leader Bob Brown intervened aggressively to have the policy overturned.

Sarah Hanson-Young herself has been instrumental in pulling left-wing Greens into line, joining a campaign to drive out Senator Lee Rhiannon when she got in the way of the Greens striking a crap deal with the Liberal government over education funding.

Over the past two years, the Greens have shifted to the left on Palestine, mirroring the massive shift in the sentiment of young people. They’ve gone from condemning violence on “both sides” during Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza to now labelling Israel’s actions as genocide and calling for sanctions. Since 7 October 2023, they’ve supported and spoken at anti-war demonstrations. This has been a welcome development.

But adopting a good policy platform and sending an MP to the odd rally isn’t enough if you are just going to fold under ruling-class pressure. The Greens’ capitulation in the face of a dishonest and cynical campaign to slander the Palestine movement shows the difference between socialists and small-l liberals.

Socialists don’t just take radical positions when it’s popular or easy. The Greens have folded at precisely the time when it matters most. It’s our job to continue to hold the line—and our principles—against the right-wing onslaught.