Royal Commission a win for the ruling class offensive against the Palestine movement

So it’s official. The Albanese government has appointed former High Court justice Virginia Bell to head a royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion. It will begin its hearings soon, with a deadline for reporting to the government in mid-December.

This is a win for the ruling class, which has mounted a weeks-long offensive to use the Bondi massacre to attack the Albanese government, the Palestine movement and civil rights more generally. The royal commission will give them the means to do this.

There can be no overstating the sheer cynicism of this campaign by the ruling class, spearheaded by the Liberal Party, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the Zionist Federation and the Murdoch press, but which has drawn in a broad spectrum of establishment bodies, ranging from big business lobby groups, former heads of security agencies, judges and barristers to the ABC and Nine newspapers and university vice chancellors.

Those campaigning for a royal commission have been united in their determination to link the Bondi killings to a supposed “national crisis of antisemitism”, the blame for which, they argue, lies with the Palestine solidarity movement and the Albanese government’s supposed support for this movement. Everything that might point away from those goals has been pushed to one side.

The leaders of this campaign aren’t really interested in understanding the massacre. They simply brushed aside the fact that the killers had no known identification with the Palestine solidarity campaign. They have dismissed as irrelevant national gun laws to limit ownership of the kind of high-powered guns used in the attack.

No, the popular revulsion at the Bondi killings had to be the springboard for a malicious and much broader agenda—one of crushing the Palestine movement and legitimising a more repressive political and legal environment in the name of tackling “antisemitism” and “religious and ideologically motivated extremism” and protecting “social cohesion”.

We know that by “antisemitism” they mean the unprecedented Palestine solidarity campaign that has brought millions onto the streets since 7 October 2023. By “ideologically motivated extremism”, they mean chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” or “Long live the intifada!” By threatening “social cohesion”, they mean Palestine supporters wearing keffiyehs or watermelon earrings.

It’s not like they’ve tried to hide their agenda. The Liberals demanded before Christmas that a royal commission examine “the threat posed by far-left wing and neo-Nazi extremists”, where by “far left” they mean anyone who has marched for Palestine. They wanted a thorough purge of the universities and the arts and cultural institutions. And in response to the Albanese government tabling hate speech legislation, the Liberals will only back this if it’s restricted to hate speech against Jews or Christians. If it identifies Muslims, LGBTI, disabled people or racial minorities as targets of hate speech, well, “freedom of speech” must prevail.

If the architects of this campaign were really so worried about neo-Nazism, they might have tried to do something about it. Instead, Ley has refused to speak out against the rise of One Nation, the far-right anti-immigration marches or the recent Nazi demonstration outside NSW state parliament. If Israel’s supporters in Australia are so opposed to fascism, perhaps one of their leading figures, Alex Ryvchin, shouldn’t have excused Elon Musk’s fascist salute at one of Donald Trump’s inauguration events as an “appreciative gesture”. If they cared about calming community anxieties, why have they cheered on Israel’s barbaric war in Gaza?

Their motivations were clear when they tried to block the appointment of Virginia Bell on the grounds that the NSW Supreme Court had used one of her High Court judgements to overturn the Minns government’s ban on the pro-Palestine march across the Sydney Harbour bridge last year.

The right will now use the royal commission hearings to attack the Albanese government and demand a crackdown on the Palestine movement.

The commission is a gift to the Liberals as it will give them a point of unity after nearly a year of internal dissension. Whether supposedly “moderate” or right wing, they all agree in hounding the Palestine campaign and trying to push society in a more authoritarian direction.

The widening of powers of the security agencies that will result from the royal commission will allow the police and security forces greater leeway to attack the freedoms of the Palestine campaign to organise. Its terms of reference, specifically “strengthening social cohesion”, will legitimise the Minns government’s legislation that allows the police to ban street marches for up to three months, and the Allen government in Victoria which has threatened to do the same.

The racists will be encouraged by the focus on immigration and surveillance of supposed hotbeds of extremism in western Sydney.

The government’s announcement that it will implement all the recommendations of Jillian Segal’s report on antisemitism will stiffen the resolve of university vice chancellors to crack down on Palestine solidarity campaigns on campus.

The focus on strengthening “social cohesion” will give governing bodies of cultural and artistic bodies, like the Adelaide Festival board, even more excuses to cancel Palestinian writers like Rana Abdel-Fattah.

The Albanese government has capitulated to this ruling class offensive, which should come as no surprise. The government has defended Israel’s “right to defend itself” as it slaughters 70,000 Palestinians, turns Gaza into a hellscape and steals more and more land on the West Bank. How could we ever rest our hopes in such people?

The Greens have been no better, with acting leader Senator Hanson-Young welcoming the decision to call a “balanced, careful and powerful” royal commission that might “bring together multicultural Australia” and “tackle antisemitism and all forms of racism”. Can they not read? It’s a royal commission into antisemitism, where “antisemitism” means the existence of the Palestine solidarity movement.

But we won’t give in to this ruling class offensive. We will continue to march for Palestine and campaign against Israeli atrocities until Palestine is free.