The great antisemitism con job

In a bombshell press conference on 10 March, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and NSW Police shredded the entire story that we have been fed about a supposed tsunami of antisemitism gripping society and leading to a wave of violent attacks on Jewish people and property. It has all been based on a pack of lies, a “criminal con job”.

For more than a month, attention has been focused on the discovery in January of a caravan in Dural, Sydney, filled with explosives. It was described as a terrorist plot targeting a synagogue. We now know that it wasn’t.

“Almost immediately, experienced investigators within the Joint Counter Terrorism Team believed that the caravan was part of a fabricated terrorism plot—essentially a criminal con job”, AFP Deputy Commissioner National Security Krissy Barrett said. “Today, I can reveal that the caravan was never going to cause a mass casualty event but instead was concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal benefit.”

For this reason, the police never classified the caravan as a terrorism incident. But that didn’t stop the politicians. On 30 January, NSW Premier Chris Minns told ABC radio: “This is the discovery of a potential mass casualty event. There’s only one way of calling it out and that is terrorism.” This is the exact opposite of what the police thought, in their own words, “almost immediately”. It is inconceivable that Minns did not know by this point that he was telling bald-faced lies. In the six weeks since then, Minns has never corrected the record, nor apologised for his dishonesty.

In the same ABC interview, Anthony Albanese was asked, “Do you classify this as terrorism as well, prime minister?” Albanese answered, “I certainly do. I agree with Chris Minns. It’s clearly designed to harm people, but it’s also designed to create fear in the community. And that is the very definition”.

Except that the prime minister surely also knew that the police had immediate and serious doubts and believed it to be a “fake plot” with no plan nor prospect of the caravan or its cargo of 40-year-old explosives harming anyone.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton called it a “grave and sinister escalation in this insidious rise of unchecked antisemitism in our country”. He later claimed that it was “believed to be the biggest planned terrorist attack” in Australia’s history.

None of this is true.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has accused Dutton of deliberately avoiding police briefings so that he would have more freedom to “continue to make the most outrageous claims. He wanted to make sure that he could stoke the most fear”, Burke said. Dutton’s claims were outrageous, but so were those of Albanese and Minns, who cannot pretend they didn’t know the truth.

Beyond the caravan, the police said they believed all of the high-profile antisemitic attacks in recent times in Sydney, which have resulted in dozens of arrests under Operation Pearl, had a “common source” with the caravan plot. “The caravan job was orchestrated by the same individual or individuals that were orchestrating the Pearl incidents, said NSW Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson. “None of the individuals we have arrested during Pearl have displayed any form of antisemitic ideology”, he said.

This is an extraordinary revelation, although one that the police had been repeatedly theorising about in press statements for weeks. In the first press conference NSW police gave about the caravan, they speculated that it might be a “set up”. This was ignored by politicians and the bulk of the media, who instead breathlessly reported that an antisemitic “terrorist” massacre “with a blast radius of 40 metres” had been imminent.

Indeed, the biggest hoax has not been the one carried out by a few organised criminals looking for bargaining chips with the legal system. The main hoax, the biggest con job of all, has been carried out by the entire political and media establishment. They have cynically used this plot to whip up fear, suspicion and hatred for Muslims and Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement, to justify a hysterical witch hunt and purge of Palestine supporters throughout many institutions, and to rush through a new set of draconian anti-protest laws.

This campaign was on full display at the recent Sky News Antisemitism Summit, a conference of right-wing and far-right politicians, activists, media outlets and the pro-Israel lobby. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), Australia’s main pro-Israel lobby group, presented a fifteen-point plan for combating antisemitism, beginning with a call to “declare the existence of a National Emergency and establish a Joint Counter-Terrorism Taskforce [to] fight against antisemitic terror”. This was followed by a wish list of extreme censorship, attacks on free speech and the right to protest, and purges of pro-Palestine students and academics.

ECAJ and other pro-Israel lobby groups, who routinely propagandise in support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and promote the dehumanisation of the Palestinian people, have been gifted tens of millions of dollars by the Australian government as part of its so-called campaign of combatting antisemitism. Jewish organisations who are critical of Israel have not received a cent.

The attempt to tie what has been confirmed as a criminal plot to the Palestine solidarity movement reached its zenith with the passing of a series of new anti-protest laws, especially in NSW. The laws were justified with constant reference to the “antisemitic terror” gripping Australia.

We now know that Minns, and at least several other senior ministers, clearly knew that they were rushing through these laws based on complete lies. Perhaps they were rushing to beat these revelations coming out. Not only were the attacks not motivated by antisemitism­—being in fact, according to the police, a “criminal con job”. There was absolutely no link between these attacks and any protest activity.

Chris Minns must apologise to the people of NSW, and to the Palestine solidarity movement, for using lies and distortions to trample on our democratic rights. He should repeal these laws immediately, and he should resign.

Minns should also apologise to Jewish people in this state. Antisemitism is real and must be opposed, and the actions of these crooks caused legitimate fear among Jewish people. But Minns’ lies, along with those of the media and pro-Israel lobby, who have all made the most of this criminal hoax, have falsely portrayed these criminal acts as a result of a rising tide of antisemitism in society.

They have deliberately exaggerated the threat posed to Jewish people in a reprehensible and cynical ploy to whip up fear in order to attack and silence opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They were, in effect, the accomplices in this entire hoax.