Zionist groups are falsifying antisemitism statistics and the media are playing along
In August of 2023, someone wrote the word “ESHAY” on a pillar in Sydney. How do I know this? And why am I telling you? Because this enigmatic incident was included in the Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s “Report on Antisemitism in Australia 2023”—a report that claims to document and record trends in anti-Jewish hatred, and which is treated as a serious, even definitive, source by the mainstream media and political parties.
If you don’t want to subject yourself to a Trotskyist publication explaining what “eshay” means, look away now. We will stick to reputable sources. Wikipedia describes an eshay as a member of a subculture of young men who “wear sportswear, have mullets and engage in immature and anti-social behaviour”. An alternative definition—“dickheads whom [sic] seem to think they are top shit”—comes courtesy of an Urban Dictionary contributor writing under the nom de plume “I hate eshays”.
Was this graffiti in Sydney anti-eshay? Or was it a public assertion of eshay pride? Its author did not leave us enough evidence to make a conclusive determination of this question. Yet I think we can say that it probably didn’t have much to do with Jews. Nonetheless, this message found its way into the ECAJ’s 2023 list of antisemitic incidents in Australia, and it wasn’t the dumbest thing in there. Not by a long shot. According to the report, cited as authoritative by the entire political gamut of Australian daily news outlets, even organising a protest against neo-Nazis is an act of antisemitic hatred. But we’ll come to that later.
The ECAJ published its report at the start of 2024, a couple of months into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. It’s nearly 300 pages long and claims to document and analyse incidents of antisemitism in Australia. The report’s publishers got the response they were after: “An unprecedented wave of antisemitic hatred surges through Australia” was how the Murdoch press reported it, with more measured but effectively identical analysis appearing in the Nine papers, the Guardian, ABC and SBS.
This report is a scam. It downplays a very real antisemitic threat—that of a growing conspiratorial and far-right movement that has shown a real interest in violence—while using false claims and distorted definitions of antisemitism to slander left-wingers, Muslims and anyone else critical of Israel’s genocidal conduct. Its authors declare their political goals at the outset. “Antisemitism has many active sources – extremist right-wingers, extremist left-wingers, and Islamists”, they explain. “However, each of the main sources operates differently. In general: right-wing antisemitism is overt, but marginalised; left-wing antisemitism is insidious, but mainstreamed.” So don’t worry too much about actual Jew-hating Nazis and conspiracy theorists: they’re “marginalised”. Worry about the “insidious” antisemitism associated with the supporters of Palestine. And if you can’t detect or prove any antisemitism at all, that just proves how insidious it is.
And so the report proceeds. Its catalogue of antisemitic incidents is full of examples of straightforward Palestine solidarity activism, involving no hostility towards or criticism of Jewish culture or religion, and that usually takes place within, and is often motivated by, an anti-racist framework. One example cited is advocacy for boycotts of Israel or its settlement economy. “BDS mimics the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses”, the report warns. “More insidious, BDS officially preaches non-violent forms of protest.” BDS obviously involves no such racial targeting. In fact, more to the point, it mimics one of the most significant and effective anti-racist campaigns in history: that to end the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Alongside the eshay incident, the report lists in its documentation of antisemitic incidents:
“Graffiti of ‘BDS’ (anti-Israel ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’), written four times on a concrete wall, Paddington, Sydney (15 May 2023).”
“Graffiti of ‘BDS’ in two places, Surry Hills, Sydney (17 June 2023).”
“Graffiti of ‘BDS’, re-written where previously removed, Surry Hills, Sydney (18 July 2023).”
There’s plenty more like that. And they all get counted in the statistics. Mentioning the year 1948 or the term “Nakba” is also antisemitic, according to these esteemed researchers: graffiti, stickers and posters with these words are included in the lists, and therefore also in the headline numbers.
Perhaps, on reading this, you have begun to suspect that aspects of this report might be a little misleading. Well, guess what? By thinking that, you just perpetrated an act of antisemitism. In the report’s list of forms of antisemitism, we find: “Jewish organisations being accused of concocting false accusations of antisemitism ... specially in order to stifle criticism of Israel”. (Research by the Australasian Union of Jewish Students is leaned on heavily in the report. AUJS is a pro-Israel group with the unusual distinction of having had to issue a public apology to Socialist Alternative for concocting false accusations of antisemitism in order to stifle criticism of Israel.)
Maybe you’re guilty of something worse than scepticism about the report. Maybe you organised a protest against neo-Nazis and chanted about the need for anti-racist unity. Believe it or not: antisemitism. Describing a rally against a neo-Nazi base organising in the west of Melbourne, the report quotes a single chant: “Black, Indigenous, Arab, Asian and white—unite, unite, unite to fight the right!” This incident is listed under the category “Omitting Jews”. So desperate are the report’s authors to slander left-wingers and Palestine supporters that they even found a way to construe an anti-Nazi rally as an act of antisemitism.
What is particularly inexcusable about all this is the way it obscures the genuine antisemitism that exists and which should be combated. Falsified reports like this, along with the meaningless statistics that emerge from them, make it much harder to understand the form real antisemitism takes today.
The report itself documents many examples, most of which are perpetrated by the same neo-Nazi grouplets that socialists and other left-wingers have been organising against for years—with groups like ECAJ contributing nothing to the cause, only intervening to slander the anti-racists. These Nazi groups descend from a revived far-right movement that emerged from the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric that dominated public life during Tony Abbott’s government. There’s a related current of conspiratorial antisemitic sentiment attributing the proposal for an Aboriginal Voice to Parliament to Jewish influence. In both cases, the genuine antisemitic incidents emerge from groups that largely espouse radicalised versions of Liberal Party talking points.
Further along the right-wing conspiratorial spectrum, the ECAJ reports various ranting voicemails and graffiti along the lines of “JEWS DID COVID” and (more mysteriously) “COVID IS JEW”. These far-right conspiracy theorists, like the neo-Nazis, may see themselves as distinct from the mainstream right wing. But they still draw their fears and hopes from a radicalised version of mainstream conservatism, whether it be hostility to immigration, resentment of Aboriginal people, opposition to public health measures that inconvenience business owners or paranoia about a progressive conspiracy to undermine national unity. This is real antisemitism. The left has always opposed it, in word and in deed, usually without the support of opportunistic pro-Israel political groups that falsely claim to act in defence of Jews. The same right-wing media outlets that fearmonger about every progressive cause, contributing to the rise of this current, are also ECAJ’s best allies in promoting the lie that Palestine solidarity is antisemitic.
It is quite possibly true that there is an increase in religiously conceived antisemitism relating to Palestine. The report documents things like pro-Palestine slogans being shouted at people wearing identifiably Jewish religious clothes. This is a terrible, but predictable, result of the occupation of Palestine being understood as a clash of religions. Yet this misunderstanding is exactly what the ECAJ promotes. ECAJ describes any attempt to understand Israel and its imperialist and expansionist policies in anti-racist political terms—as colonialism, for example, or apartheid—as forms of anti-Jewish prejudice. Its entire report is structured to suggest that the Jewish people are inseparable from the genocidal Israeli government and that any criticism of the latter can emerge only from hatred of the former. The alternative to this is to build an anti-racist pro-Palestine movement—which the anti-Zionist opponents of ECAJ, Jewish and non-Jewish, have been doing for more than a year.
The report is a joke. It is vexatious, mendacious, outrageous: preposterous. It should be utterly, instantaneously discrediting to the institution that published it, and to the individuals associated with it. But it isn’t. Quite the opposite. The former president of ECAJ, Jillian Segal, has been appointed Australia’s new “antisemitism envoy” by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
This report is not exceptional or an outlier. ECAJ is part of an international group of Zionist organisations, the so-called J7, that includes the Anti-Defamation League of the US, Britain’s Board of Deputies, France’s CRIF and the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Most of these produce similar reports, with similar intentions, promoting similarly misleading and unreliable statistics. ECAJ claims its 2024 report is coming out “soon”. Given the explosion of pro-Palestine activism in the last 12 months, it is absolutely certain that it will claim a horrifying rise in what it calls antisemitism. The lies of pro-Israel groups won’t help us fight real antisemitism—and nor will they stop us standing in solidarity with Palestine.
