Palestinian activist and recent graduate of New York’s Columbia University Mahmoud Khalil has spoken for the first time about his detention at the hands of the US government. Authorities arrested and are attempting to deport Khalil, a permanent resident of the United States and prominent figure in last year’s Columbia’s Gaza solidarity encampment. 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took him on the evening of 8 March. They also threatened to arrest his pregnant wife, who is a US citizen. President Trump said Khalil’s case is “the first arrest of many to come”. The goal is to intimidate student activists, undermine the right to free speech and smash all solidarity with Palestine. 
“Even if Khalil is eventually able to prevail, the government may get the short-term win of sending the message to immigrants of every status that they risk arrest, detention and perhaps even removal for having the temerity to speak out in favour of unpopular causes, even if they might win their lawsuit in the end”, Stephen Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, told the New York Times.
Khalil is being held in a detention facility in Louisiana but was able to dictate <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25592020-letter-from-a-palestinian-political-prisoner-in-louisiana-march-18-2025/">the following statement</a> by phone to his friends and family. 
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Letter from a Palestinian political prisoner in Louisiana 
Dictated over the phone from ICE Detention 
March 18, 2025 
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law. 
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing. 
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities. 
On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours—I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request. 
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom. 
I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention—imprisonment without trial or charge—to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza Hospital director and paediatrician Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace. 
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the US has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted. 
While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns—based on racism and disinformation—to go unchecked. 
Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticising Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration's latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students—some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation—and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples. 
If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change—leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice. 
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all. 
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.

Letter from a Palestinian political prisoner in Louisiana

In a <a href="https://www.afp.gov.au/news-centre/media-statement/afp-deputy-commissioner-national-security-krissy-barrett-statement">bombshell press conference</a> 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 <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/dural-caravan-nsw-police-find-explosives-in-caravan-synagogue-targeted-20250130-p5l87g.html">caravan in Dural, Sydney, filled with explosives</a>. 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 <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/radio-interview-abc-sydney-10">told ABC radio</a>: “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, 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?” He 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 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2025/feb/06/australia-politics-news-live-labor-anti-hate-speech-laws-mandatory-sentences-federal-election-campaign-anthony-albanese-peter-dutton-ntwnfb">claimed</a> 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 <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-11/burke-says-dutton-conned-by-caravan-hoax/105033778">accused</a> 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 <a href="https://www.ecaj.org.au/15-steps-to-defeat-antisemitism/">fifteen-point plan</a> 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 given tens of millions of dollars by the Australian government as part of its so-called campaign of combating antisemitism. Jewish organisations that 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 <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/new-anti-protest-laws-target-opponents-of-genocide">anti-protest laws</a>, 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.

Josh Lees

The great antisemitism con job

Governments and other institutions have recently been adopting definitions of antisemitism, but not to protect Jews from persecution or discrimination. They’re doing it to justify the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/feb/28/the-national-gallery-censored-parts-of-an-artwork-about-silencing-indigenous-and-oppressed-peoples">repression</a> of people who object to the genocidal policies of the apartheid Israeli state and the foreign policies of governments that support them. And they are attempting to create a moral panic about antisemitism.
In the face of media images of destruction and mass murder in Gaza, governments have had <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/657404/less-half-sympathetic-toward-israelis.aspx">problems</a> convincing their populations that they should back Israel as it engages in genocide. Instead, they are resorting to the naked repression of expressions of solidarity with the Palestinians, barely covered by the tattered loin cloth of these antisemitism definitions.
<a href="https://universitiesaustralia.edu.au/media-item/statement-on-racism/">Universities Australia</a><a href="https://universitiesaustralia.edu.au/media-item/statement-on-racism/"></a> (UA), the peak body of the country’s 39 universities, in late February decided that antisemitism includes “criticism of Israel ... when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel”. This parallels the 2016 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) <a href="https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism">definition</a>, which governments use as an excuse to attack Palestine solidarity activity. The alliance says that is it antisemitic to claim “that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”.
That approach has given free licence for the German government to shut down a Palestine solidarity conference, which included many Jews, and ban former Greek Finance Minister <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/why-germany-bans-and-arrests-israel-critics-including-jews-by-yanis-varoufakis-2024-04">Yanis Varoufakis</a> from speaking at it, even by video link. It enabled police in the United States to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/us/pro-palestinian-college-protests-encampments.html">break up</a> campus Palestine solidarity encampments, which included a large proportion of anti-Zionist Jews. This kind of “fighting antisemitism” involved arresting, often violently, hundreds of young Jewish people.
It is the reason that the Australian Labor government appointed a Zionist, whose main priority seems to be targeting critics of Israel, as its special envoy to combat antisemitism. The approach led to the absurd situation at Monash University in Melbourne, where security officers told Palestine solidarity activists that using the words “Zionist” or “Zionism” or accusing anyone of supporting genocide contravened university policy. The Australian National University gave a written instruction to socialists that they could not say “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” or display a banner with the slogan on it.
The conflation of Zionism with Judaism paints a bullseye on the backs of all Jews. If you object to the genocide Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians then, according to this false proposition, you should hate Jews—because they all ostensibly support the existence of Israel as a racially defined state (under the cover of religion) and, to a greater or lesser extent, its policies.
Zionists may denounce antisemitism and use it to demand that authorities target opponents of Israel. But Zionism assumes that antisemitism is inevitable. The movement to establish a Jewish state was premised on the notion that Jews and non-Jews cannot live together in peace. That remains an important rationale for the existence of Israel as a state in which non-Jews are second-class citizens. But it also apologises for antisemitism because it is, according to Zionists, inevitable and normal for non-Jews to hate Jews.
So it’s fine for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be best mates with Viktor Orban—the authoritarian prime minister of Hungary, who uses antisemitic tropes when it suits him—and for Israel to encourage Christian Zionists. Millions of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/us-evangelical-christians-israel-hamas-war">evangelical Christians</a>, many of them antisemites, are Zionists because they believe that their own countries, especially the United States, should be rid of Jews, and that the gathering of Jews in the “Holy Land” is a sign of “end times” preceding the Apocalypse and the second coming of Christ, when Jews will either convert or be eradicated.
But, of course, the vast majority of non-Jews, of different religions and none, don’t hate Jews. There is a history of Jews being persecuted in particular places and during particular periods. But there is also an extensive history of Jews and non-Jews living together, without violence, for hundreds of years, from <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/29779835">China</a>, through central Asia, the <a href="https://brill.com/display/title/34519?language=en">Arab world</a>, India, Europe (including <a href="https://www.neh.gov/article/ornament-world-and-jews-spain">Spain</a> and <a href="https://www.copernico.eu/en/articles/jews-poland-middle-ages-and-early-modern-times">Poland</a>), to the Americas and, down the bottom of the planet, South Africa and New Zealand.
In Australia, there is undoubtedly a minority with antisemitic attitudes and a tiny number who commit antisemitic acts. But, in a country where there has been a Jewish governor-general and Jews have held and hold senior ministries in Liberal and Labor governments, Jews are not today subject to structural or systematic oppression.
According to the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2024/10/07/hate-crimes-grow-in-us-since-oct-7-attacks/75501456007/">Anti-Defamation League</a>, a pro-Israel organisation, there were 150 incidents of violence against Jews in the USA in the year after 7 October 2023, during Israel’s war on Gaza. That’s bad, but minor in comparison with <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/what-happened-scholars-disciplined-over-israel-gaza-comments">police</a> and <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-30/ucla-moves-to-shut-down-pro-palestinian-encampment-as-unlawful">Zionist violence</a> against participants, many of them Jewish, in the Palestine solidarity encampments at US universities, or with <a href="https://monitor.civicus.org/explore/repression-of-palestine-solidarity-continues-raids-detentions-and-police-brutality/">German police </a>attacks on pro-Palestine events and protests in Germany.
Both the Universities Australia and IHRA definitions assert that Jews have a right to self-determination. The UA definition even claims that “all peoples” have that right: music to the ears of white nationalists. This was a claim made by the apartheid South African government to support white rule. If Jews are a people with the right to self-determination, is that also true of Christians (or members of different Christian sects), Muslims and Buddhists (as argued by religious bigots, not only in Afghanistan but also in <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/comparing-zionism-and-sinhala-buddhist-nationalism">Sri Lanka</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21567689.2023.2216137">Myanmar</a>)?
The conflation of Judaism, a religion, with Zionism, a political ideology, in definitions of antisemitism, is itself antisemitic. No matter that UA acknowledges the existence of non-Zionist Jews, while the IHRA definition is silent about non-Zionist, let alone anti-Zionist, Jews. Defining support for Israel into a Jewish identity that must be accepted, apparently in all its aspects, is racist “identity politics” along the same lines as the self-conceptions of white nationalists and religious bigots. 
Thankfully, increasing numbers of Jews, especially young Jews, are rejecting Zionism, both in Australia and the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/american-jewish-divisions-zionism/">United States</a>.
Rick Kuhn has been a Palestine solidarity activist and socialist since the 1970s. He is Jewish and opposes Zionism.

Rick Kuhn

Conflating Zionism and Judaism is antisemitic

US authorities have arrested Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent figure in last year’s Columbia University’s Gaza solidarity encampment. 
Khalil was reportedly inside his university-owned apartment in Manhattan when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took him on Saturday night. They also threatened to arrest his pregnant wife, according to Khalil’s lawyer Amy Greer.
Khalil is a permanent resident of the United States; his wife is a citizen. Greer told the Associated Press that the ICE agents told her they acted on State Department orders. She also said that Mahmoud’s whereabouts are unknown.
“Given that neither Khalil’s lawyer nor his eight-months-pregnant wife knows where in the United States he is currently being held, ‘detained’ seems like a euphemism. Kidnapped seems more appropriate”, City University of New York professor Corey Robin commented. 
This is the first publicly known deportation effort under President Trump’s promised crackdown on student activists.
The Republican Party’s 2024 election platform promised to “keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America” and to “deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again”.
Then, in a 30 January executive order, Trump warned: “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before”.
Shortly after the executive order was issued, the Justice Department assembled a multi-agency “Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism”. Its first priority, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-formation-task-force-combat-anti-semitism">according to a media release</a>, “will be to root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses”.
The targeting of Mahmoud Khalil has nothing to do with “fighting antisemitism”, which has become little more than a euphemism for waging a war on Palestinians and their supporters.
Deportation Defense in the United States released the following statement. We encourage readers of Red Flag to <a href="https://actionnetwork.org/letters/demand-the-immediate-release-of-columbia-student-pro-palestine-advocate-mahmoud-khalil-from-dhs-detention">sign the petition and share it widely</a>.
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Demand the Immediate Release of Palestinian Student Activist Mahmoud Khalil from DHS detention
On the evening of March 8, 2025, Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil was detained by the Department of Homeland Security. The arrest comes on the heels of the Department of State’s announcement that it plans to deport students affiliated with pro-Palestine protests. The student, who is Palestinian, is a lawful permanent resident of the U.S.
Columbia University, which recently published a <a href="https://publicsafety.columbia.edu/content/protocol-potential-visits-campus-us-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-ice-agents" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">new protocol</a> on its plans to cooperate with ICE, has targeted Khalil for his Palestinian identity and outspoken activism on multiple occasions over the last 17 months. 
He served as a lead negotiator during the Gaza Solidarity Encampment last spring and has frequently appeared in media interviews and press conferences. Columbia’s continued acquiescence to federal agencies and outside partisan institutions has made this situation possible. 
Like many other Arab and Muslim students, Khalil has been the target of various Zionist harassment campaigns, fuelled by doxxing websites like Canary Mission. This racist targeting serves to instil fear in pro-Palestine activists as well as a warning to others. 
Add your name to demand the immediate release of Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil from DHS detention and a reversal to Columbia University's protocol permitting ICE on campus without a warrant.

US government ‘kidnaps’ Palestinian student activist

Macquarie University Palestinian academic Randa Adbel-Fattah has been the victim of a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/academics-under-attack-for-supporting-palestine">vicious smear campaign</a> conducted by the Murdoch press, the Labor Government and the Liberal Party. Under pressure from Labor Minister for Education Jason Clare, the Australian Research Council (ARC) has formally suspended Randa’s $870,000 Future Fellowship Grant. 
Clare wrote to the ARC board on 31 January requesting they investigate her research grant as a “matter of priority”. Ironically, it was Clare himself who <a href="https://ministers.education.gov.au/clare/ending-days-political-interference-australian-research-council">celebrated</a> the Albanese government for revising the National Interest Test to supposedly stop politicians from interfering in research grants, saying in March 2024 that he “promised to end the days of ministers using the ARC as a political plaything”.
This stunning backflip shows that Labor is just as happy as the coalition to weaponize research funding for political purposes. 
Abdel-Fattah’s grant, which began in 2023 and aimed to study the history of Arab/Muslim social justice activism in Australia, was targeted by the Australian newspaper after she participated in an anti-racist conference at the Queensland University of Technology, where she said
“The peak of an academic career ... usually means somebody who’s ... written lots of books about genocide but will not sign a statement against [it]. I want no part of that, so I look for ways to bend rules and refuse and subvert them. I challenge the formal circuits of knowledge production and what counts as knowledge.”
In response to this comment, Macquarie University must now prove that the grant has been administered appropriately, otherwise the grant, which also funds Abdel-Fattah’s salary, must be repaid in full.
When pressed by Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi in a recent Senate estimates hearing, the ARC claimed that they are just doing their normal due diligence by investigating the grant. This same line was parroted by Macquarie vice-chancellor Bruce Downton in a staff town hall last week, where he, after casually mentioning staff redundancies several times, stated that the investigation does “not have anything to do with academic freedom or freedom of speech”. They must think we are stupid. 
While Macquarie University has recently become the epicentre of academic repression, the suppression of Palestine supporters on campus is systematic. For example, the peak university lobbying organisation, Universities Australia, recently adopted a new definition of antisemitism which has been widely condemned, including by the <a href="https://www.jewishcouncil.com.au/media/jewish-council-of-australia-slams-universities-adoption-of-dangerous-politicised-and-unworkable-antisemitism-definition">Jewish Council of Australia</a>. 
Mohamed Duar of Amnesty International <a href="https://www.amnesty.org.au/australian-universities-decision-to-adopt-contested-definition-of-antisemitism-is-an-attempt-to-stifle-freedom-of-expression-across-campuses-nationwide/">has said that</a> 
“This dangerous definition will be used to silence students and staff alike, suppress protest, and shut down criticism of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, the unlawful brutal and unlawful military occupation as well as apartheid that we determined to be a crime against humanity.” 
The vilification of Abdel-Fattah and the targeting of her research grant is a part of this broader trend. 
Labor has effectively found a bureaucratic means to sack an academic for their outspoken support of Palestine, something Liberal Shadow Minister for Education Sarah Henderson has been demanding for months. The ARC is doing the ALP’s dirty work and <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/research-grant-suspension-about-probity-not-politics">openly admitted in the Senate</a> that their investigation stemmed from reporting by the
Australian. This whole rotten affair shows that these liberal institutions that supposedly support freedom of inquiry and democratic values are a sham and cannot be counted on to defend our rights.

Steven Hansen

Solidarity with Palestinian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah

The West Bank has been the primary region for the Israeli colonisation of Palestine for decades. There, Israeli settlers attack Palestinians and steal their land and homes under the protection of the Israeli military. 
In the mid-1990s, the Oslo Accords divided the territory into zones under Palestinian Authority control, joint Israel-Palestinian Authority administration, and total Israeli control. The last of these zones covers most of the land.
Israeli military violence in the West Bank escalated when the genocide in Gaza began. It has now increased further since the delicate Israel-Hamas ceasefire was signed in January. Far-right Israeli politicians, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have openly declared that they want to annex the entire West Bank.
Ghaied Hijaz is a student activist with the Right to Education campaign at Birzeit University, which defends the right of Palestinians to education in the West Bank and Gaza. She spoke to Red Flag
about the current situation. The text has been edited for length and clarity.
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The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza must have been a great relief. But there are reports that Israel has since escalated its operations in the West Bank. What’s going on?
When the ceasefire was announced, it was of course the moment we’ve all been waiting for, especially for the people in Gaza. It gave this moment of relief and comfort.
But since the beginning of the ceasefire, everything in the West Bank got much worse.
Even though through the last fifteen months of war the West Bank was not technically living in war, we were witnessing daily raids, daily attacks on the villages and towns, daily arrests, daily killings. But when the ceasefire was announced, many troops that were in Gaza came to the West Bank, and they started by completely closing all the checkpoints, the entrances of all cities in the West Bank, and everybody was stuck. 
It was very, very sudden. At my university, we turned to online learning because there was no way anyone could reach the university if they were outside of Ramallah. People were stuck at the checkpoints for hours.
They continued closing everything for two weeks. And then, after two weeks, it started to get a bit easier, but now they’re going back at it again, they are pushing for more troops to go into the West Bank. 
Yesterday [23 February], they decided that they’re going to have tanks inside the cities, especially in Jenin. The last time Palestinians in the West Bank saw Israeli tanks in the middle of our cities and towns was during the Second Intifada in 2002-04. 
Now what we’re seeing is that the war is paused in Gaza because we’re still not sure if the ceasefire is permanent. And we’ve been hearing statements from Israeli officials claiming that they will go back to war very soon, and that they will not go on with the deal and so on. 
But the war in the West Bank is just starting. We’re just starting to see the plans that they have for the refugee camps, especially for the cities inside of the West Bank, to displace people, to change how cities look, to change the structure of cities and towns. 
They started in Tulkarm and Jenin. They are completely wiping out the refugee camps, they’re destroying all houses, they are building new streets, and they loudly say that they will not leave the cities for at least a year, and some say that they will never leave.
So Israeli forces are saying they’re going to be in Palestinian cities in the West Bank long term?
Because of the Oslo Accords the areas in the West Bank are separated into A, B and C areas, and the A area is for the Palestinian Authority, where the Israeli military is not supposed to enter. But of course, that was never a reality—the Israeli military would enter any city or town that is in the Palestinian area anytime they want.
But they were never inside the city or town for a long time. Now they’re saying that they are going to create bases inside the cities and the towns. They demolished most of the homes in the Tulkarm refugee camp and in Nur Shams refugee camp. Just like how they did the Netzarim Corridor in Gaza, they want to do this in the heart of towns and cities and refugee camps, and they don’t want to leave.
They say that this will be the new reality. No A areas, no Palestinian Authority. They’re going to rule everything, which they already did, but this is in a different way. This is more intense. It puts the West Bank in the middle of a war and creates new questions. What’s the future of the Palestinian Authority, if everything that the Palestinian Authority is based on is being torn apart?
Has there been more violence and land theft by Israeli settlers?
Yes. After the ceasefire was announced, with the plans for annexation, with what Trump is saying, with Netanyahu’s promises to Israeli officials on the right wing to increase attacks in the West Bank instead of Gaza, they’ve just got more nerve now. They keep blocking roads for everyone, attacking people in their farms. In the olive picking seasons, we’ve seen settlers go into lands burning trees [and] hurting people.
And they also organise attacks on a city or a town, and they shoot and kill people because they are all armed. And most of the time, that would be with the protection of the IDF [the Israeli military]. So the IDF would be there just to protect settlers from people who are throwing stones at them as they are shooting with their machine guns at everyone.
In many areas, especially the C areas in the West Bank, you would have land. It’s in your name; it’s yours. The Israeli government hasn’t exactly taken it, but you’re not allowed to do anything in it. It’s yours, but you can’t go there, sometimes you need a permit to go there, you can’t remove anything, you can’t grow anything. You can’t even pick the fruits of the trees.
Since the right-wing politicians and officials in the Israeli government refused a ceasefire and didn’t want to halt the attack in Gaza, Netanyahu promised [Bezalel] Smotrich, who is the finance minister and is kind of the de facto ruler of the West Bank, to take the war from Gaza to the West Bank to achieve what they’re planning for annexation and displacement of Palestinians.
The ceasefire deal has included the release of hundreds of Palestinians from Israeli prisons. How has the community responded?
We have been waiting for our detainees and prisoners to be released for years, especially the ones who were sentenced to life sentences. And also many of the women, many of the children who were living under cruel circumstances in Israeli prisons, under torture, starvation and everything.
So it was a moment of happiness that was long waited for. On the first day of the ceasefire, many people gathered to welcome the released Palestinian women and children that day. And even though it was so cold we were waiting in the streets under the threat of Israeli forces attacking. And they did, throwing tear gas, live bullets or rubber bullets.
We needed to give our prisoners the welcome they have long been waiting for. And so even though it was delayed for six hours, there were a lot of people who were not going to let Israeli forces ruin this moment for us. And every week after that, when there’s a release as part of the exchange deal, hundreds gather to welcome their loved ones.
But as we’re seeing people getting out, we’re hearing more horrible stories about the situation they were living in. When they get out of the bus and we see them, sometimes we don’t even recognise them. Like, if you saw Khalida Jarrar—she was right next to me and I didn’t recognise her. She was in such bad shape and bad condition that it was tearing my heart apart. [Jarrar is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who was released as part of the prisoner exchanges.]
Last Saturday [22 February], it was supposed to be the last day of prisoner exchange. Six hundred Palestinian prisoners were supposed to be released. More than half of them were women, children, and men who were detained in Gaza after 7 October [2023]. And Israel, after delaying and delaying again and again, at 2am the next day decided they are not going to release the Palestinian prisoners, and they still haven’t released them [as of 25 February].
Has your activism with the Right to Education campaign been able to continue?
There’s a whole discussion in universities whether we should be on campus or just go to online learning because of how bad the situation is, because they always live with the threat of the settler attacks, threat of arrests, killing at checkpoints, and it’s actually dangerous. But what we always say is that getting to the university and moving between cities is a form of defiance and resistance, because what they want is to separate cities, and for every community to live alone, separated, isolated. And we don’t want that to happen.
We want to keep connected, no matter the hardships. And we continued doing that, even though it was becoming more difficult and challenging by the day. But since the ceasefire agreement, it became impossible.
Students were separated again. The campuses are really important for students to gather and communicate, and to organise together, to have the spirit of community. When everyone at home can’t move, that just crushes it.
And so for the past fifteen months, we’ve been on and off. When we go home, we need to come back and rebuild things again, rebuild the spirit, rebuild the organising efforts. But as the Right to Education, we continued working, because our work with advocacy and building alliances is just more online.
Other student groups and campuses have taken really big hits. Most of their activists are currently in prison or just released from prison, traumatised and not able to work or maybe not able to come back to university. So we’re going through difficult times where we’re trying to maintain student activism overall, not just in the Right to Education, but in all universities with all student groups.
US President Donald Trump recently declared his intention to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip. How did people in the West Bank respond?
Palestinians have been living under the threats of displacement, and in the West Bank, annexation, for 75 years. It’s not new. So when Trump said it, it was not really a new thing since in his previous term, he suggested the “deal of the century”, which was not exactly the same, but was leading to the same thing: to liquidate the Palestinian cause and get Palestinians scattered around the world.
It is [now] much more difficult circumstances, in a much more tense environment. But what we know is we’re not leaving. The core of the Palestinian cause is that Palestinians don’t want to leave. Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza are either refugees or they are residents from these cities. If they are refugees, they don’t want to become refugees again. And if they are originally not refugees, they don’t want to become refugees at all.
So, leaving is not an option for us. And it doesn’t matter if Trump said it or not. People are defiant of what Trump is saying. And that is just the stance of everyone. Every single political group, no matter the differences between them, they all say clearly we don’t want to leave.
I personally think that Trump’s plan is not about displacement. And it’s not going to work, because there’s no way to do it unless he wants to take Palestinians to the US, because nobody is willing to take Palestinians in, as we’ve seen statements from around the world. I think that Trump’s plan is about pushing normalisation [with Israel] in an economic trade way, especially with Saudi Arabia.
And I think that’s what’s dangerous about the plan. He’s just proposing something big that would make everybody say no, especially Arab countries, who are not exactly allies, but still hold on some grounds in supporting Palestinians. So he proposes this big thing to achieve other things he wants.
So it seems that, yes, they rejected the displacement plan, but they accepted normalisation with Israel. They accepted increasing cooperation with Israel, which is the kind of peace Trump is looking at. Trump is a businessman who’s just looking at everything and everyone as a profit. So when he’s trying to manipulate the Middle East, he’s just trying to make more profit. 
Is there anything else you would want our readers to know about what’s happening in the West Bank?
I don’t think that what’s happening in the West Bank is getting much coverage or much attention. Right now, I think we have 40,000 people displaced from three refugee camps, and these displaced people went to surrounding cities and towns. And we hear Israelis, what they’re saying is that they’re going to attack them.
It’s not enough for them that they’ve destroyed the refugee camp, that they have destroyed the houses, that they displaced everyone. They want to go after every single refugee. And we see this as they are attacking UNRWA and suspending their services in Jerusalem. 
If we’re still under the threat of displacement and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and in Gaza, and the threat of going back to genocide as Israeli officials want to resume the fighting, the fight is not over. It’s just starting, even though the past fifteen months were mentally exhausting and physically exhausting, and it caused a lot of damage and losses for a lot of people in the West Bank and in Gaza and around the world. People lost their jobs. They were getting harassed by Israeli activists and [the] Israeli government and everything. 
But we still have to keep going, because it’s not over.

Danica Rachel

The view from the ground in the West Bank

A raft of new laws, purportedly to combat the antisemitism “crisis” in Australia, have been passed federally and by some state governments. The Human Rights Law Centre <a href="https://www.hrlc.org.au/reports-news-commentary/2025/02/21/hate-speech">summed up</a> the situation, saying that the laws have “been introduced under the guise of protecting against hate speech and vilification [but] on closer inspection, these laws are likely to have a chilling effect on our democracy while failing to stamp out hate speech and discrimination”. 
The same political leaders who in sucking up to Donald Trump have refused to condemn his calls for ethnic cleansing in Gaza, or the recent Nazi salutes by Elon Musk and Steve Bannon, are now pontificating about “racist hate” to pass laws that undermine our democratic rights. This is occurring in the context of a McCarthyite-style witch-hunt of Palestine supporters across media, educational and cultural institutions.
At a federal level, the new laws mostly increase sentences for existing offences, while also introducing new offences of threatening to use force or violence against protected groups, and either advocating or threatening damage to, or destruction of, places of worship. The Labor government performed a spectacular backflip, capitulating to Peter Dutton and the Liberal opposition by including mandatory minimum sentences of up to six years’ imprisonment for some offences, while ramming through the legislation in less than 24 hours. This is despite Prime Minister Anthony Albanese just weeks earlier describing mandatory prison terms as “fraught” and “unproductive”. 
Mandatory sentencing explicitly goes against the Labor Party’s own official policy platform, given its disastrous history of resulting in mass incarceration of marginalised and oppressed people. This didn’t stop Albanese and every Labor MP voting for these laws.
In NSW, the Chris Minns Labor government has gone further, passing three new sets of laws. The first targets the display of Nazi symbols and graffiti near synagogues, Jewish schools or the Sydney Jewish Museum. The second and third are explicitly targeting protesters, despite there being no link between protests and the recent spate of antisemitic attacks—which the police have theorised were likely coordinated by organised crime networks.
The NSW government’s Crimes Amendment (Places of Worship) bill 2025 creates an offence with a potential two-year imprisonment and/or a $22,000 fine for blocking, impeding or hindering access to places of worship. It grants NSW police the extraordinary powers to arrest and move on people in or near a place of worship for any reason. As the NSW Council for Civil Liberties <a href="https://www.nswccl.org.au/news">argues</a>, “these offences could be used to charge members of the faith protesting their own organisation, sexual abuse survivors demanding justice and any snap rally or assembly that happens within a vicinity of a place of worship, such as Town Hall”. The laws are extraordinarily broad, especially given that almost everywhere in the Sydney CBD is “near” a place of worship, all of Sydney’s most common protest locations being close to a church. 
Minns has made no secret of the fact that he is a staunch supporter of Israel and wants to stamp out the mass Palestine movement that has mobilised tens of thousands against the genocide in Gaza for more than sixteen months. These laws follow a wave of other anti-protest laws passed in NSW in recent years, many targeting climate protesters, and could be used against people protesting for any cause, including the union movement.
The third law passed by Minns makes it a criminal offence to incite racial hatred, with a maximum penalty for an individual of two years’ imprisonment and/or fines of up to $11,000. In Victoria, new anti-vilification laws have also passed, although they include other protected categories besides race, and potentially some protections from the laws for political speech.
The danger of these laws is that a concerted effort is being made by supporters of Israel to define criticism of or opposition to the state of Israel as inherently antisemitic. Pro-Palestine activists have been falsely accused of antisemitism for decades to silence opposition. Now they want to make opposing Israel a crime. In a similar vein, Universities Australia recently adopted an official definition which says that calling for the abolition of the state of Israel is antisemitism, potentially opening up thousands of academics and students to disciplinary proceedings.
Decisions about who should be prosecuted under these laws will be in the hands of the police and public prosecutors—that is, the very institutions of power that uphold racist inequalities and the interests of Australian capitalism. For that reason, no-one should be under any illusion that these laws will be used to prosecute vicious racists like Peter Dutton, Sky News or the pro-Israel lobby, who have dehumanised the Palestinian people, supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza and systematically demonised the Arab and Muslim population. In fact, all these racists are clamouring for even more draconian “hate speech” laws to try to outlaw dissent. 
All progressive causes, including the union movement, should unite in opposing these undemocratic laws.

New anti-protest laws target opponents of genocide

Red Flag joins the call for <a href="https://clads.ch/solidarite-en-suisse-et-a-linternational-avec-le-pr-joseph-daher/">solidarity with Joseph Daher</a>, who faces the loss of his job for his Palestine solidarity activism. We stand in full solidarity with all who are being disciplined or attacked for opposing the genocide in Gaza.
--------------------
Solidarity with Professor Joseph Daher against the arbitrary decision of the UNIL rectorate
We offer our support and full solidarity to Prof. Joseph Daher, who is subjected to an arbitrary procedure by the University of Lausanne (UNIL) rectorate: the alleged non-renewal of his contract (signed in May 2024) as a Visiting Professor for the spring semester 2025. This sudden, unjustified and unfounded position deprives his students of his teaching at UNIL, despite the fact that his seminar course entitled “History of International Relations Post-1945” has been on the syllabus for months. Students working on their masters’ dissertations under his supervision have also been deprived of his supervision overnight, which is intolerable.
This arbitrary procedure, which also deprives him of the financial resources associated with his commitment, follows months of relentlessness against Joseph Daher by UNIL management. Such administrative relentlessness is a source of concern for all other UNIL employees, thereby creating an environment where no one is safe. This is even more worrying as UNIL Management has not provided any protection to Prof. Daher against the smear campaign he has been subjected to for several months in the French- and German-speaking Swiss press in connection with his defense of fundamental rights and his commitment to supporting the demands of UNIL students mobilized around the Palestinian cause.
Prof. Joseph Daher is an internationally recognized scholar of Middle Eastern political history. The author of several books on Middle Eastern societies, he holds two doctorates (one in political science from UNIL, the other in development sciences from London's renowned School of Oriental and African Studies). He has taught at several European universities (Ghent and Paris-Dauphine) and for several years was visiting professor at the prestigious European University Institute in Florence. He is also involved in numerous study and consultancy missions for various international organizations, NGOs and research institutes. His expertise is regularly sought by the international media.
The sidelining of the Prof. Daher is part of a wider political context of pressure and repression against scholars involved in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. The chronology of events clearly indicates this, particularly in relation to the occupation of the Géopolis building in UNIL last May by students demanding transparency on partnerships with universities in Israel and the suspension of these agreements in the name of the precautionary principle. We are currently facing serious violations of the fundamental principles of academic freedom and freedom of expression, principles which are under threat, as highlighted by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Farida Shaheen, in her report “Principles for the implementation of the right to academic freedom” as well as by the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Gina Romero, as consigned in her recommendations to universities in the context of the ongoing mobilization on Palestine.
We therefore are expressing our deepest outrage and indignation. The measures taken by UNIL's management align on the long series of national and international attacks on the freedom to think, teach, research and learn that have affected and continue to affect teachers, researchers and students. They threaten the fundamental democratic rights of all.
As a result, we demand the immediate reinstatement of our colleague Joseph Daher to his teaching and duties within the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at UNIL.
<a href="https://clads.ch/solidarite-en-suisse-et-a-linternational-avec-le-pr-joseph-daher/">Add your name to the petition here</a>.

Editors

Solidarity with professor Joseph Daher

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has released its findings and recommendations from the inquiry into antisemitism on university campuses in Australia. They call for an even greater crackdown on free speech and the right to protest.
The inquiry was launched last year in response to the mass Palestine-solidarity movement on university campuses. In the wake of these anti-war actions, university administrations launched a series of attacks on student activists. Supporters of Israel made a string of bogus complaints about campuses purportedly developing a hostile atmosphere towards Jewish students, claims that were then amplified by the media. 
The panel’s recommendations include that universities tighten and expand their disciplinary processes and report complaints to a national student ombudsman. If universities don’t act on the recommendations, the government might launch a judicial inquiry. 
Another recommendation is for universities to adopt the International Holocaust Memorial Association’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been criticised by many for its potential to associate any criticism of the state of Israel with antisemitism. The recommendation has been accepted by all universities across Australia, which have agreed on a definition of antisemitism that closely mirrors the IHRA definition. 
A section of the definition reads: “Criticism of Israel can be antisemitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions and when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel ... Substituting the word ‘Zionist’ for ‘Jew’ does not eliminate the possibility of speech being antisemitic”. This means students and staff can be disciplined for calling for a free Palestine or for criticising Israel or Zionism—which is a political ideology. 
As Senator Lidia Thorpe noted in comments about the inquiry: 
“[T]he Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Ms Farida Shaheed, observed that universities in the United Kingdom have used the working definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance to ‘silence lawful speech supportive of Palestinian human rights and the right to self-determination’”. 
The National Tertiary Education Union and the National Union of Students have voiced concerns about adopting the IHRA definition because it may restrict pro-Palestine advocacy and limit academic freedom. 
Another recommendation directs the government to investigate whether the Fair Work Act should be altered to allow universities to fire staff more easily. <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/academics-under-attack-for-supporting-palestine">As reported in Red Flag</a>, universities are already unfairly treating staff who stand up for Palestine. Randa Abdel-Fattah, a Palestinian academic, is facing a smear campaign from the press; her own vice-chancellor, who fronted the inquiry, says the Act is impeding his ability to fire her. 
The inquiry was a blatant witch hunt against supporters of Palestine. For instance, one submission’s “proof” of bigotry at the University of Sydney consisted of anti-war posters calling for weapons companies to be kicked off campus, Muslim men praying at the Gaza solidarity encampment and a sign that read “apartheid free zone”. 
According to Dr Noam Peleg, a Jewish professor of law at the University of New South Wales, Zionist organisations advised people on how to flood the inquiry with submissions. He wrote in his submission (which was largely ignored by the panel): “These organisations encouraged individuals to spam the commission with submissions that include so-called evidence about antisemitism on campus by circulating templates ... [They] called this template a ‘Submission Cheat Sheet’”. 
In their submissions to the panel, university administrations said they had already tightened disciplinary procedures, banned encampments and made it easier for people to complain. Nevertheless, the inquiry recommends that universities do more to restrict democratic rights and to act quickly. 
Politicians, the corporate media and university administrators are campaigning hard to conflate Palestine-solidarity activism with an apparent rise in antisemitism. There have been abhorrent acts of antisemitism, such as attacks on synagogues or swastika graffiti. But virtually no evidence is provided to uphold the claim that there is a rise of antisemitism on university campuses. 
Instead, genuinely antisemitic acts are being cynically tied to legitimate protests against Israel’s war crimes—as though the people who oppose today’s genocide are no different from those who celebrate the Holocaust. Equally perversely, many people who openly support Israel’s actions in Palestine claim to be the victims of a broad anti-war sentiment, despite there being no official sanctions or inquiries into their pro-war behaviour and intimidation of Arab and Muslim students. Some Australian citizens have even flown to the Middle East and joined the Israeli military’s offensive in Gaza—yet there is not a peep of opposition to this in the media or among the political class.
If there were a genuine increase in racism against Jewish staff and students on campuses, silencing protests would not be the way to deal with it. In its submission, the Human Rights Law Centre argued that actions curtailing racism “must not come at the cost of silencing critical or dissenting voices”. But that is precisely what is happening at universities across Australia. 
The University of Western Australia administration has banned almost all forms of mass political communication between campus activists and students. Students can no longer put up posters or hand leaflets to other students, affix signs, banners or other displays, or use chalk on pavements. If students want to hold “events relating to the current Middle East crisis”, they must ask for approval ten days in advance and detail how they will “ensure the safety” of attendees. 
Not only are basic activist activities banned, but students also “must refrain from using phrase[s] and slogans that are contrary to the university’s policies (in either written or verbal form) at any time or place on campus”. This is a flagrant restriction of free speech. 
This mirrors the introduction of the University of Sydney’s civility code, which prohibits the use of “contested” phrases unless their meaning is explicitly defined. Slogans such as “from the river to the sea” will require further explanation if students and staff are to avoid misconduct and disciplinary hearings. 
The university recently wrote that “practices such as sit-ins and protests in buildings and classrooms are out of step with contemporary work health and safety standards and our obligations to maintain psychosocial safety on campus”. 
Dr Peleg has described how “frameworks such as cultural safety and psychosocial safety are also used to attack, harass and bully staff and students, Palestinians and their allies, including Jewish staff who oppose Israel’s actions. This is done in the name of combating antisemitism”.
Universities and governments are also introducing policies and legislation to censor and punish individuals and groups who protest peacefully and express critical ideas. Charges of antisemitism are, disturbingly, being weaponised to introduce these measures. We must resist the push to limit free speech and the right to protest. We will need them as the drive to war and the growth of the far-right gains momentum.

Anneke Demanuele

Antisemitism inquiry recommends crackdown on free speech

Something strange and disturbing is afoot. It has been nearly three months since the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne was firebombed. Shane Patton, Victoria’s police chief (at the time of writing), said the matter was “the number one counter-terrorism investigation”. But the perpetrators are still unknown and things have only grown murkier since. 
In late January, the Australian Federal Police revealed that some unknown force seemed to be using cryptocurrency to hire low-level criminals to vandalise, and possibly bomb, Jewish targets around Australia. How many of these antisemitic acts—from graffiti to arson—were carried out by this purported network of crypto-hired goons?
Who would run this operation? What’s in it for them? Religiously motivated terror networks don’t usually hire local meth-heads and junior bikies to write racist slogans on the doors of parked cars. 
The combination of violence, conspiracy and juvenile sloganeering seems compatible with the interests of Australia’s neo-Nazis—but they also take pride in doing their own dirty work, showing up in person to terrorise their victims. For ideologically motivated ultra-Islamists and fascists, committing the act yourself is usually the whole point. 
The AFP suggested that the funders are offshore, which leads us into the mire of espionage and organised crime. It may be some time before we know who ordered these attacks and what they hoped to gain from them.
But we do know some things with certainty: there are antisemitic fascist groups operating in Australia that want to use violence to gain notoriety and terrorise the minority groups they hate.
The National Socialist Network has gained the most notoriety. An insight into the group’s inner life is available from court documents after one of its Adelaide members, Cameron Brodie-Hall, was charged with possessing extremist literature. He lived in a shared house with other NSN members; they were raided by the police in 2021. On a bookcase draped with a Nazi flag, police found an edition of David Myatt’s Practical Guide to the Strategy and Tactics of Revolution, which recommends that neo-Nazis “target and kill several soft targets” because “successful assassination will get the organization known, respected and feared”.
The NSN’s mandatory reading list, discovered and disclosed in the trial, includes Mein Kampf, the Hitler Youth pamphlet Faith and Action and a typically moronic contemporary neo-Nazi pamphlet, “A Squire’s Trial”, which, amid its antisemitic propaganda, quotes Mussolini’s dictum on the intrinsic value of violence: “War is to man what motherhood is to woman”. Text messages revealed NSN members praising the neo-Nazi mass murderers Brenton Tarrant and Anders Behring Breivik.
In the end, Brodie-Hall was acquitted because prosecutors could not prove which of the housemates truly “possessed” Myatt’s terrorist manifesto—a rare legal advantage to share-house living. The NSN has continued to provoke and build; Brodie-Hall’s Adelaide branch staged multiple masked rallies in January.
We know, too, that antisemitic ideology is finding a recruiting ground in the radicalised, taboo-busting, Trumpified right-wing internet. Holocaust denial, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and calls for genocide are now rampant on X, Facebook and Instagram. Elon Musk has become an open and notorious promoter of quasi-fascist political currents, particularly through his favoured method of <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/elon-musk-x-racists-boosting-white-nationalists-south-africa-antisemitism-adl-springfield-doge-holocaust/">re-tweeting Nazi-adjacent accounts</a> when they post anti-migrant propaganda. 
RFK Jr, Trump’s new health chief, has suggested that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to spare Jews and Chinese people. Far-right politics has an inbuilt <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/6605">tendency towards antisemitism</a>, or something like it, because it is the natural conclusion of extreme nationalism: the search for a national scapegoat. This tendency is remarkably consistent even when official right-wing politics is duty-bound to support the state of Israel and posture as resolutely opposed to antisemitism.
How stupid, then—how irresponsible and shameful—are those right-wing pro-Israel figures and organisations who have sought to minimise right-wing antisemitism while trying to slander peaceful, anti-racist Palestine solidarity activists as the real threat to Jewish safety? 
The Executive Council of Australasian Jewry complacently asserted in 2023 that “right-wing antisemitism is overt, but marginalised; left-wing antisemitism is insidious, but mainstreamed”. By left-wing antisemitism, of course, it meant Palestine solidarity activism: ECAJ’s Peter Wertheim said the Greens were “like a lynch mob at a pogrom” when they said Israel was an apartheid state. Worse, then, than the real lynch mobs: fascist gangs that genuinely want to kill Jews, and which are organising and studying in preparation to do so.
Why, when there are genuine antisemitic attacks taking place, would anyone want to fabricate more antisemitism? Yet this is precisely what the pro-Israel activists in the Australian media have done. The Daily Telegraph’s <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/02/14/news-corps-backfired-undercoverjew-operation/">failed attempt</a> to goad Arab cafe owners into a racial fight is only the most overt example. The Tele’s “undercover Jew” operation makes its political priorities undeniable: the more antisemitism the better, if it helps smear Palestine supporters.
The same is true of the Israeli influencer Max Zeifer, who spends his time trying to provoke supporters of the Palestinians into saying stupid things. You can see his highly edited output on his reprehensible TikTok channel, where he asks questions like, “Why are the terrorists hiding behind kids?” to unimpressed Bangladeshi teenagers. He scored the scoop of his career when he managed to get two Bankstown nurses to claim that they’d rather kill Israeli patients than treat them. 
The media has treated the incident as if two antisemitic serial killers have been unmasked. Maybe. Or maybe these nurses detected they were interacting with an internet troll and adopted the ultra-aggressive posturing that characterises online discourse—facts and consequences be damned. Zeifer’s own propaganda justifying the very real bombing of Palestinian children has drawn rather less attention than the unlikely claims of these two nurses.
Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians does create a certain risk of an antisemitic reaction. In the first instance, Israel’s rulers and advocates are to blame: they, as the occupying imperial power, fundamentally control the conflict’s dynamic, and so often seek to present their genocide as a clash of civilisations, in which only race hatred could underpin opposition to Israel. But it is not only them. There are religious-sectarian forces that adopt the Palestinian cause and frame it in that lens. They are marginal, but they do exist.
The most effective antidote to this kind of sectarianism is a large-scale, internationalist, anti-racist solidarity movement—just like the movement in support of Palestine. When movements like that are strong, anti-racism becomes the daily reality of its participants. This has been the case over more than a year of intense pro-Palestine activism. At one after another of the huge weekly street marches that have taken place since the Gaza war began, Jewish speakers have taken the stage to situate their solidarity with Palestine in the context of a more broadly anti-racist commitment.
Their participation has been little reported in the mainstream press, which often presented the pro-Palestine marches as inherently antisemitic. But records of the speeches exist, including that by Raphael Duffy, printed in an earlier edition of Red Flag: “If you want to end the inhumanity that caused the Holocaust, we have to demand the end of the siege on Gaza”, he said. Pro-Jewish arguments, slogans and placards are common at pro-Palestine rallies—often recognising the protester’s duty to fight on in the memory of those killed by the Nazis. These are the very protests that pro-Israel institutions have been trying to limit and ban.
It’s the principle of global solidarity that has confronted and challenged antisemitism throughout history. The same principle challenges Israel’s actions today. With an increasingly rabid far-right movement accumulating power throughout the world, and so many dark and unknown forces trying to sow confusion and hatred, the need to speak, organise and act in accordance with that principle has to be defended.

Letter from a Palestinian political prisoner in Louisiana

The great antisemitism con job

Conflating Zionism and Judaism is antisemitic

US government ‘kidnaps’ Palestinian student activist

Solidarity with Palestinian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah

The view from the ground in the West Bank

New anti-protest laws target opponents of genocide

Solidarity with professor Joseph Daher

Antisemitism inquiry recommends crackdown on free speech

How not to fight antisemitism

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