Jewish Council, Commission Clown School, Media Circus.
Antizionist testimony exposes gaping institutional failure.
In January, I warned in the Australian Financial Review (freely accessible below) that the central danger to Jewish safety was being misnamed. The piece argued that “Antizionism is not about legitimate criticism of Israel” and identified it as an eliminationist ideology rather than an ordinary political position. That warning now sits at the centre of the Schwartz coverage and the Royal Commission’s work: Australian institutions still lack a clear language for distinguishing criticism of Israeli policy from antizionism.
Jewish Council, Commission Clown School, Media Circus.
Antizionist testimony exposes gaping institutional failure.
This piece concerns institutional failures, rather than Schwartz personally. Many witnesses before the Commission have attracted harassment after appearing. This is as unacceptable, as has been the vile abuse Schwartz detailed in her testimony today.
Media coverage of Sarah Schwartz’s evidence before the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion presented a misleadingly simple story.
The ABC, the Australian Financial Review, and The Guardian all presented the Jewish Council of Australia CEO’s experiences of abuse and being called a “traitor” as responses to her Palestinian advocacy and criticism of Israel. That framing is wrong.
Political criticism can be answered by reform. Antizionism cannot. Antizionism should not be conflated with political criticism. That the AFR, The ABC, The Guardian are yet to have made this distinction marks the Royal Commission’s failure to adequately address today’s most fashionable conduit for anti-Jewish libels and conspiracies: antizionism.
“Criticism of Israel” means criticism of Israel. It may involve criticism of military operations, ministers, policies, humanitarian consequences, settlements, laws, or diplomatic decisions. That speech belongs within ordinary democratic discourse.
The phrase is also being used to shelter something else. Antizionism is not criticism of Israel. Antizionism brands the Jewish state as inherently genocidal, racist, or illegitimate, then treats anyone considered proximal to the problem of its existence as morally suspect.
Criticism assumes that the object in question may grow to become a better version of itself. Antizionism approaches the Jewish state from the opposite position. The Jewish Council’s demonstrably antizionist stance should not be conflated with political criticism.
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Crossing the line
Standing midway along a rain-slicked trail on Mount Gibraltar, ninety minutes southwest of Sydney, I pulled the hem of my raincoat over my phone to shield it from the downpour. Ducking my head into the dry, dark pocket it made, like a tortoise folding into its shell, I pressed play on the live broadcast of the Royal Commission into antisemitism and social cohesion.
This category problem may have been visible in Schwartz’s evidence itself. At one point, she referred to government responses that conflate antisemitism with “anti… ah… criticisms of Israel.” The hesitation is significant because “antizionism,” “anti-Israel,” and “criticism of Israel” are not interchangeable. Did she almost say the quiet part out loud? It may have been a terrible coincidence.
The correction—if it was indeed a correction from having accidentally almost said “anti-Israel” or worse, “antizionist”—moved the sentence into the safest category.
That is precisely the institutional problem: antizionism is repeatedly reported as “criticism of Israel.” Being pro-Palestinian means advocating for Palestinian dignity and safety. I am pro-Palestinian. Palestinians deserve better. That position only comes to require hostility to Jewish self-determination, or the treatment of most Jews as moral contaminants called “Zionists,” when antizionism is allowed to pass as advocacy or criticism.
Anti-Zionism, with the hyphen, describes historical Jewish debates about Zionism. We should take pride in having had those debates. Antizionism is not anti-Zionism. It is a bigotry that positions the retroactive abortion of the Jewish state as the golden path forward for peace in the Levant.
Antizionists use libels such as genocide, apartheid, colonialism, racism, and fascism to retroactively justify their fixation on the elimination of the Jewish state. None of these libels, nor anything about antizionism, were inquired into. The “Zionism” that antizionist libels characterise bears little relation to really existing Israel or Zionism. It is a phantom constructed to legitimise the hunt. That hunt leaves Jews murdered from Israel to Manchester, Washington, and Bondi.
No accusations are being made regarding the Jewish Council’s culpability for violence incurred against Jews. Antizionism is a system. It is a permission structure that enables libels levelled against the Jewish state to stigmatise Jews worldwide in ways that libels that once stigmatised Jews for their ethnicity (classical antisemitism) or religion (antijudaism) cannot. This pathway for stigmatisation is omnipresent. The questions that needed asking were whether they consider antizionism to be defensible, and whether they consider themselves to any degree antizionist.
The framing of Schwartz as vilified for being pro-Palestinian is insufficiently substantiated. The reported abuse levelled at Schwartz is disgusting. I have personally shut down cruel remarks said in my vicinity. That Schwartz has been abused cannot be questioned. She has been. It is wrong.
Yet these examples do not establish that the operative cause was support for Palestinian rights, rather than contested positions on Israel, Zionism, Jewish peoplehood, or far-right hatred of Jews as Jews. This leap of logic reflects our institutions’ incapacity to distinguish between antizionism and criticism of Israeli policy.
Schwartz argued that Jews are collectively blamed for Israel’s conduct and that public discourse should separate Jewish people from Israel. The premise is correct. Jewish Australians are not responsible for the conduct of the Israeli government. The conclusion requires precision. Separating Jews from responsibility for Israeli state action does not require separating Jews from maintaining an interest in the continued existence of a Jewish state.
A useful analogy clarifies the point. Asking Pakistanis to accept anti-Pakistanism, then stigmatising Pakistanis who refuse as “Pakistanists” responsible for the Pakistani government, would rightly be seen as bigoted. The same ought to hold for Jews.
If criticism of Israel and antizionism had anything meaningful in common, there would be no need for “Zionists.”
Institutions fail when they treat Jewish connection to Israel as collective liability. They also fail when they treat antizionist hostility as ordinary criticism simply because it avoids the word Jew.
Commissioner Virginia Bell’s apparent description of Schwartz’s position as “progressive” also required more care. In this setting, “progressive” risks operating as a moral credential rather than a neutral descriptor. It can position an antizionist or strongly anti-Israel Jewish witness as the enlightened internal critic, while placing mainstream Jewish communal views in the implied category of defensiveness, conservatism, or parochialism.
The Commission has heard substantial lived-experience evidence from Jewish Australians across the country. Witnesses have described intimidation, exclusion, institutional failure, professional consequences, fear in public, harassment after testimony, and the cost of being visibly Jewish. Schwartz’s evidence belongs within that broader record. Its media prominence reflects the narrative appeal of conflating being pro-Palestinian, critical of Israel, and antizionist.
Calling a Jewish critic of Israel a Kapo weaponises Jewish persecution. Calling a Zionist Jew a Nazi, fascist, or genocide supporter also weaponises Jewish persecution. The harm does not change according to the politics of the Jew being targeted.
The Royal Commission must understand that this is not a question of whether a Jewish critic of Israel has been abused. Abuse does not discriminate between Jews based on their beliefs. Matilda, and the doxxed 600, were not asked about their positions on Zionism before the antizionists came.
The question is whether Australian institutions can distinguish political criticism from antizionism. Schwartz was not questioned by representatives of Jewish organisations. Palestinian advocacy is protected speech. Criticism of Israeli policy is protected speech. Jewish Australians are not responsible for Israeli government conduct. Jewish political diversity is real. None of those propositions prevents the Commission from recognising that antizionism is none of these things.
The central issue is whether Australia can develop a public language that protects political criticism and advocacy while separating them from an ideology that positions the Jewish state as exceptionally evil, and Jews as suspicious unless proven otherwise.
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For more on antizionism in Australia:
(Oldest to latest)
Jewish Antizionists (”Asajews”) — 8 Feb 2026
How hate becomes fashionable — 12 Jan 2026
Can courts handle antizionism? — 9 Mar 2026
Anti-Zionism v Antizionism — 20 Feb 2026
Violence and antizionism — 13 Feb 2026
Psychology of antizionism — 9 Dec 2025
Strategic advocacy and antizionism — 30 Jan 2026
A polite takedown of Randa Abdel-Fattah — 23 Jan 2026
Antizionism and Bondi — 14 Dec 2025 (published in The Australian 17 Dec 2025)
Post-Bondi reflection — 12 Jan 2026
Personal Submission to Royal Commission — 14 Jun 2026
MAAZ AU Submission to Royal Commission — 11 May 2026
Antizionists are not “pro-Palestine”. — 29 Mar 2026
When Jews mistake abuse for “criticism” (Grace Tame) — 2 Apr 2026
Why I stopped defending “Zionism” — 13 Apr 2026
Royal Commission’s false start — 4 May 2026
Antizionism in Victorian Labor — 24 May 2026
Psychoanalysing antizionist’s quest for redemption — 20 Jun 2026
Our new strategy to fight antizionism — 23 Jun 2026
Great analyses Joshua .. why can’t people see that antizionism is definitely not pro- Palestine!
Thankyou.