Sarah Schwartz, Executive Officer of the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), has been attacked by the right for criticising Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s conflation of Jews with Zionism.
During a comedy debate at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) on January 22, she accused Dutton of being a racist, saying in the midst of a real and scary spate of antisemitic attacks, he had “taken the throne as Australia’s chief antisemitism warrior”.
Commenting on his Christmas Valedictory Speech, in which Jews were singled out for special mention, she said “it’s tempting to think Dutton has found a heart”.
She said “the reality is that for Dutton and his ilk, Jews are just the perfect avatars to use to peddle racism, Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment”.
Schwartz’s presentation to the “The Great Race Debate”, at the Symposium Unifying Antiracism Research and Action, was both comedic and serious. It critiqued and challenged racist stereotypes of Jewish people, particularly from those with a large platform, such as Dutton.
“Dutton isn’t alone in his low-key obsession with Jews as stand-ins for Western civilization,” Schwartz said. “Right-wing populists around the globe are doing the same,” she said, pointing to far-right Islamophobe Geert Wilders, US President Donald Trump and Christian Zionists who “want all Jews to move to Israel to bring on the second coming of Jesus Christ”.
But it’s not just the far right, Schwartz said. “Dutton and his ilk are setting the tone for the discussion of antisemitism across the political spectrum.” Labor’s antisemitism envoy uses her position to quash anti-war protestors and lobby for law and order crackdowns, and the PM “appears to be caving to Dutton’s demands when it comes to responding to antisemitism”.
Schwartz said that right-wing Zionist institutions, which side with anyone who supports Israel, “conflate Jewish identity with the state of Israel so that they can silence Palestinian voices by labeling them antisemitic”.
It is “inconvenient” for them to confront a growing number of Jews who are refusing to be grouped into a single archetype.
Schwartz said contrary to Dutton’s narrow conception of Jewish people (which is where the term “Dutton’s Jew” was used) she said Jewish people are “diverse” and the Jewish community is “not a monolith”.
“Flattening any group into a single archetype, and silencing any member who displays individuality, breeds racism.”
She said Dutton uses stereotypes to promote division, attack Labor and push an anti-immigration agenda.
“Because none of this is actually about Jews or Jewish safety, Dutton can still feed into racist discourse by arguing that immigration has created a housing crisis; he can still be part of a political party which has consistently faced scandals for alleged links to white supremacists. Trump can still see ‘very fine people’ in those chanting ‘Jews will not replace us’, and entertain neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers at Mar-a-Lago for dinner.
“Musk can do what looks and smells like a Seig Heil at that inauguration and right-wing Zionist groups will come to his defence.
“It’s why none of these antisemitism warriors would really care that neo-Nazis are making whacko conspiracies about a left-wing Jews like me…
“It’s honestly getting a bit hard to tell the difference between the harassment we get from right-wing Zionist anti-antisemitism warriors and neo-Nazis … I might just stick to being a bad Jew with neo-Nazis as my enemies rather than friends.”
The JCA criticised the Murdoch media and far-right social media for misreporting Schwartz’s comments. It said sharing of a single image from a speech, devoid of any context, “has resulted in a gross misrepresentation of the content and intention of her presentation”.
JCA is now urging people to write to QUT Vice Chancellor Professor Margaret Shiel, education minister Jason Clare and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, urging them to resist the pressure coming from the Coalition and Israel lobby groups to condemn Schwartz and defend the “the right of Jewish people to critique and challenge racist stereotypes”.
Janet Parker from Jews for Palestine WA (JFPWA) told 91̳ that her group is concerned at the “erosion of academic freedom”, particularly Jewish voices, over Israel’s genocide over the last 15 months.
Parker said the mainstream’s conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel had “made Jews more unsafe” and “actively fuelled antisemitism”.
“Those that swallow this conflation see Jews, not the state of Israel, as responsible for the most devastating assault on the Palestinian peoples since the Nakba of 1948.”
She said JFPWA sees the genocide in Gaza by the Israeli state as a holocaust. “We refuse to be represented as some kind of monolithic entity — that we all think the same. Indeed, such a characterisation is insulting and is, in itself, antisemitic.
“It was this that Sarah Schwartz sought to challenge.”
JFPWA has urging it to resist the pressure from Zionist lobbies to condemn Schwartz.
“Any condemnation or apology will feed into the coordinated campaign to silence, not just Sarah’s voice, but that of all the voices of diverse Jewish people such as ourselves.”
[Professor Margaret Sheil can be contacted at the Queensland University of Technology via email at vc@qut.edu.au.]