A personal view of Australian and International Politics
Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
Artist's impression of the Swift observatory. (Supplied: NASA)
In short:
NASA has launched a robotic mission to try to prevent one of its aging telescopes from burning up in the atmosphere.
The unprecedented effort involves sending a robot to rescue the Swift space telescope that is currently falling towards Earth.
The robot's launch was postponed earlier this week due to weather and then technical issues.
A three-armed spacecraft has rocketed into orbit to rescue a NASA telescope that is in danger of crashing back to Earth.
Northrop
Grumman launched Katalyst Space Technologies' Link spacecraft from the
Marshall Islands in the Pacific, on Friday local time.
The
Pegasus rocket blasted off from the belly of a modified airplane,
putting Link on course to reach and capture NASA's Swift Observatory in
about a month.
The complicated operation is expected to last several months. (Reuters: Supplied/Ron Beard/NASA)
Launched in 2004, Swift is sinking faster than ever because of recent solar storms.
If successful, the mission could pave the way for giving other satellites a second life.
NASA
is paying $US30 million ($43.5 million) for Katalyst to capture the
telescope and boost its orbit so it can continue tracking some of the
biggest explosions in the universe, like gamma ray bursts and exploding
stars.
If all goes well, Swift could be back scanning the cosmos by September.
Observations are currently on hold to preserve the telescope's orbit as long as possible.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope could be a candidate for a similar salvage operation in a few years.
It is also slipping in altitude because of increased atmospheric drag caused by the sun's outbursts.
The 1.4-metric ton Swift currently is circling 360 kilometres above Earth.
Katalyst aims to raise the telescope's altitude by 240 kilometres, back to where it all began.
Link's thrusters will fire to boost Swift slowly, so there's no heavy jostling.
Without such a boost, it's predicted to plunge to its demise in October.
The SWIFT orbital boost effort is the first US mission of its kind
(AP: Supplied/Sophia Roberts/NASA)
Bad weather and technical issues caused a series of last-minute launch delays.
"This is a high-risk, high-reward mission," Katalyst Space CEO Ghonhee Lee said ahead of lift-off.
"The
biggest danger was always we don't launch anything and we let Swift
burn up in the atmosphere. So we were always trying to avoid that risk,
and our team has done that."
"The boys really done us proud. It was a game of two halves, but rugby league was the winner at the end of the day."
Business
and team sports have a great deal in common. Matches and corporate
seasons usually are divided into two halves, and the outfit with the
biggest score is declared the victor.
With
a stonking $5 billion-plus broadcast rights deal ready to be inked
sometime this week, rugby league, or more correctly the National Rugby
League (NRL), really is the winner. And not just at the end of the day.
Peter V’landys has been a key player in the broadcast negotiations. (Getty Images: Mark Kolbe)
It
has also cemented the position of Peter V'landys, who assumed the chair
of the Australian Rugby League Commission in 2019, as the nation's
supreme sports administrator.
The
seven-year deal, at $700 million a year, is easily the most lucrative
television deal in Australian history. That's the bottom of the range.
It could rise as high as $800 million if a 20th team is added to the
competition.
It easily outstrips the seven-year deal struck by the AFL for $4.5 billion, which kicked off in 2025.
But it is an agreement that raises one very big question. Who, ultimately, will shell out the coin for this whopper transaction?
Will it be a Ukrainian-born billionaire, Nine shareholders or Foxtel subscribers?
When friends fall out
When
negotiations over the new NRL broadcasting rights deal began last year,
horseracing and football powerbroker V'landys warned both Foxtel and
Nine of colluding on a joint bid.
He needn't have bothered.
For more than 30 years, the pair have divvied up the spoils when it comes to rugby league.
Nine
has broadcast limited games on free-to-air television as part of a
federal government system that ensured televised sport was available to
all free of charge, while Foxtel subscribers had a much larger offering.
While
there has been friction between the pair during that time, the
relationship fundamentally shifted about a decade ago after Nine created
its own streaming service, Stan.
From an uncomfortable partnership, the relationship gradually transformed into outright competition.
Stan nabbed some global soccer rights, including all the English Premier League games, Champions League, regional rugby union, the four grand slam tennis games and some motor sports, but always had its eye on a bigger prize.
For streaming and cable services, sport is paramount. It anchors viewers to your network and allows you to charge a premium.
This time around, Nine was desperate to secure a win while Foxtel was determined to defend its patch.
And so, the bidding war began.
Foxtel went it alone with a bid that would cut Nine out of the race by offloading games to rival free-to-air network Seven.
Nine
attempted to outbid Foxtel for the entire package with an offer to
secure the streaming rights for Stan in conjunction with its
long-running free-to-air offering.
That put V'landys in the box seat, happily fending off escalating bids from a pair that have been partners forever.
V'landys approached the negotiations from a position of strength.
The
NRL's finances have improved dramatically in recent years with five
consecutive cash surpluses. The vast lift in cashflow from broadcast
rights helped.
But stronger
crowds, government injections through adding a PNG team, and competition
from states to host State of Origin matches have bolstered the coffers.
A leak in time
A little over a week ago, details of the bids were made public in the Nine newspapers.
"Maybe they wanted to deflect from the furore surrounding Karl Stefanovic," one insider joked.
But the well-timed leak was more likely an attempt by Nine to push the deal across the line.
Foxtel was to pay $500 million a year, Nine would spend $150 million and a New Zealand broadcaster $50 million a year.
If
a 20th team joined the NRL, the amount would increase. Add in some
contra deals on advertising and, all up, the seven-year arrangement
could be worth as much as $5.3 billion.
But
the leak may have had the opposite effect. Instead of preceding an
imminent announcement, there has been radio silence from NRL
headquarters.
On Tuesday, the
unofficial word was that some last-minute details needed to be ironed
out. On Wednesday, negotiations were ongoing. By Thursday, the message
was: "Nothing to say at this time."
There
have since been unconfirmed reports that both media groups have
continued negotiations with V'landys over gaining sole rights to the
code.
Who will foot the bill?
V'landys has always been insistent that viewers shouldn't be slugged with extra fees to watch footy.
But someone has to pay.
Over
the past decade, the NRL broadcast rights have risen from slightly
above $1 billion to the soon-to-be-announced $5 billion-plus
arrangement.
For Nine, it creates an existential crisis.
Former
Nine boss Hugh Marks, now the ABC managing director, struck the deal
for Nine's free-to-air rights through the COVID era for $90 million a
year.
His successor Mike Sneesby upped that to $115 million. Under the new offer, Nine will now be paying $150 million in cash.
With
advertising revenues in free fall after three interest rate hikes and
plummeting business confidence, that puts Nine's earnings under
pressure.
Nine's share price has fallen about 10 per cent since April but, so far, hasn't reacted since details of the bid were leaked.
Foxtel, meanwhile, is in a much stronger position than Nine.
One
of the best-performing businesses in the Australian media landscape, it
is now owned by DAZN, a UK-based global media group controlled by
Ukrainian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik, with backing from Saudi
Arabia.
Foxtel was bought last year by global streaming company DAZN, which is controlled by Len Blavatnik.
(Getty: Mark Robinson)
But
it will still need to wrangle extra revenue, particularly since its
former record-setting deal to secure streaming rights for AFL set it
back $500 million. With the NRL under its belt, that is $1 billion a
year in costs for just two codes.
Foxtel's
ability to lift subscription prices will be kept in check by mounting
cost-of-living pressures as struggling households try to rein in
expenses, forcing the streaming operator to look at commercial customers
for extra cash.
But some hotel owners, who can't operate without sports broadcasts, are up in arms.
"This whole rights deal is good for some, but not for others," one pub owner posted on Reddit.
"As a licensed venue, I now have to pay $4,120 a month for Foxtel. All I need it for is the NRL.
"That's
$50,000 a year. I was paying $2,600 a month, which was still
outrageous. And before you ask, I'm not allowed to screen Kayo or
FoxtelGo."
Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks to the media as he visits the site of a damaged apartment building. (Reuters: Valentyn Ogirenko)
Ukraine's
military has hit oil and military facilities near St Petersburg
overnight on Saturday, in response to Kyiv suffering what has been
called Russia's deadliest attack in the war to date.
Ukranian
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the major drone attack on
Telegram, saying the military had targeted infrastructure that was
helping Russia finance its war efforts.
A plume of black smoke is seen over the port of St Petersburg after a Ukrainian drone attack. (AP)
"Ukraine's
defence forces struck port oil infrastructure that generates revenue
for Russia's war, and also hit Kronstadt, an important military
target more than 850km (528 miles) from Ukraine's state border,"
Zelenskyy wrote in the post.
Russian
energy infrastructure has become increasingly targeted by Ukraine this
year, adding to fuel shortages in parts of the country.
Meanwhile,
St Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov said the aftermath of the
attack had been dealt with, and there were no casualties reported.
The
nearby region of Leningrad was also hit in the strike, with Governor
Alexander Drozdenko reporting that 72 drones were shot down.
Deadliest attack to date
Ukraine's
retaliation followed Russia's attack on Kyiv on Friday, which killed at
least 27 people in the deadliest attack in the war to date.
About 130 buildings were damaged throughout the capital and 91 people were injured.
During the attack, thousands of residents rushed to bomb shelters and underground metro stations to take cover.
Seventy-four
missiles and 496 drones were launched during the attack, which Kyiv
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said was the "enemy's most massive attack on the
capital".
'Fake claims' of city capture
On Friday, Russia's military said its forces had taken control of Kostiantynivka in central Ukraine.
Ukraine's general staff said on Saturday that this statement was another "fake claim".
The
Kostiantynivka capture announcement was made by the Chief of Russia's
General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, during President Vladimir Putin's visit
to a military command post overseeing Russian military operations in
Ukraine.
Emergency workers search for victims after a Russian missile hit a supermarket in Kostiantynivka, in Ukraine's Donetsk region. (AP: Iryna Rybakova)
Gerasimov
said it was a significant step as Russia continued offensive operations
aimed at taking control of the entire Donetsk region.
Russia
had previously stated that its forces controlled parts of the city, but
Friday's announcement marked its first claim that Kostiantynivka had
been fully captured.
"We deny
this," a Ukranian general staff official said in response, stating
Kostiantynivka remained under the control of Ukrainian forces.
Two osprey chicks have been filmed hatching on top of a crane in the Daintree Rainforest.
The
crane is run by James Cook University's Daintree Observatory, and the
video live stream has been running for more than a decade.
What's next?
The observatory was threatened with decommissioning, but the university recently confirmed it would stay operational.
Each
year for more than a decade, a pair of ospreys have built a nest 47
metres in the air, on the top of a crane in the Daintree Rainforest.
The
crane is similar in structure to those used in construction, but this
one is part of a research observatory run by James Cook University (JCU)
in the heart of the World Heritage-listed rainforest.
Researchers
are confident the same osprey pair returns to the exposed location each
year, and the birds have again become proud parents to two squirming
chicks.
Daintree Rainforest
Observatory manager Johan Larson said the chicks began life "pretty
helpless" after hatching sometime between last Thursday and Saturday.
"They
struggle to hold their necks upright but, pretty quickly, once they've
had a few meals of fish, they start getting pretty strong," he said.
Researchers believe the same pair of ospreys have been returning to the observatory crane to nest every year. (Supplied: James Cook University)
Mr
Larson said the parents took turns flying the roughly 2 kilometres to
the ocean to fish, bringing meals back several times a day until the
chicks reached fledgling age.
"Then
slowly, slowly they start practising [flapping] their wings and, after
about two months, they start their first flight — [they] usually just
hover a little bit above the nest,"
he said.
Mr
Larson said the ospreys had been extremely successful parents, raising
chicks on a live-streamed video every year since cameras were installed
atop the crane about 11 years ago.
The canopy crane at the Daintree Rainforest Observatory has been in place since 1998. (Supplied: Johan Larson)
Crane's clearer future
The
future now appears more secure for the Daintree Rainforest Observatory
and the crane where the osprey nest — two years after it was revealed
JCU was considering closing both.
In
a statement this week, deputy vice-chancellor Jenny Seddon said a
consultation process found ways to increase use and public engagement
with the observatory and crane.
"For
example, last year, there was an increase in the number of
undergraduate students who used the facilities as part of their degree
program, along with a rise in the number of domestic high school
students who visited," Professor Seddon said.
She said the crane was in good working order, with its next 10-year certification review due in 2028.
Researchers sometimes use drones in tandem with the James Cook University crane, in the Daintree Rainforest Observatory. (Supplied: Emmeline Norris, James Cook University)
"There is no indication at this stage that this date would be the end of useful life for the crane," she said.
Mr
Larson said he expected the crane would need some significant servicing
or replacement, possibly in 2028, but was pleased it and the
observatory would continue to operate.
He
said despite advances in technology like drones and satellites, a lot
of research in rainforest canopies was best done on a crane.
"[The
canopy is] where you get most of the photosynthesis, pollination,
fruiting and flowering, and you have quite different communities of
insects and other types of wildlife up in the canopy compared to on the
ground,"
Mr Larson said.
"Without
a canopy crane, that work is very difficult. You have to use climbing
equipment, or you can use things like slingshots to get branches down
for leaf samples and things like that."
Australia has strengthened economic and political ties with Indonesia but our Asia capability is in decline. (AAP: Dan Himbrechts)
Rod
Brazier presented his credentials as Australia's ambassador to
Indonesia to President Prabowo Subianto in Jakarta on May 6 last year.
In
terms of the Australia-Indonesia relationship, the event was sandwiched
perfectly between the signing of the Australia Indonesia Defence
Cooperation Agreement in August 2024 and the Treaty on Common Security
in December last year.
Announcing
Brazier's appointment at the end of 2024, Foreign Minister Penny Wong
observed that it was "impossible to overstate Indonesia's importance to
Australia".
"A strong and prosperous Indonesia is vital to the peace, stability and prosperity of our region," she said.
We
have re-strengthened our economic ties, and, significantly, our defence
and strategic ties with Indonesia in recent years and the shock that
went round the globe with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz in March
only highlights the importance of such ties in the region.
Remember
our prime minister's lap around South-East Asia on the search for more
energy and fertiliser supplies a few months ago? And his reminder to our
near neighbours at the time that it really is a two-way street between
their economies and ours, particularly for resources?
The
world is making a lot more local and dense trade and diplomatic ties in
the Trumpian world. Whether or not countries walk from the United
States — always the extreme and unlikely journey — they are just quietly
rewiring and reinforcing bilateral connections.
Yet
despite the worthy rhetoric about the significant of Indonesia to
Australia, we seem to have only regressed in our focus on our nearest
large neighbour.
Investors are nervous about the contradictions in Prabowo Subianto's economic strategy. (AAP: Lukas Coch)
Fears of another Asian financial crisis
Despite
two-way trade being at record highs, despite the closer defence ties,
and despite one island in Indonesia helping making it Australia's top
destination for short term travel, news desks in Australia don't seem to
rate it very much.
"Bombs, bongs and boats" — is the way some jaded Jakarta correspondents describe their bosses' interest in Indonesia.
Through
much of this year, there has been a major tremble going through the
Indonesian economy which, at times, analysts have feared might presage
another Asian financial crisis.
Just
this week, Bloomberg reported that the three biggest foreign banks in
Indonesia have shipped around $US640 million ($920 million) of their
earnings out of Southeast Asia's largest economy since 2024 "as they
pare exposure amid President Prabowo Subianto's increasingly
state-focused economic policies".
"The
Indonesian units of Citigroup Inc., Standard Chartered Plc and HSBC
Holdings Plc remitted a total of 11.5 trillion rupiah ($US640 million)
over the last two years, slightly exceeding their combined profits for
the period, according to an analysis of their financial statements,"
Bloomberg said.
There have been other alarming signs.
The
Indonesian rupiah has depreciated "a lot" against the US dollar — to
more than 18,000 rupiahs to one US dollar — the weakest point in its
history, weaker than during the Asian Financial Crisis.
Currencies fall when more people are selling them than buying them.
In
February this year, trading on the Indonesian stock exchange was
briefly suspended after a two day sell off saw an 8 per cent drop in the
market, worth an estimated $US 80 billion ($115 billion).
Overall
the stock market has lost about a third of its value since the start of
the year — making it one of the worst performers globally.
What's
making investors nervous are the contradictions in Prabowo's economic
strategy and how his administration deals with them: it aims for 8 per
cent annual growth (compared to around 5 per cent recently).
But
significant capital outflow has forced the central bank to lift
interest rates (which slows growth) and the government has been mostly
reluctant to cut back on the president's expensive pledges to deliver a
multi-billion dollar school meal program as well as fuel subsidies.
Indonesia has also imposed tighter export controls on some goods in the name of "resource nationalism".
As analyst James Guild wrote in The Diplomat this week there is always a tension between state and market in Indonesia.
"With
the current administration, we are seeing a sharper turn toward state
intervention and economic nationalism and this is causing a strong
market reaction," he said.
Committee
chair Tim Watts reflected on investments like school language and
exchange programs, as well as university courses in Asian studies and
languages. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
Relevant to Australia's interests
How this all develops is of significant interest to Australia in the short term and the longer term.
Which brings us back to Rod Brazier.
Ambassador Brazier speaks fluent Indonesian.
That's because, as a young chap, he spent six months learning it in Makassar and living with an Indonesian family.
He then did an honours degree in Asian studies at Griffith University.
That makes him something of a dying breed.
Remember
when Paul Keating talked about greater engagement in Asia? Or Kevin
Rudd pushed for more Asian languages in Australian schools?
Well, the direction of our studies and engagement in Asia have only seemed to go backwards.
The
grand vision at one point might have been an Australian population that
had an awareness of our Asian neighbours, and all the opportunities
they presented.
But now the
problem is now rather more existential: will we even have enough
Indonesian-speakers, or for that matter Mandarin speakers, or Japanese
speakers to fill the ranks of our diplomatic corps in the future?
Will we have any deep academic knowledge of what is happening in our own region?
The report found language subjects have faced a steady decline in Australian education. (ABC News: Lachlan Bennett, file)
Language enrolments falling
The
House of Representatives standing committee on education this week
handed down its report into "Building Asia capability through the
education system and beyond".
Committee
chair Tim Watts reflected on the long investment made by — and for —
our diplomats like Brazier: school language and exchange programs;
university courses in Asian studies and languages.
"These
steps led them to be at the forefront of our engagement with the region
and to make an enormous contribution to our nation's security and
prosperity in Asia", Watts said.
But
the committee is warning that "school and university language programs,
in-country exchange and immersion programs, Asian studies courses at our
universities —all of these stages in Australia's Asia capability
pipeline are now facing an existential crisis".
"Australia
still has the people and the knowledge to make our own way in Asia
today. But the school language programs and university courses that
produced them are closing, one by one," it warned.
"To
ensure Australian self-reliance in Asia in challenging and contested
times, we need to act to preserve the institutions that build our Asia
capability."
The numbers are indeed staggering.
Domestic enrolments in South-East Asian languages at Australian universities have fallen by 75 per cent between 2005 and 2024.
"Barely
500 of the one million domestic Australian university students are
studying Indonesian language, fewer than when Menzies was prime
minister", the committee's report says.
"The
situation is even more dire in our schools. Just 3.3 per cent of
Australian Year 12 students studied a priority Asian language in 2023,
down from 4.7 per cent at the time of the Australia in the Asian Century
White Paper (2012)."
"The number of Year 12 Indonesian students across Australia fell from 1,160 in 2010 to 486 in 2024.
"In
Queensland, Indonesian is already functionally extinct. Over the past
15 years, only two schools have consistently taught a Year 12 or
combined Year 11 and 12 class in Indonesian. In 2026, just four students
across the state were projected to sit a year 12 Indonesian exam."
The
committee's report notes there has been a multitude of earlier reports
that have urged government strategies to help Australia make its way in
Asia.
But it says that "while
Asia has grown more important to Australia during this time, governments
from both sides of politics have not met the challenge set by these
reports", which will require "sustained national policy focus over the
long term".
An incentive to study language without culture
The committee heard two justifications for why nothing had to be done about this.
One
was AI translation tools which, it is claimed, will make language
learning redundant. This overlooks the fact that relationship building
actually needs just a bit of contextual and cultural expertise.
And it is perhaps worth noting here how government policies with different agendas can often destroy good intentions.
Independent MP Kate Chaney noted in the committee's report how the Morrison government's 'Job-Ready' graduates package worked.
(Job
ready restructured university fees to cut the costs of some degrees in
areas like STEM subjects while doubling or even tripling fees for arts,
law and business. It felt like there may have been just a tad of
woke-smacking going on in the policy process. It was a singular failure:
it turns out that people study things they are interested in, not what
they can afford).
Chaney noted
Job Ready did actually lower the student fee contribution for foreign
language courses, but "it simultaneously raised costs for Humanities,
Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) degrees, increasing the maximum student
contribution for the latter from $6,804 to $14,500.
"The
result is a purported financial incentive for students to study
language without culture, precisely the opposite of genuine Asia
capability," she said.
"Deterring students from HASS study reduces the pipeline into Asian language and area studies programs.
"It
weakens the institutional sustainability of programs in history,
politics, international relations, linguistics and cultural studies,
which produce precisely the kind of deep regional expertise this report
identifies as critical to Australia's national interest."
"Targeted
investments in language programs, teaching pipelines and in-country
experiences will have limited effect if the underlying funding structure
continues to signal that understanding Asia's societies, cultures and
politics is not worth students' time or money."
The other justification put to the committee was that the Asian-Australian diaspora would solve the problem.
Yet
our universities and schools don't even give communities an opportunity
to learn their heritage language. Only two Australian universities, for
example, offer courses in Hindi.
It's
not just Indonesian or Hindi that are in trouble. The language and
cultural expertise in China — our largest trading partner — is also
fading.
It only becomes more
important that we have people like Rod Brazier who are competent to
protect our interests in the future if we don't seem that keen as a
nation to understand the people and places around us.
Jews should be able to criticise the actions of Israel without risking exclusion from communal life
Today,
I’m giving evidence to the royal commission on antisemitism and social
cohesion, established after the slaughter of 15 people at a Hanukah
celebration at Bondi beach. Their murders demand an honest reckoning.
The question is whether we can confront antisemitism without weaponising
Jewish grief or turning Holocaust memory into a political instrument to silence the very forms of solidarity and dissent it should compel.
Over
the past two years, as a Jewish person publicly supporting Palestinian
freedom, Israel’s defenders have repeatedly turned symbols of Jewish
persecution against me. Online, I am called a “Kapo” and “Judenrat”,
invoking the institutions the Nazis created to make Jews complicit in
their own persecution. Those who claim to be the inheritors of the
Holocaust circulate memes depicting me as a rat, pin yellow stars on my
clothing, place me on a train to concentration camps and describe me as
“Hitler’s Jew”. During a live ABC interview, another Jewish guest
declared that I was “an anti-Jew”. Afterwards, a publication launched a
“debate” about whether that description was justified, as though my
Jewishness itself had become a matter for public adjudication.There is something profoundly disorienting about being compared to Nazis
At
the same time, I’m a target of actual neo-Nazis. They traffic in
conspiracies such as the “Great Replacement”, portraying Jews as the
hidden force behind multiculturalism, migration and anti-racism. They
recycle familiar caricatures of Jewish appearance and Jewish power that
have animated antisemitism for generations. They are indifferent to my
views on Israel. They target me because I am publicly Jewish, and
because I stand with those they imagine to be the enemies of a white
Christian nation: Muslim people, migrants and anti-racists.
There
is something profoundly disorienting about being compared to Nazis. I
understand why people reach for this language. For many Jews, the
Holocaust is the deepest moral reference point. It is the vocabulary
through which fear, vulnerability and collective memory are expressed.
But the language directed at me is not simply an expression of grief or
lateral violence. It is part of a political framework cultivated over
decades: one that collapses Jewish identity into the state of Israel,
recasts criticism of Israel as hostility towards Jews, and turns the
Holocaust from a warning against atrocity into a test of political
loyalty. Israel becomes the “persecuted collective Jew”. Its critics
become antisemites.
Last week, a UN commission of inquiry concluded that
Israel has continued to commit genocide through the deliberate
targeting of Palestinian children in Gaza. It found that Israeli forces
deliberately shot at children’s vital organs, used high-payload
munitions in densely populated areas, and that starvation caused by
Israel’s blockade had inflicted profound and lasting harm.
Rather
than engaging with these findings, Israeli officials again reached for
the language of historic Jewish persecution. They dismissed the report
as part of an “anti-Israel narrative” and accused those
sharing its findings of “parroting blood libels”, invoking one of
history’s oldest antisemitic myths. The allegations themselves became
the persecution. The question ceased to be what had happened in Gaza,
but whether those describing it were the latest antisemites.
This
framework has travelled well. Australia’s debate has become almost
entirely disconnected from Gaza itself. We argue about protesters,
slogans, university encampments and definitions of antisemitism.
Universities adopt managerial policies to mitigate “controversy”.
Regulators adopt contested definitions which chill speech. Journalists
learn which stories attract organised campaigns.
For
Palestinians, the result is global silence; turning evidence of mass
atrocity into a debate about permissible speech. For Jews, it flattens
our identities into allegiance to a nation-state. Jews who refuse that
allegiance must be cast out. My attempted public humiliation tells Jews
that our place in communal and public life is conditional on political
conformity.
Over the past two years I have
spoken to countless Jewish people who feel unable to express their
political convictions without risking public exposure, family rupture or
exclusion from communal life. After I was publicly described as an
“anti-Jew”, one wrote: “Growing numbers of Jews are feeling excluded and betrayed by communal institutions because of their political convictions.”
No
government or institution can or should decide the boundaries of Jewish
identity. But they can stop reinforcing the fiction that Jews and
Israel are interchangeable.
When the Holocaust
is used to police Jewish identity, silence those who bear witness to
atrocity, or to recast allegations of mass violence as acts of
persecution against the accused, it is hollowed of any moral force.
Instead its memory should be not only about what we inherit, but what we choose to do with that inheritance.
