A Macquarie University lecturer in Middle East politics who has been the target of a pro-Israel media campaign claims to have been filmed, followed and threatened on campus.

Dr Jumana Bayeh — an associate professor specialising in postcolonial and Middle East studies at Macquarie University — said a man recorded her without her consent in a May lecture, became aggressive toward another student when confronted and followed her when she left the building, forcing her to call campus security and prompting her students to form a protective circle around her.

“At one point, he said, ‘I can find you’,” Bayeh told Deepcut.

“That gave me the chills. I felt sickened by it.”

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‘Mind your own f***ing business’

Bayeh first noticed the man — who was not one of her regular students — toward the back of one of her Middle East studies lectures.

“He looked a bit older than the cohort, maybe in his early 30s, so he looked a bit distinguishable from the rest,” Bayeh told Deepcut. “One student told me that they remembered him walking in earlier in the semester, standing in the corner, and then leaving the room.”

Macquarie lectures are audio-recorded, but private filming is generally prohibited. Bayeh says the trouble began when she noticed the man seemingly filming her on his phone.

“It seemed like he was filming me because he was holding his phone up to his face,” Bayeh said. “I said to him, ‘Are you recording me?’ He said, ‘No, I’m not. I’m looking at my phone’.”

Bayeh asked that the man not film her and reminded her students that the lecture’s audio was being recorded. A few minutes later, she looked up and saw he was filming her again.

“I said to him, ‘I just told you no one is to film me in this class’,” Bayeh said. “He said, ‘I’m not filming you, I’m looking at the lecture slides for the unit on his phone’, which seemed odd as the lecture slides were on four big screens behind me.”

At that point, Bayeh felt the situation was getting “tense” and decided to end the lecture. The man then became verbally abusive.

“I said to the students, ‘I’m really sorry, I’m not obliged to give a lecture where I don’t feel safe, I’m ending this lecture, I’ll post notes for you’,” Bayeh said. “At that point he said to me, ‘Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?’”

“One of the other students, sitting towards the front, said to him, ‘Why don’t you get over yourself?’ He then marched down to the student and got in his face,” Bayeh said.

“It looked like it was going to get violent. He’s bigger than me; I’m quite short. If there was going to be physical altercation, there’s no way I could have stopped it.”

At that point, Bayeh rang security on the lecture theatre’s internal phone, prompting the man to “stomp out”. Bayeh lingered in the lecture room to check on her other students, who were “quite upset”.

When security didn’t arrive, Bayeh’s students offered to walk her out of the building.

“When we got downstairs, I could see him waiting outside,” Bayeh said. “We took a different exit, but he found us as we were walking out. He started following us and pointing at me, saying, ‘You have to talk to me. I’ve done nothing wrong, Jumana. You have to talk to me’.”

“I called security again, and the students had physically formed like a ring around me, telling him to go away. At one point, he said, ‘I can find you’. That gave me the chills. I felt sickened by it.”

Eventually campus security arrived and escorted Bayeh to her car, after which she left campus. Bayeh then called one of her tutors to warn them about the man.

“I said, ‘Listen, this has happened. If this guy turns up to the class, just call security straight away’. And apparently he was waiting outside the tutorial room,” Bayeh said. “My colleague called security, and he wasn’t seen after that.”

Bayeh and several of her students filed an incident report with Macquarie’s internal complaints portal, as well as her Head of School.

“In this instance, the University has jumped on it very quickly and dealt with it.,” she said.

One of Bayeh’s students, who first contacted Deepcut and wished to remain anonymous, corroborated Bayeh’s telling of the incident.

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Campaign of targeting

It’s not the first time Bayeh’s lectures have been targeted by students or members of the public with pro-Israel views.

“In 2024 I had a student in my class. For several lectures, whenever I mentioned the 1948 Nakba or the war on Gaza or any Israeli attack on Lebanon, he would start fist-pumping and cheering and clapping,” Bayeh said.

“Once there was an altercation between him and some of my other students in which they got very angry. I found out later he had filmed me and sent a text message in some group chat, where he said, ‘call in border control, she needs to be deported back to Lebanon’.”

Bayeh says she made complaints about the student to her Head of School and to the university’s student misconduct team, but never heard back. As far as she is aware, the student was never contacted or disciplined.

Like fellow Macquarie academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, Bayeh has been repeatedly targeted by pro-Israel lobby groups and conservative media outlets over her criticism of Israel in the classroom. In April, Sky News ran an ‘exclusive’ revealing that Macquarie was investigating Bayeh regarding a lecture she gave in a Middle East studies class in March.

The complaint cited Bayeh’s referring to Hezbollah as a “resistance group” and describing Israel’s actions in Lebanon as “ethnic cleansing”, audio recordings of which were included in the Sky report.

The complaint was officially lodged by Michael Gencher, a former CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and the executive director of StandWithUs Australia, an “Israel education organisation” with branches in nine countries.

Speaking to Sky, Gencher claimed the complaint also included Bayeh’s quoting of UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, using terms like “genocide” and “land grab”, and claimed it was “wholly irresponsible” of Bayeh “to go down this path without context and without balance”.

While StandWithUs bills itself as a “non-political organisation”, Gencher himself has been the president of the Northern Beaches branch of the Liberal Party since November 2025.

Sky host Caroline Marcus, who presented the report, cited the Bondi terror attack during her interview with Gencher, saying “we’ve seen how the rise of antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric and anti-Zionism, as it’s often cloaked as… what that’s led to in Australia”.

“I’m not calling this academic antisemitic or that what she did is antisemitism, but I think it contributes to an environment in which Jewish students can feel unsafe at university,” Marcus said.

Bayeh said the targeting by Sky and others had had serious ramifications in her workplace.

“As a result of the [Sky News] complaint, I was put on a three-month teaching performance review, which I believe is the maximum period the university can apply,” Bayeh said.

“I have no idea what’s involved in that process — whether one of my managers is listening to my lectures or is talking to my students.”

Bayeh was one of nine academics made redundant from Macquarie’s Arts faculty in December, seven of whom were female and two of whom were Arab women. While Bayeh fought her redundancy for six months, Macquarie recently decided to uphold the redundancy despite an independent review panel unanimously finding in Bayeh’s favour.

In April, Bayeh also gave evidence before the NSW parliamentary inquiry into university governance, testifying on what she called Macquarie’s “brutal approach to change management”.

“As a member of the faculty’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee and as one of a few Arab women, or possibly the only Arab woman, teaching Middle East politics units in Australia, and as the first in my family to go to university, I felt an extra responsibility to highlight these issues to management,” Bayeh told the inquiry.

“The shocking thing about the last three-odd years is that not one member of management at Macquarie — not one — has bothered to ask me or anyone at the university who’s got family in Lebanon how we’re feeling,” Bayeh told Deepcut.

“There’s been nothing. We’ve just been treated as people to control, to be aggressive with, or to silence. Half of my family lives in Lebanon.”

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink, where Antoun Issa discusses his new book, Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War, with Readings Books. The wide-ranging conversation delves into Beirut’s history, enduring Arab resistance, and interpreting Kahlil Gibran and the purpose of life.

A Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) board member has denied that Palestinian civilians were deliberately killed in Gaza, in astonishing remarks heard in three weeks of court proceedings.

The highly anticipated legal stoush between the MSO and pianist Jayson Gillham played out in the Federal Court earlier this month, with pro-Israel board members and witnesses making sensational statements regarding Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Gillham is suing MSO for unfair dismissal after the orchestra cancelled his show due to pro-Palestinian comments he made before a performance in Melbourne on August 11, 2024. Before performing Witness, Gillham explained to the audience that the composer had dedicated the piece to journalists slain covering the conflict in Gaza.

“Over the last 10 months, Israel has killed more than 100 Palestinian journalists. A number of these have been targeted assassinations of prominent journalists as they were travelling in marked press vehicles or wearing their press jackets. The killing of journalists is a war crime in international law, and it is done in an effort to prevent the documentation and broadcasting of war crimes to the world. In addition to the role of journalists who bear witness, the word witness in Arabic is shahid, which also means martyr.”

Throughout the trial, evidence revealed a clear pro-Israel bias within MSO and a perceived pressure to appease pro-Israel donors.

Denying the deliberate killing of civilians

Minutes of an MSO committee meeting held on 13 December 2023 – nine months before Gillham’s cancellation – were put to several witnesses, including then-MSO boss Sophie Galaise.

“Two of the MSO’s board members are Jewish and have expressed an interest in the company taking a pro-Israeli stance,” the minutes read.

Galaise – who was sacked following the Gillham dedication – confirmed during cross examination that the two members referred to were Farrel Meltzer and Edgar Myer.

Meltzer’s evidence highlighted his own pro-Israel stance:

“You don’t accept that a single Palestinian civilian has been deliberately killed by forces controlled by the State of Israel?” Sheryn Omeri KC, Gillham’s barrister, asked.

“No, I don’t,” Meltzer replied.

In a later exchange, Meltzer confirmed that he named his property investment company “Wingate” after British military figure Major General Orde Wingate who he understood to be:

“… a great British general who assisted in the early years of Israel. He was posted in Palestine, as it was then known, and he was a great person, and someone who came from a very deeply religious Christian family, and of a very unusual strength and character and brilliance. And I liked the name and I named it after him.”

Colonel Wingate, known as the father of the IDF (though Meltzer claimed to not know this), commanded the Special Night Squads, a British-Jewish unit in Mandatory Palestine infamous for torture and killings of Palestinians. He has been described by prominent Israeli journalist Gideon Levy as “an oddball with sadistic tendencies” and a “villain” who “tortured Arabs”.

Denying the killing of journalists

Another key figure in the saga was Suzanne Dembo, who was then MSO’s Director of Philanthropy and External Affairs and is now the orchestra’s Chief Operating Officer. Dembo told the court she found Gillham’s comments “highly offensive”, and that she did not believe that journalists had been killed when questioned by Gillham’s barrister.

“You disagreed at that time and when you were reading this message that the Israeli killing of Palestinian media was a war crime?” the barrister asked.

“Yes. I disagreed with that position,” Dembo replied.

“You believed that the Israeli killing of Palestinian media in the Gaza War was justified?”

“Your Honour, I don’t believe that the journalists were killed. I think there were lots of people that were killed, and I do not recall the specifics of who were journalists and who were not journalists. I just remember the killing of Palestinians and the killing of Israelis.”

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“So your evidence is that, at the time, you didn’t believe that Israel had killed any Palestinian journalists, is that right?”

“I did not believe that Israel had committed war crimes, no, personally, your Honour.”

Fact-checking on journalists and civilians

According to the Committee to Project Journalists, Israel killed 207 Palestinian journalists during its assault on Gaza.

“Israel’s disregard for the lives of journalists – and for the international laws designed to protect them – is unparalleled,” the CPJ says.

“Israel has now killed more journalists than any other government since CPJ began collecting data in 1992, making this war the deadliest on record for journalists,” its alert read, referring to the Gaza war.

A UN Commission of Inquiry in September also found that Israel’s actions in Gaza – in which at least 73,000 Palestinians have been killed – constitute genocide. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is facing an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, charged with crimes against humanity including the use of starvation as a weapon.

Criticising Israel ‘highly offensive’

Dembo sent a message to stakeholders on Tuesday 12 August, the day after the performance, stating:

“[Jayson Gillham’s] remarks were highly offensive.”

Galaise also described the comments as “highly offensive” in correspondence following the event. Guy Ross, MSO’s Chief Commercial Officer, said the fact that the comments were critical of Israel was part of the reason they were seen as highly offensive:

“And you understood her to be saying that they were highly offensive because they had been critical of Israel, yes?” Gillham’s barrister asked.

“I understood them to be offensive within …

“Well, you said ‘highly offensive’, Mr Ross?

“Highly, thank you, highly offensive in the context on the MSO stage in front of those particular audience members, and that they were inappropriate and offensive, yes, in their general sense, and the remarks were critical of Israel.

“So when you say in their general sense, what do you mean by that? They were … ?”

“It was a – a personal, political – yes. It was critical of Israel, yes.”

Other text messages in evidence revealed frustration on the part of board members that Gillham was not “vetted” before he was allowed to perform, with board member Margaret Jackson sending Edgar Myer the following message:

“There was no vetting of the background on the musician, i.e. if you Google him, he is clearly pro-Palestine.”

Now chair of the board, Myer confirmed that, going forward, he thought it was appropriate to vet musicians and do “due diligence”, though he denied that this concerned artists’ view on Palestine.

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More complaints about cancellation

Evidence also came to light as to the number of complaints received by the MSO about Gillham’s statement. Dembo, in her email to stakeholders, referred to numerous complaints about the performance, when in fact there had been only one written complaint about the dedication, and 10 complaints about the cancellation.

Similarly, several board members said they were not actually aware of how many complaints had been received.

In total, there were three complaints about Gillham’s comments and 487 complaints about the cancellation of his performance.

Gillham’s lawyers pointed to the appeasement of pro-Israel donors as a potential reason for withholding the accurate number of complaints regarding Gillham’s statement, as evidenced by a text message Myer sent to fellow board member Martin Foley:

“Yet the Jewish/pro-Israel piece across our stakeholders is almost the very next thing we need to solve for the sequence.”

When questioned about what he meant by the message, Myer said:

“What I meant by that was, if a statement had gone out in order to resolve the short-term situation around our reputation and the media situation, that might have an impact on various members of our stakeholder community that might be deleterious, and therefore that would need to be managed in the short to medium term thereafter.”

MSO’s pro-Israel donors

The donors who were specifically identified were the Gandel and Besen Family foundations – two of the orchestra’s three ‘Major Philanthropic Stakeholders’.

Both foundations contribute to causes in Australia and Israel, and were consulted in the drafting of the MSO position on Israel’s actions in Gaza, first presented to the board on 15 December 2023.

The Gandel Foundation consistently donates to major pro-Israel groups operating in Australia, including the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), The Australia Israel & Jewish Affairs Council and the Jewish National Fund.

Notable donations in 2025 include a grant to support ‘Duvdevan soldiers’ and their families – an infamous Israeli commando unit believed to be responsible for the killing of renowned Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022 – and a three-year grant to ECAJ to support the work of Jillian Segal as Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism.

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The Besen Family Foundation’s most well-known contribution to Zionist causes has come in the facilitation of Israeli settlement of the Negev (or Naqab in pre-colonial Palestine) desert.

The desert, located in southern Israel, is home to an indigenous Arab Bedouin community, which has faced home demolitions and expulsion from their ancestral lands, in some cases to directly make way for Jewish settler communities.

Marc Besen, the family patriarch, said of the Zionist colonisation of the Naqab in 2019, “Ben-Gurion talked about his dream to settle the Negev and I made a promise to him … It is a great privilege to take part in his vision and dream.”

The MSO is not the first organisation to be taken to the Federal Court for actions related to Palestine. Journalist Antoinette Lattouf succeeded in her unfair dismissal case in the same court against the ABC last year.

As the proceedings came to an end on 5 June, Justice Hill urged the parties to reach a settlement given the reputational damage they both may face should his findings be made public.

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Shaimaa Marwan Eid is a Palestinian journalist and human-story writer based in Gaza. She has been published in Declassified UK and Brave New Europe. You can donate to Shaimaa’s Chuffed campaign to help treat her father’s cancer diagnosis here.

The residents of the Gaza Strip had barely begun to recover from months of war and displacement when late-night Israeli calls once again disrupted their lives, ordering the evacuation of homes and entire residential complexes ahead of planned airstrikes.

Within minutes, dozens of families were forced to leave what remained of their homes, reliving scenes of displacement that have become deeply ingrained in the collective memory of Gaza’s residents throughout the war.

The streets quickly turned into new routes of displacement, as families carried their children and a few essential belongings in search of safety. However, with displacement camps already crowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced people, finding a safe place has become extremely difficult.

In the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, 42-year-old Saida Al-Basyouni was preparing to go to sleep with her family when news of the evacuation arrived.

She says that an Israeli intelligence officer called one of her neighbors and ordered him to evacuate his home and the entire surrounding residential block ahead of an airstrike.

Recalling those moments in a voice still marked by confusion, she said, “It felt as though we had returned to the first days of the war. We rushed into the street with our children and neighbors, and the only thing on our minds was saving our lives. We did not think about clothes, belongings, or anything else.”

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She added that families remained in the streets for more than an hour late at night, gripped by anxiety and anticipation. “We were expecting the strike at any moment, and the children were crying in fear. Then suddenly, a massive explosion shook the entire area. The occupation targeted our neighbors’ home, the home of the Al-Taweel family, and several nearby houses were damaged by the force of the blast.”

She said that what surprised her most was that these operations continue despite discussions of de-escalation and international efforts aimed at maintaining the ceasefire.

She asked, “Where are the mediators and the countries that sponsored the agreement? Why is the occupation not being compelled to stop these violations?”

But what has remained most vivid in her memory was not the sound of the explosion, but the question asked by her young daughter, Najla. She said, “She looked at me while crying and asked, ‘Mama, has the war returned? Will the bombing start again?’ I did not know how to answer her.”

In Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, similar scenes unfolded, but under even more difficult circumstances. The camp is one of the most densely populated areas in Gaza, with tightly packed homes built on narrow plots of land, meaning that the targeting of a single house can cause extensive damage to surrounding buildings.

Ramez Abdelfaatah, a 25-year-old resident of the camp, says that late-night phone calls have become a constant source of fear for residents, even after the ceasefire was announced.

“We have become afraid to sleep,” he says. “At any moment, a call may come ordering the evacuation of a house or an entire residential block. No one knows when it will happen or where the next target will be.”

Al-Amassi recalls a night when residents of the area were forced to leave their homes after a sudden call was received by one of the neighboring families.

“After months of war, we had begun to feel a sense of reassurance, but these calls brought tension back into our lives. As soon as we heard about the evacuation order, everyone rushed into the streets. The elderly, the sick, and children suffered the most.”

He notes that his 65-year-old mother suffers from heart disease, making every evacuation a direct threat to her life.

“My mother cannot run like everyone else. The moment she hears about an evacuation order, she becomes extremely distressed, which affects her health. In those moments, all I can think about is her and my young child, and how to get them to a safe place.”

He describes the moment of the strike as being like an earthquake hitting the area.

“The explosion was enormous. The ground shook beneath our feet, and shrapnel and dust were scattered everywhere. Even homes that were not targeted were damaged by the force of the blast.”

Evacuation orders were not limited to residential neighborhoods. They also extended to the Al-Mawasi area west of Khan Younis, which the Israeli military has long presented as a safe zone for displaced civilians.

There, Neama Al-Astal lives in a tent her family set up after losing their home during the war. She says Israeli forces ordered residents to evacuate the area surrounding a food warehouse before it was targeted.

“We were always told that Al-Mawasi was a safe area and that we should move there,” she says. “But if it is being targeted as well, where are we supposed to go?”

She continues, “We do not live in houses that we can lock and leave behind. We live in fabric tents. When the warning came, all we could do was run. We were not given enough time to evacuate the area or move our belongings.”

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About ten minutes after the evacuation, the strike took place.

“The area caught fire, and many tents around the warehouse were damaged,” Al-Astal says. “Some families lost everything they owned for the second or third time since the beginning of the war.”

In recent weeks, evacuation orders in Gaza have generally fallen into two main categories. The first involves the evacuation of entire residential neighborhoods ahead of airstrikes targeting one or more homes within them, as has occurred in refugee camps across central and northern Gaza. The second involves the evacuation of areas adjacent to what is known as the “Yellow Line,” as part of efforts to expand the boundaries of that zone.

Residents say these orders have reignited fear and anxiety among civilians, particularly in areas close to military separation lines, where people live in a constant state of anticipation, fearing that a new warning could force them to flee once again.

Between late-night forced evacuation orders and bags kept packed and ready at the doors of homes, Gaza’s residents today live with the return of a familiar fear. For many of them, the dilemma is no longer only about the place they are being forced to leave, but also about where they can go in a territory where safe spaces are shrinking day by day.

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink, where Antoun Issa discusses his new book, Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War, with Readings Books. The wide-ranging conversation delves into Beirut’s history, enduring Arab resistance, and interpreting Kahlil Gibran and the purpose of life.

The federal government has promised an independent police investigation into allegations of Israeli abuse against Australian participants on the Global Sumud Flotilla, activists say.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong held a meeting with several flotilla activists and their family members on Monday afternoon, where activists say Wong committed to an investigation.

International Development Minister Anne Aly, two Australian Federal Police (AFP) deputy commissioners and senior Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) officials also sat in on the meeting.

Flotilla activists had demanded a meeting with Wong and the prime minister after returning from Israel in May, where they allege Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldiers and guards at Ktzi’ot prison subjected them to rape, sexual assault, beatings and forced injection of “unknown substances”.

Last week, Wong declined to commit to an independent investigation during Senate estimates questioning, prompting criticism from Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi that the government was “[asking] Israel, the criminals, to investigate their own crimes”.

Government officials took allegations ‘seriously’

Barrister Patrick Keyzer – who was present in the meeting and whose daughter, Sumud activist Gemma O’Toole, alleges Israeli soldiers groped, beat and threatened to rape her – said Wong and Aly told the women they “believed” their stories.

“I was sitting across the table from these people, and it was clear that the government ministers and officials understood and took it seriously,” Keyzer told Deepcut.

“Each of the activists described what had happened to them – it was very emotional – before discussing what their demands were, the first of which was an independent Australian investigation. The ministers and the AFP committed to conducting that investigation.

“The AFP [deputy commissioners] said they were highly experienced in investigating sexual assaults,” he said. “They told us this was the first step in a process.”

Keyzer said Wong was dismissive of the activists’ other demands, including that Australia end the two-way arms trade with Israel, expel Israeli ambassador Hillel Newman and impose sanctions on the Israeli government. Newman has repeatedly dismissed their stories and claimed there were “no sexual attacks of any kind against the flotilla people”.

In May, the UN added Israel to a blacklist of nations suspected of sexual violence in armed conflict, prompting the Israeli mission to the UN to formally cut off contact with the office of UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres.

In 2025, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, described the “systematic, large-scale and horrific sexual violence perpetrated by Israel against Palestinian women, men and children” as a “femi-genocide”.

Keyzer described Hillel’s denials as “minimising and lying about” the experiences of the activists in Israeli custody.

“It was clear the Foreign Minister wasn’t really interested in discussing those issues,” Keyzer said. “I think from their perspective, the meeting was about the activists and their treatment. There was a full, frank, fearless and sometimes feisty exchange of views on those [other] topics, but by that stage we were getting to the end of the meeting.

“In that sense the meeting was disappointing for the activists, but you can’t blame them for trying their best to advance their point of view,” he said. “I went into the meeting with no particular expectations but with a hope that there would be an investigation, and they said that they would do that.”

Push to investigate Australian IDF soldiers

Wong and the AFP also refused to commit to investigating Australians serving in the IDF, despite the UN and international law experts repeatedly warning that the government has a legal obligation to consider Australian IDF soldiers fighting in Gaza since October 2023 as suspects in genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“The critical point that I made – and that I hope landed with them – is that there are over 500 Australians in the IDF, so I don’t know whether Australians beat and sexually assaulted my daughter,” Keyzer said.

“We don’t know whether they’re involved in the genocide. We don’t know if they’re carpet-bombing Lebanon. We don’t know whether they’re abusing Palestinians in the West Bank. We don’t know what they’re doing, because they’re not under our command and control.

“I said to [the officials], ‘But you know. You can find out. When people come back, you could investigate what they are doing. You could ask Israel to tell you where the Australian IDF soldiers were that they [and] what they were deployed to do.’”

Keyzer hopes the AFP investigation uncovers the identities of the people who sexually assaulted his daughter.

“There were cameras everywhere [in Ktzi’ot],” Keyzer said. “There were bodycams. When the IDF soldiers were stripping people down and sexually assaulting them, they would take off their balaclavas and take selfies and taunt the activists, and tell them ‘This is going to go all over social media’. I want every single one of these people to be brought to justice.”

“Whatever people think about our armed forces, at least in Australia, there’s a Victoria Cross recipient who’s been charged with war crimes. He’ll go through a criminal justice process and there’ll be an outcome. That’s a lock, stock and barrel demonstration of what we don’t have with Israel. We’ve got no idea what those Australian IDF soldiers are doing. They could have been sexually assaulting my daughter, and I’m going to find out. I will not rest until I find out.”

The AFP said in a statement it had “begun inquiries into allegations made by a representative of the group”.

“The AFP engages with a victim centric, trauma-informed approach. The AFP will provide an update at an appropriate time.”

DFAT did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The primary intention of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion was to surface the lived experiences of antisemitism in Australia. What we’ve mostly seen, however, is the astonishing display of a Zionist community that seems incapable of seeing what the rest of us can see – that Israel is an apartheid state committing genocide. It instead shrouds itself in a cloak of self-victimisation.

To this community, Israel is the only home that matters. To describe it as their spiritual home understates the reality of it. It’s their sun around which everything constellates. It’s their frame of reference for living. It’s what drives parents, even those who struggle to afford it, to sacrifice a great deal to send their children to Jewish day school.

More than anything, these parents want a Jewish education for their children, both in the curriculum via daily Hebrew language or Jewish history and culture classes, and in their social interactions. In my experience, it functioned like a walled city where outside influences were barred at the gate, with no exposure to anything beyond a conservative, pro-Israel perspective. Ultimately, it’s the crucible in which young people’s single-minded support for Israel is continually refined to develop new strains to match its ever-evolving obscenity.

I went to a Jewish school for 12 years. I’ve attended every 10-year reunion since, and I receive the regular school newsletter available to all alumni. And every now and then there’s a wedding or bar mitzvah I go to and it’s clear that the sentiment hasn’t changed in all that time. There were only two unspoken but clearly understood KPIs for the school – telling the uncritical Zionist story and academic achievement. Each of them reinforced the other in their impact on the insularity of the institution.

No one will doubt the history of the persecution of Jews in Europe down through the centuries – well, most won’t anyway. That history has, sadly, entrenched a victim narrative in the psyche of many Jewish people that remains in large measure undiluted.

While it’s understandable, it’s been used in recent history to justify Israel’s most egregious, reprehensible and immoral behaviour, all in the name of the ‘never again’ catch cry. It’s that sentiment that’s informed the development of the guiding principles of Jewish day schools, narrowing the focus of the students to an Israel-first pinpoint.

I was raised on a diet of a sanitised, concocted history of modern Israel, both at home and reinforced through my school years by Hebrew and Religious Instruction teachers. At the heart of the fiction is the seemingly simple story that land for settlers in Palestine was purchased with funds that were raised through the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an entity established in the late-19th/early 20th-century for that specific purpose.

The intent of this version of history was to make impressionable minds believe that the acquisition of land by European Jews was an utterly benign and equitable endeavour. When the inconvenient issue was raised of the conflict after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and the war of independence – known to Palestinians as the Nakba or Catastrophe – we were told that those Palestinians, living on land the JNF ‘legitimately purchased’, refused to leave.

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To exercise their believed rightful claim to the land, we were told paramilitary groups had no choice but to evict them. And we were assured that those Zionist paramilitary groups, the Irgun and the Haganah, were honourable, heroic militias who served and protected the Israeli population, rather than the brutal, heartless thugs they were.

What we were never told is that the land was purchased from absentee landlords who had little to no interest in the patchwork of desert, swamp and rocky hills – land on which indigenous Palestinians had an unbroken bond for millennia. Or that only 6 per cent of the land was under private Jewish ownership in 1948. Instead, we were given to believe that the Palestinians were just intransigent for not relinquishing the land that generations of their families had owned and worked on for centuries.

The biblical version of history and its precepts is the cornerstone of the Zionist claim to the land, and that’s just how my school presented it. That this, at the time, seemed reasonable to me says a great deal about the power of the insular nature of the school environment, even though my connection to Judaism was casual at best and certainly not religious.

In the absence of any engagement with non-Jewish life or society during those formative years, one’s worldview becomes linear and single-tracked. That’s how I came to see it in my latter years at school. And that’s how the school parents wanted it.

Years later, it became an article of faith as a parent that this would not be my children’s school experience. My attachment to my Jewishness became tenuous at best, making the kids’ exposure to their Jewish heritage limited.

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For us, their worldview and their encounters with life had to be more expansive. So, they went to public schools where they mixed with students from diverse socioeconomic, ethnic and religious backgrounds, with equally diverse interests and lifestyles. Three of the four of them are fluent in another language and have partners not born in Australia.

One, who lives in Germany, called me in deep distress when Israel began their murderous campaign in Gaza, not knowing what to think about his Jewish heritage when that slaughter was ostensibly being carried out in his name. We’d never talked about his Jewishness, ever, but here we were, talking about it, critically.

I’ve wondered how the conversation might have gone – if at all – had he gone to a Jewish school.

There are estimates that there are 18,000 to 19,000 Jewish school-age kids in Australia and that about half of them attend Jewish day schools. Taking those numbers as accurate, that’s a significant proportion of malleable young people who will grow up in the same sheltered environment, with the same harmful and unchallenged prejudices that will only lead another generation down a path of ignorance and hate.

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“Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it,” William Pitt, the 18^th century British prime minister, once said.

It’s a line that precisely captures the spiralling behaviour of Benjamin Netanyahu and the war-mongering extremists surrounding him in the Israeli leadership.

For a political maverick that has managed to stay on top of Israeli politics for the better part of three decades, the recklessness in launching a war against Iran (and attempting to renew it this week) exposes a desperate leader running out of tricks.

The walls are closing in on Netanyahu. Israeli elections loom in October, and his brand of strength is convincing fewer Israelis as sirens continue to sound and missiles fall. In a fresh poll this week, a majority of Jewish Israelis (57%) said he should not run in the upcoming elections.

Should he lose, a corruption trial awaits. It’s a trial Netanyahu has successfully stalled courtesy of convenient wars acting as useful distractions.

Haaretz reported last month that since the April 8 ceasefire with Iran “none of Netanyahu’s testimony hearings have taken place as planned – they have all been shortened or cancelled”.

The reason?

“… security and political reasons that do not allow the Prime Minister to appear” – i.e. continued hostilities with Iran and Lebanon.

Outside of Israel, an ICC arrest warrant for his crimes in Gaza hangs over his head. Whether in Israel or The Hague, the prospect of Netanyahu ending up behind bars remains a possibility, which makes the October elections all the more crucial.

Without the power and protection of the prime minister’s office, western nations will have fewer reasons – such as falsely claiming Netanyahu enjoys ‘diplomatic immunity’ – to avoid arresting him. His ability to influence court proceedings in Israel will also diminish.

Netanyahu’s only remaining move is to bomb and keep bombing, even if – as we discovered this week – ongoing war is leaving Israel demonstrably weaker.

Israel loses its advantage

Israel kicked an own goal this week when it defied Iran’s red line and bombed Beirut, drawing an Iranian response. Just as it kicked an own goal on February 28 when it launched a war that has left Iran in a stronger position than where it was on February 27.

An addendum to Pitt’s line is that corrupted minds lose strategic focus. What we’ve witnessed in Israel’s behaviour is a state so drunk on military might and a sense of invincibility (understandable given the world has allowed it to commit a genocide for three years) that it can no longer read the state of play and make calculated decisions.

This week’s blunder was further proof of that. Iran made it clear that bombing Beirut was off limits — and yet, remarkably, IDF officials say they weren’t expecting an Iranian response. How could they have not anticipated a response given Iran’s demonstrated capability to hit Israel?

The cost has been Israel’s strategic advantage in Lebanon.

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Prior to October 2023, Israel and Hezbollah maintained unspoken rules of engagement that were established after the 2006 war: ‘apart from the occasional tit-for-tat, you don’t hit me, I don’t hit you’. Both sides were happy to maintain mutual deterrence and limit skirmishes to a low intensity. As a result, south Lebanon and the Israeli settlements across the border saw relative peace for 17 years.

The war post-October 2023, however, gave Israel the upper hand – it decimated Hezbollah’s leadership and left many of its cadres wounded after the pager attacks in September 2024. The Israelis rewrote the rules of engagement to their advantage. They occupied five military posts inside Lebanese territory and, crucially, established a freedom to operate in Lebanon without reprisal.

From the November 2024 ceasefire in Lebanon to February 2026, Israel carried out almost 3,000 attacks and were killing 22 Lebanese a month without Hezbollah firing a single bullet. The deterrence Hezbollah established in 2006 was gone – until Israel bombed Beirut again this week and invited Iran into the equation.

Iran’s new check on Israel

Iran’s recent performance in the war with Israel and the US has given it greater confidence to strike Israel while absorbing the pain of airstrikes.

When it drew its red line over Beirut, it created a trap into which Israel’s reckless leadership fell. It did so knowing it had the ability to hurt Israel – by way of missiles and closing the Bab al-Mandeb strait to Israeli shipping – and handle whatever response Israel could muster.

For six decades, Israel has been able to operate militarily in Lebanon with relative impunity. This week marked the first occasion a regional power with a potent offensive capability has entered the Lebanese arena and directly tied a military consequence to Israel’s actions.

This is a spectacular fall in Israel’s strategic position vis-à-vis Lebanon, and the opposite result for a state intent on establishing regional hegemony.

And yet, beyond Netanyahu seeking to stall his own trial and revive his domestic image ahead of the October elections, Israel’s specific goals in Lebanon are unclear. It is suffering losses on the battlefield – at least 30 Israeli soldiers killed so far and dozens of tanks destroyed – without an obvious purpose. Its northern settlements are struggling under persistent rocket fire – the population of its largest settlement, Kiryat Shmona, has halved.

Israel knows it cannot disarm Hezbollah – IDF officials said as much in April – which means it knows Hezbollah will continue to kill and wound Israeli soldiers and fire at the northern settlements so long as they remain on Lebanese soil. And the inclusion of an Iranian response has only worsened its already difficult predicament.

What is clear is that endless war is weakening Israel, while Netanyahu scrambles to avoid his fate.

Upcoming book talks

If you’d like to jump off the screen and enjoy some warm, in-person community, the following book talks for my debut, Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War, are taking place next week:

• Tuesday, June 16:

  • WHERE: Realm Library, Ringwood, Victoria

  • TIME: 6pm

  • COST: FREE but bookings required (book here)

• Friday, June 19:

  • WHAT: Conversation with Dr. Mohammed Mustafa, hosted by Rabble Books

  • WHERE: The Laneway Artspace, Bayswater, WA

  • TIME: 6pm

  • COST: $10 (book here)

In the year’s budget, the government decided to cut the NDIS and in doing so will destroy lives.

The nominal funding cuts didn’t look too bad – at least spending remained steady:

But in real terms, it was budgeting for a 12% fall:

The NDIS legislation – cruelly titled “National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill” – outlined how severe and arbitrary those cuts would be.

It gives the health minister the power to use regulations to “to reset funding for groups of supports like social, community and civic participation and capacity building”.

The Explanatory Memorandum provides an example of how this would work:

“Example - Omar

Omar has an old framework plan with $40,000 in the Assistance with Social, Economic and Community Participation budget. The Minister could make a determination that the funding component for Assistance with Social, Economic and Community Participation will be reduced by for example 25 per cent.

If Omar’s plan is renewed, the amount that he can spend on community participation supports under his new plan will be the funding amount set in the new plan for community participation reduced by 25 per cent. This means he will have $30,000 in his Assistance with Social, Economic and Community Participation budget.”

Nothing in the example relates to Omar’s needs. Nope, the minister has just decided that everyone’s funding for social, economic and community participation is to be cut by 25%.

The law will be such that any future health minister can cut by up to 99% without any need for legislation.

That’s a cruel hell of a law.

Thing is right now my wife and I are in the midst of NDIS hell.

This is not an unknown position for parents or others dealing with the scheme.

Our youngest daughter is about to turn 20. She has Down Syndrome. She can speak a few words but not a full sentence.

She likes to say “sorry”. Sometimes it is because she has done something wrong, mostly it is because she thinks we have done something wrong, and that we should say sorry.

She needs a consistent routine. She used to catch a bus to her special school. Sometimes they changed the bus because it was getting serviced or being used elsewhere. She would strongly and loudly refuse to get on it – even though it was the same driver and carer on board. I would have to drive her. (Our car was safe; the new bus, not).

We really can’t leave her alone for too long. Two hours is about the maximum, and while we know she will happily lie on her bed watching her iPad, if anything were to go wrong, she would be helpless.

She still needs to be reminded to go to the toilet.

She cannot make her own meals.

She has a wicked sense of humour. Her favourite books are Bluey books and Meg and Mog. No matter how long she lives, and no matter how many articles I write, she will never read a word of them nor ever have any comprehension of what I do, but she still gets a thrill when she sees me on TV.

She, by any definition, has a permanent and significant disability (although once an NDIS officer just wanted to check if she still had Down Syndrome).

Like anyone in the system, we have had our challenges dealing with the NDIS.

Last year was her final year of school. For three months she transitioned to the new day programs she was to move to full-time this year.

These are programs where she does small tasks like recycling with Lids4Kids, or assists at a special café, does activities to learn how to interact with other adults, how to buy things from a shop, how to be more self-sufficient, how to, in short, live a life.

In September last year, we began the process of updating her NDIS plan for these new circumstances.

And we entered NDIS hell.

My wife spoke to the case officer, sent her quotes for the day programs at the two NDIS registered not-for-profit providers, and ended the email, “Please let me know if I need to do anything else.”

We waited.

In November, we emailed for an update and were told we needed some other information – such as her address and date of birth – which was fine, but a bit odd since presumably they had her file.

In December, we sent the case officer a revised quote. Twice. My wife rang and was told the plan had yet to be processed.

In February, we emailed again and also rang. We were told her case was pending but not to worry because when her current plan ran out at the end of the month it would just automatically roll over and be topped up if the funds ran out.

Because we had enough funds, we carried on. But then the funds ran out … and did not automatically top up.

We emailed again explaining the situation, but got no response.

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Both of us work full-time. I rang during work hours but discovered I could no longer speak on my daughter’s behalf because now she was an adult I needed to re-register (even though I am her legal guardian and power of attorney).

Last week, my wife rang and was told our case officer would ring us the next day. They didn’t.

She rang again and was told to ring before 5pm.

She did and was finally told that actually no one had ever reviewed our daughter’s new plan. It had “fallen through the cracks”. Oddly though, the person was able to see our trail of emails and all the paperwork we had filed.

We were asked if our daughter really needed this program. Was it not possible for one of us to stay home from work instead? We also should fill in another change of plan forms (that we already did nine months ago).

We were told to wait, and that while we waited maybe we should take our daughter out of her programs because they might not be approved. Yes – for a girl who cannot cope with a different bus, and who needed three months accompanied by a personal carer she knew to become comfortable at her current situation.

Hell!

But here’s the thing – the program we are desperately trying to get approved is the very type that the health minister, Mark Butler, has singled out for warranting an arbitrary cut – say 25% (hell the Explanatory Memorandum gives another example of a 50% cut).

Few have spoken against the cuts. The Liberal Party loves them – and loves that it allows them to further gut the scheme should they ever return to government. Some of the independents have shown the humanity lacking in the ALP, LNP and One Nation.

Kate Cheney, for example, noted in her speech on the bill:

“this funding is not discretionary spending in any meaningful sense. For many participants, it’s what makes the difference between a full life and an isolated one. It funds the sporting activities, outdoor experiences and community engagement that allow people with disability to be members of their community, to build skills and independence and to experience the ordinary dignity of participation in public life.”

And so we live in NDIS hell – worried that our daughter’s plan will not be approved, and worried that even if it is, in a year’s time it could be cut by 25% or more.

All so that, as Mark Butler suggests, the NDIS can return to its original intent of “providing lifetime supports for Australians with permanent and significant disability”.

Cruel hell.

Got a tip? Send an email to tips@deepcutnews.com or send an anonymous Signal to @deepcut.25.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has agreed to personally meet with Australian members of the Global Sumud Flotilla who allege they were raped, sexually assaulted and tortured by Israeli soldiers and prison guards.

Correspondence between the flotilla participants and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and seen by Deepcut, reveals the department initially declined the activists’ request to meet with Wong and the prime minister, instead offering them a meeting with DFAT First Assistant Secretary for Consular and Crisis Management Elizabeth McGregor.

“We need you to sit with us, look us in the eye and hear our stories of the abuse that we suffered at the hands of the Israelis,” the activists’ initial request reads.

“Australian women need an end to all forms of sexual violence and we need you to take a stand.”

Participants allege they were subjected to horrific abuse by Israel Defense Force soldiers and guards at Ktzi’ot prison, including rape, beatings, being forcibly injected with an “unknown substance” and having “guns inserted inside them”.

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The activists, who held a press conference in Canberra last week, are calling on Australia to demand an independent investigation into allegations of sexual violence against flotilla participants, expel the Israeli ambassador, and commit to enforcing the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

In October, Deepcut reported that Australian participants in an earlier flotilla alleged similar mistreatment while in Ktzi’ot, including that Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, personally threatened to “gas” them.

Australian officials admit hearing ‘screams’ of activists

Flotilla participants allege they were punched, kicked, elbowed in the head, thrown to the ground and stomped on by Israeli soldiers — and within earshot of Australian consular officials — while being processed for deportation at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.

Speaking before the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee on Thursday, McGregor said that consular officials did not see the Australians being abused, as “there was a screen that was erected” in their line of sight. While she admitted that officials did hear screams, “it was a very noisy [and] crowded environment” and the screen “prevented them from seeing what was beyond the barrier”.

In a letter to Greens Senator David Shoebridge on Thursday – and seen by Deepcut – Wong admitted the Israeli government actively prevented Australian diplomats from helping the imprisoned activists.

“While Australian consular officials did all they could to provide consular assistance to Australian participants in Israel, including travelling to Ktzi’ot prison twice and attending the airport where the participants were deported, Israel refused consular [officials’ requests] to provide access,” the letter states.

Participants also criticised DFAT for claiming in statements to media outlets that flotilla activists released by Israel did not need medical attention “beyond the provision of basic first aid supplies”.

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Wong refuses to demand independent investigation

Wong and DFAT officials repeatedly declined to answer questions from independent Senator David Pocock during Senate estimates on whether the government would push for an external investigation headed by the UN or a similar international body, rather than an internal investigation conducted by the Israeli government.

“Our preference would always be for an independent investigation… but we’re not the ones who are able to determine what that investigation is,” Wong said. “I would rather have an investigation that is transparent than no investigation and so we need to keep pressing for that.”

Wong’s refusal to commit to an independent investigation led to a heated exchange between Wong and Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi, who accused the government of “[letting] the perpetrators of these heinous crimes investigate themselves”.

“What you have done is ask Israel, the criminals, to investigate their own crimes. This is what you are doing,” Faruqi told Wong.

“You’ve done nothing to support these women.”

Flotilla participant Juliet Lamont, who alleges she was raped by an Israeli soldier, told SBS last week that she wanted Wong to publicly speak about the abuse flotilla activists had endured, even if it meant disclosing distressing details.

“Something as barbaric as this needs to be talked about at every single moment and ordinary Australians need to know what happened,” she told SBS.

‘Widespread Israeli sexual violence’ against Palestinians

In May, the New York Times published an essay detailing “a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against [Palestinian] men, women and even children by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards”.

The report is based on interviews with 14 Palestinians — including those who were children at the time of their assaults — who described being gang-raped by Israeli guards with metal batons and carrots; guards sexually assaulting them while forcing their heads into toilets; zip-tying their genitals; and being raped by Israeli police dogs.

In a May press release, the Israeli embassy in Canberra called flotilla participants “professional provocateurs“ advancing an “orchestrated political campaign that serves the interests of Hamas”.

“The provocateurs were neither tortured nor raped. Such claims are entirely baseless and are intended solely to advance the provocateurs’ smear campaign against Israel,” the embassy claimed.

“While claims of abuse have not been substantiated, some participants have been photographed on stretchers, posing as injured. They then reveal miraculous recovery, posing in other photos looking very healthy.”

Israeli ambassador Hillel Newman also dismissed the claims, telling the ABC’s 7.30 in May that there had “been no sexual attacks of any kind against the flotilla people” and called the flotilla a “provocation”.

DFAT did not answer questions sent by Deepcut, instead providing a statement that “Australia has condemned the degrading treatment of flotilla participants by Israeli authorities shown in publicly available footage”.

“We are also deeply alarmed by reports of mistreatment of Australians while in detention. Australia has made representations to Israel about these allegations and conveyed our expectation that they be urgently investigated.”

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink, where Antoun Issa discusses his new book, Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War, with Readings Books. The wide-ranging conversation delves into Beirut’s history, enduring Arab resistance, and interpreting Kahlil Gibran and the purpose of life.

The ABC has declined to answer whether it will discipline high-profile radio presenter Charlie Pickering for criticising the broadcaster in an interview with a self-proclaimed “Jewish Nazi” who has previously doxxed an ABC employee.

In a recently published interview with far-right media outlet Rebel News, ABC 774 Melbourne* presenter Charlie Pickering criticised the ABC for hiring sexual assault survivor advocate Grace Tame to present a four-episode podcast series, ‘Autistic AF with Grace Tame’.

Citing his Jewish faith, Pickering told Rebel News Australia correspondent Avi Yemini he believed Tame’s hiring was “problematic”.

”As you would understand, and as a Jewish Australian, there is a complete misunderstanding of a lot of the words that are said and what the true meaning of them are, and a lot of people are using words and phrases that have meaning well beyond what they think they do,” Pickering said.

“I think you could argue a lot of people that jump on protest bandwagons are ignorant a lot of the time.”

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Pickering’s comments were picked up by The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and News Corp outlets, which have run dozens of articles and video segments attacking Tame since she chanted the phrase “globalise the intifada” at a Sydney rally protesting Israeli President Isaac Herzog in February.

Tame has been the target of sustained attacks by right-wing media outlets and politicians since the rally. In March, Deepcut revealed that pro-Israel activists took credit for a public campaign against Tame’s speaking engagements and appearances at writers’ festivals, as well as a Hobart conference dedicated to stopping domestic and family violence.

Writing in Crikey, Tame said at the time that her livelihood that been “completely destroyed” by a “well-oiled, well-funded political propaganda machine” waging a “concerted smear campaign against me”.

Self-proclaimed ‘Jewish Nazi’ interviews Pickering

Pickering made the comments outside the ABC’s Melbourne headquarters, where Rebel News was livestreaming a rally against supposed anti-Israel bias at the broadcaster. The rally was organised by Allies for a Strong Australia, an offshoot of right-wing Zionist group Never Again Is Now. Mark Leach, a co-founder of both groups, has claimed that “Islam’s foundational texts and leaders provide the theological and cultural logic to attack and murder Jews”, and stressed the need to “dismantle the pro-Palestinian movement”, which he considers to be a “Marxist/Jihadist alliance”.

Rebel News is a far-right outlet based in Canada that has been frequently criticised for spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories about Islam and Muslims, COVID-19, vaccines and climate change, and for its extensive ties to white supremacist figures and organisations in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. In 2017, Rebel News correspondent and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes denied that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

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Rebel News’ live footage of the interview with Pickering also featured comments from Rebel News viewers, including one with the username ‘@drmengele2260’ — an apparent reference to Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor who conducted experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz.

Yemini, the Rebel News presenter to whom Pickering gave an interview, is a former IDF soldier who has previously described himself as “the world’s proudest Jewish Nazi” and appeared onstage at British rallies with far-right figures like Milo Yiannopoulos and Tommy Robinson. In 2019, Yemini pleaded guilty to unlawful assault and using a carriage service to harass after he threw a chopping board that hit his ex-wife in the head and sent her abusive text messages.

In a victim impact statement read in Moorabbin Magistrates’ Court at the time, Yemini’s ex-wife, Sarah Lyford, said Yemini “terrorised me” and “destroyed my self-worth”.

“It was like I didn’t exist as a human being, I was just a vessel for his hatred,” Lyford told the court.

“What I will never forget is that he didn’t flinch when it happened. He didn’t ask if I was okay. He just walked by. I was left to tend to my own injuries and finish making the dinner.”

In 2018, Yemini’s Facebook page was banned after he shared the personal phone number of then-ABC Life deputy editor Osman Faruqi, alongside the caption “See this taxpayer-funded ABC employee? He smears the country that gave his peasant family refuge. Feel free to let Osman Faruqi know what you think”. Faruqi later told an episode of the ABC’s Background Briefing that he was inundated with racist phone calls and text messages following the doxxing, including death threats.

The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald neglected to include details about Yemini’s unlawful assault conviction and doxxing of Faruqi — who previously worked as the culture editor of both newspapers — describing Yemini simply as a “serial right-wing agitator”.

Speaking on the Lamestream Media podcast, which he co-hosts, Faruqi said Pickering’s comments were “reprehensible”.

“If, after a decade of having one of the cruisiest jobs in Australian media, you think it’s appropriate to talk to Avi Yemini at a pro-Israel rally that is targeting the ABC and targeting your colleagues for doing journalism day in, day out, and you give the ABC’s worst, most unhinged critics ammunition at this point in time, when everything’s so tense and divided, you honestly can go fuck yourself,” Faruqi said.

Three new episodes of ‘Autistic AF with Grace Tame’ were uploaded to the ABC’s website yesterday afternoon.

The ABC did not respond to questions. Tame declined to comment.

*Note: an earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated that Pickering is a host on ABC 702 Sydney.

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink, where Antoun Issa discusses his new book, Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War, with Readings Books. The wide-ranging conversation delves into Beirut’s history, enduring Arab resistance, and interpreting Kahlil Gibran and the purpose of life.

One of Australia’s most senior bureaucrats is working alongside pro-Israel supporters to bring the selection of research grants into line with new controversial hate speech laws – a move researchers fear will have a “chilling effect” on their work.

Professor Peter Shergold will chair the Commonwealth Research Grants Working Group, an initiative born out of the Education Antisemitism Taskforce.

The taskforce was created by the Albanese government only days after the Bondi shooting, and is chaired by prominent Israel supporter and businessman, David Gonski. Among its participants are antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal, a dedicated secretariat within the federal Department of Education, and representatives of peak bodies from the school sector, TAFEs and universities.

Shergold’s inclusion has raised eyebrows in higher education, given that he also chairs the board of the Australian Research Council (ARC). According to one senior university source, this is “self-evidently an anomalous arrangement”.

Targeting of Israel critics

In recent years, ARC grants to researchers critical of Israel have become the focus of pro-Israel supporters, in addition to intense and ongoing coverage by pro-Israel outlets such as the Australian newspaper and Sky News.

The most notable example was a request in 2024 by Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson – a pro-Israel hawk – to Education Minister Jason Clare that he intervene to rescind Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s ARC Future Fellowship, awarded in 2022.

In a letter written to the ARC Board on March 26, Clare departed from previous ministerial statements to say that he expected the ARC to make decisions on grant applications with “strong regard for relevant hate speech and anti-discrimination laws, including [an] applicant’s past compliance with these obligations”.

Hate speech laws rushed through parliament in January made it an offence to be a member of a proscribed hate group.

As Deepcut has previously reported, the laws fall in line with a years-long campaign by the pro-Israel lobby for lower thresholds to hate speech laws, which critics say encroaches on legitimate political expression.

According to meeting notes published by the Education Antisemitism Taskforce in April, Shergold’s working group has been tasked with creating “a clear framework” for grants providers such as the ARC and the National Health and Medical Research Council to make funding decisions that are “aligned” to the new laws.

Segal’s focus on competitive research grants comes alongside other measures designed to run a pro-Israel line in education. In the last federal budget, the Labor government awarded $10m to support her UNESCO-backed program to train teachers on antisemitism and $6m for an online hub with a similar focus, among other measures.

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‘Political interference’ in research

Dr Jordana Silverstein, a historian and ARC Future Fellow in the University of Melbourne, told Deepcut she was concerned by the “vague and imprecise” language that Clare had used in his letter to the ARC Board.

“We know from recent examples, particularly the horrendous attacks on Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, that Palestinians and Muslims who are recipients of ARC grants are placed under inordinate scrutiny and pressure due to inaccurate and targeted accusations of antisemitism,” she said.

“Our current grants will come under scrutiny and we are even less likely to be awarded grants in the future. This kind of political interference creates a very dangerous time in higher education and research.”

These sentiments were echoed by other researchers, including by a distinguished scholar who has previously sat on the ARC College of Experts and spoke to Deepcut on the condition of anonymity.

In their view, Clare’s letter “goes well beyond the kind of administrative guidance we’ve seen in previous statements of expectations”.

“That is a significant shift. When government begins attaching behavioural conditions to research grants, the chilling effect is not limited to the specific conduct targeted. Researchers self-censor. Institutions become risk-averse. That is not a healthy research culture.”

“Indigenous scholars and researchers from other minority communities have reason to be particularly alert here. We have long understood that the framing of what counts as acceptable speech is rarely applied neutrally.”

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A ‘troubling’ appointment

Silverstein, who is Jewish, said it was “very troubling that the chair of the ARC Board has chosen to focus on this one form of racism, and to do so in this way”.

The historian noted that “the primary form of racism” is aimed at First Nations, with anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia “skyrocketing”.

“The ARC must be a fully independent body,” she continued. “This Taskforce, which forms part of the work led by the Special Envoy on Antisemitism, is a massive overreach.”

An ARC spokesperson said that while the ARC cooperates with the federal government, it maintains “the integrity and independence of the ARC grant assessment processes”.

Concerns of a conflict of interest in Shergold chairing the working group were dismissed by the Department of Education.

“Professor Shergold has been transparent with both the ARC and the Commonwealth Research Grants Working Group about his dual roles to actively manage any potential conflicts of interest that may arise,” a department spokesperson told Deepcut.

Comment was sought from Shergold. In response, an ARC spokesperson denied the working group was “directed at particular disciplines or research topics”.

“The Australian Government is undertaking work across portfolios to address hatred and discriminatory behaviour in the community, while continuing to support legitimate academic research and freedom of inquiry,” they said.

*Correction: Article amended on June 2, 2026, to note that hate speech laws passed in January made it an offence to be a member of a proscribed hate group.

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink, where Antoun Issa discusses his new book, Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War, with Readings Books. The wide-ranging conversation delves into Beirut’s history, enduring Arab resistance, and interpreting Kahlil Gibran and the purpose of life.

On March 6, protesters draped an apron over a statue of ‘60s-era feminist activist Zelda D’Aprano outside Trades Hall in Melbourne.

The apron read ‘Difficult Woman’ – a reference to sexual assault survivors advocate Grace Tame, who was publicly described by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as “difficult” following her speech to a large anti-genocide rally in Sydney in February. The protesters also spray-painted the phrase on the ground in front of the statue.

The protest was carried out by members and affiliates of the Whistleblowers, Activists and Communities Alliance (WACA), and aimed to highlight “the failure of Trades Hall Council and unions Australia-wide to take any effective action to halt the export of weapons to Israel”.

Writing on Facebook, Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Luke Hilakari claimed the women were “aggressive and physical to the Trades Hall women who asked them to stop”, and said Trades Hall had reported the “vandalism” to Victoria Police.

“These people are not our comrades,” Hilakari wrote. “They are not left wing and know nothing about how to build a broad movement to make change.”

The incident led to the arrests of the ‘Zelda Eight’ activists and exposed long-running tensions between Trades Hall and pro-Palestine union groups, who claim Hilakari and other union leaders have “continually betrayed the thousands of working class people they pretend to represent, who have stood up against the ongoing genocide in Gaza over the last two-and-a-half years”.

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Union movement’s ‘monumental failure’ on Gaza

Hilakari has made public statements in support of Palestine, addressing a Melbourne March for Palestine rally in August and calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a genocidal war criminal” in December 2024.

However, Unionists for Palestine (UfP), a collective of pro-Palestine rank-and-file union members, have condemned Trades Hall for not responding to the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions call in 2023 for the international labour movement to oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza by refusing to build or transport weapons destined for Israel, and to pressure corporations and governments to halt military trade with Israel.

“Their inaction and their refusal to listen to both their own union members and the calls from Palestinian unionists to unions around the world to oppose Israel’s genocide is a monumental failure that belies their true class interests and their loyalty to the Australian Labor Party,” a UfP representative told Deepcut.

In April, the Italian government suspended the automatic renewal of a longstanding defence cooperation agreement with Israel – a move hailed by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese as “the first decision by the Italian government to stop the genocide in Palestine”. While Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is a vocal supporter of Israel, general strikes and protests in support of Gaza organised by Italian trade unions last year placed immense pressure on Meloni’s government.

“The general strikes in Italy and the various actions by dock workers around the world, are only possible because of militant, organised and political union members,” the UfP representative said.

The extensive ties between pro-Israel lobby groups and Australian trade unions receive relatively little scrutiny. Since 2010, union officials have travelled to Israel on yearly “study missions” organised by the Australia Israel Labor Dialogue (AILD), an organisation focused on “building links between unions in Israel and Australia”. Notable attendees include Health Services Union national president Gerard Hayes; Rail, Tram and Bus Union national secretary Alex Claassens; Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance deputy chief executive Adam Portelli; Professionals Australia Victorian director Scott Crawford; and former ACTU assistant secretary Michael Borowick.

The AILD has also been active in censuring unions and union leaders it deems to be insufficiently supportive of Israel. On its ‘For The Record’ webpage, the AILD collates union statements of support for Palestinians, presenting them as “biased, inaccurate [or] divorced from reality” — including statements by Hilakari himself.

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Zelda Eight protesters face counter-terror raids

Marion, a representative of the Zelda Eight, told Deepcut that Trades Hall calling the police on protesters had had a disastrous impact on the women’s lives. Bail conditions for many of the Zelda Eight prevent them from entering Melbourne’s CBD, contacting each other, or mentioning Hilakari in social media posts. In March, counter-terrorism police conducted dawn raids on several of the women’s homes.

“A union boss called the cops on protesters. This was a nonviolent action opposed to genocide and trying to hold the unions to account. It’s now become a joint counter-terrorism operation,” Marion said.

“If he’s prepared to call the cops on women for making a nonviolent political statement, who else is he prepared to call the cops on?”

Trades Hall did not respond to a request for comment.

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink, where Antoun Issa discusses his new book, Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War, with Readings Books. The wide-ranging conversation delves into Beirut’s history, enduring Arab resistance, and interpreting Kahlil Gibran and the purpose of life.

In the last seven days, there have been more than 350 mentions of ‘Albanese’ and ‘broken promise’ across Australian media.

Some of these are double-ups – the media monitoring service Isentia gathers all mentions across the different ABC stations and News Corp papers, even when there are duplicates.

But it is easy to see why the phrase ‘broken promise’ has stuck in voters’ minds, given it appears as the key issue of the budget in almost all media coverage, regardless of masthead or network.

What isn’t covered so well is the context.

News Corp has been running a rabid campaign against the (modest) changes to capital gains tax (CGT) and negative gearing, which makes sense when you consider just how much real estate (real estate dot com, anyone?) matters to the company.

As Christopher Warren pointed out in Crikey last week, “the stock market reckons News Corp’s controlling share of the real estate company is worth about A$13.75 billion, which is about 65% of News Corp’s entire market value”.

So why would anyone be surprised that the news company already ideologically opposed to the government becomes particularly feisty over long-overdue structural tax changes that will take a little bit of heat out of the housing market?

For most of the mainstream media, it has been a Pavlovian response. Many of the journalists in the gallery now in senior positions also covered the Abbott opposition, which took ‘broken promises’ and made it a political artform. The drama and hyperbole of those attacks, which badly wounded the Gillard/Rudd government and contributed to its downfall, looms large in the memory of many press gallery journalists who treat politics as a horse race.

‘Broken promise’ worked 15 years ago – why wouldn’t it work now?

Caught up in their own echo chamber, it’s easy to convince themselves that the broken promise means as much to voters as it does to them.

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It’s not a surprise, then, that voters are not only aware the Albanese government broke a promise to not change CGT and negative gearing, but are marking it down for it. But dig deeper into the data and it turns out that the changes are either welcomed or neutral. So it’s not the changes then, but the narrative.

Media in this context love to see themselves as neutral, when the exact opposite is true. The reason the promise exists in the first place is because of the game of rule in, rule out that journalists and commentators love to play during election campaigns.

Once something has been ruled out, it is expected to always be ruled out. This is in part in response to questions the community is asking, but it’s mostly about what the Canberra clique is obsessed with — because it is only ever the promises that the press gallery care about which get attention.

Labor had promised to scrap the Indue card if it won government ahead of the 2022 election, but it still exists under a different name. Ask Indigenous people in the communities where it is targeted if it feels ‘voluntary’. Labor went to the 2025 election with a policy to change the tax concessions on earnings over and above $3m in superannuation balances. Despite winning that election, the opposition and elements of the media waged a campaign against the changes, openly shrugging off the ‘mandate’ that is suddenly so important.

There is no outrage over the changes to the NDIS which will see at least 160,000 people removed from the scheme, let alone those who will never be able to participate in the first place, because that is ‘brave’ and ‘rational’.

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But long-overdue changes to the tax system are treated as being an End of Days event.

The press gallery is whiter and wealthier than most of the population. Journalism is increasingly the domain of the wealthy, which means the journalists who cover politicians share the same networks. It’s not unusual to hear of younger journalists arriving in Canberra and settling into apartments their parents have bought them so they can ‘concentrate on their careers’. Older reporters have holiday homes. It’s largely a privileged world, which is becoming more privileged every season.

And it sets what is important for the nation.

The day after the budget was handed down, newsrooms were filled with noisy, aggrieved journalists angry their investments would be taxed at a higher rate (potentially) and how ‘unfair’ it was that they were being ‘targeted’.

Governments should be held to account, but it should be on behalf of all people. Not just those who have the power to elevate their own grievances to the national stage.

That any of us in the press gallery think our concerns reflect the nation’s is one of the major disconnects between the political/media class and the rest of Australia. And that disconnect is only getting wider.

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink, where Antoun Issa discusses his new book, Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War, with Readings Books. The wide-ranging conversation delves into Beirut’s history, enduring Arab resistance, and interpreting Kahlil Gibran and the purpose of life.

Jewish anti-Zionist groups have revealed the shocking antisemitic abuse that the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion declined to hear in its public hearings.

Earlier this month, activist group the Loud Jew Collective (LJC) said it was “astounded” to be denied the opportunity to give evidence at the Commission’s first round of hearings.

The Commission’s first block of hearings, which ran from May 4–15 in Sydney, examined the “nature and prevalence of antisemitism in Australia” with a focus on witnesses’ lived experiences. The LJC prepared a submission detailing its members’ lived experience of antisemitism, and requested inclusion on the Commission’s witness list to give in-person evidence.

On May 1, however, the LJC was told they had been refused leave to appear, as “the Commissioner is not satisfied that LJC has a direct and substantial interest in the scope of hearing”.

LJC spokesperson Gem Walsh said the group’s exclusion was evidence that “anti-Palestinian racism is embedded in the Commission’s work”.

“This Royal Commission is demonstrating that it will be nothing more than a place for the airing of perspectives deemed acceptable to Zionism,” Walsh said.

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‘We hope Hamas rapes you to death’

The LJC submission included expert evidence prepared by Dr Jordana Silverstein, a Melbourne Law School academic, author and historian specialising in Australian Jewish history.

Besides her extensive personal experience dealing with far-right antisemitism — including being doxxed in neo-Nazi chat groups — Silverstein emphasised in her evidence that “the majority of the antisemitism [she has] experienced has come from Jewish Zionists”.

“While I have a PhD in Jewish history, it has repeatedly been made clear to me that I will never be employed in a Jewish Studies department in Australia because I and my work are anti-Zionist,” Silverstein’s evidence stated. “I have also been targeted on social media by Jewish people who discuss me as being a ‘traitor to Jews’, as ‘self-hating’, and so on.”

Examples of such targeting featured in Silverstein’s report include a Melbourne rabbi accusing her of “adopting a narrative of those who hate us”; a prominent Melbourne lawyer describing her on social media as “a token self-hating Jew”; a pro-Zionist Instagram account depicting her and other anti-Zionist Jews as rats and comparing them to Nazi collaborators; and abusive emails labelling her “kapo shit” and wondering why her family did not die in the Holocaust.

While many of the witnesses before the Commission have routinely conflated antisemitism with support for Palestinians and opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Silverstein noted in her report that, “I have never experienced antisemitism from proponents of the [pro-Palestine] movement throughout the course of my extensive, decades-long, professional and personal involvement in the Palestine solidarity movement and in researching histories of Palestinians in Australia”.

The report also includes testimony from Michelle Berkon, a member of Jews Against the Occupation ‘48 who was abused by Jewish Zionists after wearing a keffiyeh to a memorial for the victims of the Bondi massacre.

“At Bondi, there were people yelling, ‘We hope Hamas rapes you to death and cuts off your head’,” Berkon says in the report.

“One of the worst, which I’ve heard several times, but it never loses its impact, is: ‘It’s a pity any of your family survived the Holocaust’. When a Jew can say that to another Jew, you know there is something astonishingly wrong, something profoundly twisted has happened.”

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Some voices over others

The Commission has already generated significant controversy, with critics claiming the inquiry is shutting out dissenting voices and giving pro-Israel organisations an uncritical platform to spread misinformation. Earlier this month, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) expressed outrage after being refused leave to appear before the Commission, saying that “exclusing our community from a process examining racism and social cohesion – as well as discussions which label our advocacy as antisemitic – is unacceptable”.

Deepcut has already reported on the exhaustively debunked pro-Israel talking points aired at the Commission by representatives of major Zionist lobby groups, and fact-checked numerous inaccurate and misleading statements by witnesses the Commission has allowed to stand unchallenged.

Since sending questions about these inaccuracies to the Commission, the transcript records for several days of witness testimony have been removed from the Commission's website.

In April, Deepcut revealed that the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department had partnered with a pro-Zionist legal body to solicit public submissions to the Commission, sparking concerns about the inquiry’s independence. Michael West Media has previously revealed the Department appointed law firm Gilbert + Tobin, a major sponsor of the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, as lawyers assisting the Commission without an open tender process.

The Commission’s second block of hearings in Sydney is currently underway.

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink, where Antoun Issa discusses his new book, Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War, with Readings Books. The wide-ranging conversation delves into Beirut’s history, enduring Arab resistance, and interpreting Kahlil Gibran and the purpose of life.

We’re now four weeks into the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion’s public hearings. We’ve so far heard numerous statements, led by pro-Israel lobby groups, seeking to equate antisemitism to criticism of Israel, Zionism and displays of Palestinian culture.

Also aired during the Commission – which is costing taxpayers $131.1m – were several inaccuracies about Israel, Palestine and Lebanon that went unchecked. So we’ve decided to help the Commissioner by correcting the record.

Some of the clearest errors were historical:

“But then by the time I was at university, I think the morph into anti-Zionism, a hate movement against the Jewish collective, really. I joined the Jewish student union AUJS, and we had – that my first year of university [in 1982] was the beginning of the war in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, the terrorist organisation.” – Lynda Ben Menashe – May 7, day 4, p371, line 5.

Israel initially invaded Lebanon in 1978 to establish a security zone along its border (similar to what it is attempting to do today). In 1978, Hezbollah did not exist. When Israel launched a full-scale invasion in 1982 towards the capital, Beirut, Hezbollah still did not exist in its current form. Both invasions targeted the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and other Palestinian factions. Hezbollah was founded in response to the Israeli invasion, which had devastated Lebanese Shia communities in south Lebanon. Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah took centre stage after Israel’s invasion, spanning the subsequent 18-year Israeli occupation of south Lebanon.

“Well, you know, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on for centuries and there’s nuances and a lot of convoluted information with that.” –

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not date back centuries. The conflict began with British colonisation after World War I, with a promise to create a settler-colony for Jewish arrivals from Europe in Palestine. Prior to British colonisation, Arab Jewish communities – which numbered 3-4% in the 1800s – coexisted for centuries in Palestine with their fellow Muslim and Christian Arabs. The main conflict arose during Israel’s war of independence in 1948, which led to the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians.

One of the most obvious pieces of misinformation concerned Israel’s military response following October 7:

“And we also see [on October 9] before Israel had responded, before Israel had done anything – and it was a sign of what was to come – what was the response we at least saw? The police instructed the Jewish community not to attend the Opera House.” – Jeremy Liebler – May 6, day 3, p324, line 25.

By the time the Sydney Opera House protest happened on October 9, Israel had in fact responded, killing hundreds, injuring thousands and displacing tens of thousands in Gaza. By October 8, the UN reported Israel had shut off electricity to Gaza and killed 413 Palestinians, injured 2,300 and displaced 123,000. By October 9, the number of dead rose to 687, the number of injured to 3,800 and the number of displaced to 187,518. On October 9, then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said words that would later be referenced as potentially demonstrating genocidal intent in an International Court of Justice case brought against Israel in January 2024.

“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed … We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

Another statement contradicted the witness’ own written account:

“And towards the end of the session, approximately between 50 and 60 minutes, there was a Q and A, at which a woman stood up got to her feet and said, ‘We are all’ - quote unquote, ‘We are all missing the elephant in the room, the Jewish tentacles’.” – Vic Alhadeff – May 5, day 2, p185, line 25.

Alhadeff’s own submission which was before the commission, stated the woman said “the ‘tentacles’ of Australia’s ‘Israel lobby’”, as does his piece in the Jewish Independent describing the incident.

Other statements made assertions about Israel’s depiction in the media that do not accord with reality:

“I think it’s very hard to avoid accusation of Israel of starvation and genocide and all of that, that they are accused of. For example, when I go to work, I work in an office building. I have to spend about 30 seconds in the lift to go up to my office. There is a screen playing the ABC and every single morning during the war, I had to look at the headline of all of the accusation against Israel but always one-sided. They never talked about Israelis’ pain and it’s very difficult to avoid.” – Léa Levy – May 5, day 2, p154, line 20.

ABC extensively covered the October 7 attacks and Israeli suffering throughout the conflict. Our joint analysis with Newscord found consistent bias towards Israel in ABC coverage. A search of ABC’s digital archives reveals dozens of stories focusing on Israeli civilians, see examples from the last year here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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“And, I mean, if you look at it – so no other country in the world is compared to Nazi Germany, only Israel. So, in a way, they’re saying it because they know that that will also hurt Jews, that we are incredibly offended by that.” – Julie Nathan – May 11, day 6, p517, line 40.

Many states have been compared to Nazi Germany given it is, as pointed out by antisemitism expert Dr David Rich (May 14, day 8, p710, line 30), a common analogy. The accusation has been levelled at Russia, the United States, Iran, Syria and Iraq among others.

At the time of publishing, the Royal Commission had removed the transcript record for days 2 and 3 from its website.

Pro-Palestinian groups refused leave to appear

While the Jewish Council of Australia appeared in hearing block one and questioned numerous expert witnesses, other progressive Jewish and Palestinian organisations were refused leave to appear.

The Commission refused the applications of both the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network (APAN) and the Loud Jew Collective to appear, with both groups’ submissions arguing against the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. The Loud Jew Collective’s submission focused on the experience of antisemitism suffered by its members at the hands of Zionist Jews and the far right.

APAN said its submission “provides a relevant and useful history of Palestine and Palestinians” and that “the failure to allow APAN to appear will mean the commission will not have a legitimate counter narrative to the one proffered by those seeking to criminalise the pro-Palestine movement.”

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink, where Antoun Issa discusses his new book, Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War, with Readings Books. The wide-ranging conversation delves into Beirut’s history, enduring Arab resistance, and interpreting Kahlil Gibran and the purpose of life.

Editor’s note: We’re excited to publish this first contribution from Jim Malo – former property reporter for The Age.

Housing affordability is unlikely to meaningfully improve under Labor’s proposed reforms, experts say, even if forecast price falls eventuate.

A key reason is the wide gap between the cost of housing and what people can actually afford to pay. Sluggish wage growth has forced would-be homebuyers to save longer to get a deposit, and Labor’s proposed changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax (CGT) will do little to reduce the gap.

Cotality modelling showed house prices were 52.94 per cent more expensive than would be considered affordable, as of the end of 2025. Australia’s median home value was about $902,000, whereas a buyer with a 20 per cent deposit and a median household income of $106,900 could only afford a home worth about $590,000 – or what Cotality calls the ‘derived purchase value’.

Home prices expected to soften

The Albanese government’s proposed changes, announced in in the May budget, would immediately restrict negative gearing to newly built homes and would replace a 50 per cent CGT discount with a 30 per cent minimum tax from July 1, 2027.

Labor predicted home prices would grow 2 per cent less than they would otherwise over about two years thanks to the tax reforms, but AMP chief economist Dr Shane Oliver says the the government may have undersold the potential price effect.

“The logic here is that after the tax reform, investors will participate less in the property market, so the flow of money into property from investors will be less than it has been,” he told Deepcut.

“It could be about a 5 per cent fall. Some people will expect it to happen over five-to-10 years but I think it could happen over the next six-to-12 months.

“Because of the [RBA] rate hikes, we’ve revised our forecast down to 3 per cent growth [over 2026]. But if you get 5 per cent less growth because of the tax changes it could go back to -2 per cent.”

Affordability still out of reach

Affordability took a dive in 2022 when the RBA began lifting the cash rate from a record low to 4.35 per cent. The increased cost of paying down interest, together with rigid debt-to-income limits imposed by lenders and high deposit hurdles, lowered what the median buyer could afford to pay.

Five per cent deposit schemes – introduced federally by the Morrison government in 2020 – do little to improve these conditions because buyers are still restricted by the debt-to-income ratio cap of six. The cap, set by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, means that buyers earning $100,000 would find it difficult to be loaned more than $600,000 – nowhere near enough to buy the median home.

Cotality research director Tim Lawless said this showed that a small adjustment to prices wouldn’t be enough to dent the housing crisis.

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He says the divergence in housing values and affordability “was partially due to a monetary policy shock driven by increasing interest rates, along with housing values rising at a faster rate than incomes”.

“The probability that a tax change can completely offset that is low. If the cash rate rises once more, borrowing capacity reduces further, and home loan affordability worsens regardless of what’s happening with negative gearing or CGT settings,” he told Deepcut.

The Victorian example

Independent housing analyst Eliza Owen said the expected reduction in investor activity should improve first home buyers’ access to the property market, by way of reducing competition.

“Historic reductions in investor finance and benefits have been associated with periods of price decline, whether it was macro-prudential policy in the 2010s or more recent tax reforms in Victoria,” she said.

“It comes back to that idea that the property doesn’t disappear and the houses don’t go anywhere. If there is an investor who pulls out of the market, they sell to an investor or an owner occupier and in Victoria, even though investor lending has shrunk, it has been more than outpaced by an increase in first-home buyer activity.”

Victoria expanded landlords’ land tax liability in 2023 to help pay down the state’s Covid-era debt. Landlords and real estate agents cited the increase – generally in the ballpark of a few thousand dollars – along with increased protections for renters as their reasons for selling in the following years. Economists also considered it a contributing factor in Melbourne’s years-long housing price stagnation.

Tinkering without drastic change

Lawless said investor activity was likely to stabilise at lower levels, but not enough to trigger price falls large enough to close the gap between what buyers can afford to pay and what homes cost.

“Investors currently represent a significant share of overall housing demand, accounting for 41 per cent of new mortgages taken out in the first quarter of the year. While we anticipate investor demand will soften, it is unlikely to disappear altogether,” he said.

“Simultaneously, existing investors are fully protected under grandfathering provisions for negative gearing, meaning there is little incentive for them to sell their properties. Rather than triggering a wave of panic selling, the change is more likely to encourage existing investors to hold their properties for longer to preserve their tax advantages.”

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink, where Antoun Issa discusses his new book, Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War, with Readings Books. The wide-ranging conversation delves into Beirut’s history, enduring Arab resistance, and interpreting Kahlil Gibran and the purpose of life.

Human rights organisations have warned that Australia may become “a safe haven for persons alleged to have committed the most serious international crimes” unless the federal government investigates Australian-Israeli dual nationals who may have committed war crimes in Gaza.

In a submission to Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Krissy Barrett and Attorney-General Michelle Rowland on Wednesday, Amnesty International Australia, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) and the Australia Muslim Advocacy Network (AMAN) urged the government to investigate “any Australian dual nationals alleged to have participated in hostilities in Gaza or related conduct potentially giving rise to offences under Australian law”.

In a media release, Amnesty International Australia Occupied Palestinian Territory spokesperson Mohamed Duar said that “any Australian who has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide must be held to account and face justice”.

“The international rules-based order must be respected and upheld, and the Australian government must honour its obligations to bring accountability for perpetrators of these grave crimes,” Duar said. “The impunity must come to an end.”

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IDF soldiers free to enter, leave Australia

While the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) do not publish information on the number of foreigners or dual nationals in its ranks, stories of Australians who travelled to Israel to fight in the IDF after October 7 have been published in The Australian, the Herald Sun and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Authorities in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France and Sri Lanka have ordered investigations into allegations of war crimes in Gaza by their citizens or Israeli soldiers on their soil, but Australia has allowed IDF soldiers of varying nationalities to enter and leave the country unchecked. In January the government ignored a request from the Hind Rajab Foundation and domestic bodies to prepare an arrest warrant for Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who toured Australia at the government’s invitation in early February. Last year, a UN Commission of Inquiry found Herzog incited genocide when he blamed “an entire nation” for the October 7 attack.

A tour of Australian universities by IDF reservists in 2025 prompted campus protests, while home affairs minister Tony Burke was heavily criticised in March for granting visas to a troupe of female IDF soldiers taking a “recovery trip” to Melbourne. In May 2025, an Australian-Samoan dual national flew from Melbourne to Tel Aviv to volunteer with the IDF’s 512th ‘Paran’ Brigade in southern Israel, extensively documenting her service “near the Gaza/Egypt border”.

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Evidence of genocide ‘deeply disturbing’

The organisations also urged Australian authorities to investigate numerous Israeli political and military figures under the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows courts and governments to prosecute serious crimes regardless of where, or by whom, they were committed. Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are also outlawed in Australia under the 1995 Commonwealth Criminal Code Act.

The submission includes a 140-page dossier prepared by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians, a legal support organisation based in the United Kingdom and Canada, outlining extensive allegations of genocide and war crimes against Israeli government and military figures including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, former defense minister Yoav Gallant and former IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi.

Legal advice prepared alongside the submission outlines numerous precedents where governments in Europe, the United States and New Zealand prosecuted the perpetrators of international crimes committed in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and several African nations.

APAN Executive Officer Katie Shammas called the dossier’s evidence “extensive, deeply disturbing and impossible to ignore”.

“What will it take for Australian authorities to engage with that evidence seriously and independently and act in a way that is required of them under international law?” Shammas asked.

The organisations also called on the AFP to reach out to “Palestinian victims and survivor communities in Australia”, warning of “growing concern from Palestinian, Arab and Muslim communities that Australian institutions are applying fundamentally different standards of scrutiny, accountability and protection when Palestinians are the victims”.

“Palestinian victims and survivors deserve the same access to justice afforded to victims of atrocities anywhere else in the world,” Shammas said.

“There cannot be one standard for some conflicts and another for a genocide in Gaza.”

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink, where Antoun Issa discusses his new book, Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War, with Readings Books. The wide-ranging conversation delves into Beirut’s history, enduring Arab resistance, and interpreting Kahlil Gibran and the purpose of life.

The foreign minister, Penny Wong, will summon the Israeli ambassador over “shocking” treatment of Gaza-bound humanitarian activists currently detained in Israel.

Australia joins Spain, Canada, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and the UK in issuing summons to their respective Israeli envoys after far-right Israeli national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, posted a video of the detained activists.

A spokesperson for the foreign minister said the images were “shocking and unacceptable”.

“We condemn Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir – who Australia has sanctioned – and the degrading actions of Israeli authorities towards those detained,” the spokesperson told Deepcut.

“Australia’s ambassador to Israel made representations overnight to Israel, calling for the release of those detained and for Israel to ensure no ill treatment of any detainees and act in line with international obligations.”

Wong posted on social media that she had “directed DFAT to call in Israel’s Ambassador to Australia to reinforce this message”.

Western condemnation

The video shows Ben-Gvir taunting the activists as they lay kneeling on the ground with their hands bound.

The footage drew immediate condemnation from western governments, with the UK foreign secretary, Yvonne Cooper, saying the footage showed “totally disgraceful scenes”.

Tom Berendsen, the Dutch foreign minister, echoed those remarks.

“The images shared by extremist Minister ⁠Ben-Gvir of detained flotilla ⁠activists are shocking and unacceptable,” he said.

Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, said it was “inadmissible that these demonstrators, including many Italian citizens, are subjected to this treatment that violates human dignity.”

Spain condemned the footage as “monstrous” and is pushing for EU-wide sanctions against Ben-Gvir “on an urgent basis”.

Suspected broken ribs and rubber bullet wounds

Israeli forces intercepted the 52-ship Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters on Monday, capturing over 400 activists including 11 Australians.

The activists were taken to the Israeli port city of Ashdod (Isdud in pre-colonial Palestine), where they have allegedly been met with abuse.

Adalah – an Israeli human rights group and legal centre – says their attorneys were able to provide “legal consultation to hundreds of unlawfully detained flotilla participants”.

They reported “systemic violations of due process, and widespread physical and psychological abuse by Israeli authorities”.

This included “dozens of participants with suspected broken ribs … as well as injuries sustained from the use of rubber bullets during the interception”.

Adalah also documented “severe degradation and sexual harassment and humiliation”.

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Greens, Socialists call on government to do more

Greens Senator David Shoebridge criticised the government’s response as “performative”.

“The Australian government’s chief responsibility is to protect its citizens, and it is failing to do that right now,” he told Deepcut.

“The Israeli government feels like they can kidnap Australians because they never face consequences … Another statement about being deeply concerned will not move the dial for Israel. Penny Wong knows this,” he said.

Shoebridge said Labor “needs to look at what it has become and decide which side they want to be on – the side of brave Australians trying to bring food and water to starving people, or a rogue state like Israel”.

The Socialists were equally scathing of the government’s handling of the matter. Jordan van den Lamb said “this latest episode shows, once again, that there are no real red lines for the Labor Party when it comes to Israel”.

“Again and again, the Australian government has done nothing of substance to oppose [Israel’s conduct] - offering at most statements of ‘concern’, even when the abuses involve Australian citizens who it supposedly has a duty to protect,” he told Deepcut.

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink, where Antoun Issa discusses his new book, Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War, with Readings Books. The wide-ranging conversation delves into Beirut’s history, enduring Arab resistance, and interpreting Kahlil Gibran and the purpose of life.

The book traces my mother’s experiences living on the frontlines of the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s. I’ve written it, however, like a novel: painting vivid scenes with language, giving glimpses of the simple beauty that existed before the war, and the pain that has lingered ever since.

Books allow a visceral connection to human experiences that news articles do not.

They also serve as a springboard into deeper introspection, to pursue new paths revealed by new questions, in a quest to place our own stories within the timeline of history.

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The Australian government has called on Israel to abide by international norms after the rogue state captured 11 Australians in international waters.

At least 38 vessels of the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) were intercepted west of Cyprus on Monday at 5.30pm AEST, according to a GSF Australia statement.

Israeli forces boarded the vessels and captured 319 activists, including the Australian contingent, with interceptions of the remaining vessels ongoing, the statement read.

“Soldiers would destroy the boats’ cameras before abducting their crews,” it said.

Subhi Awad, a GSF Australia spokesperson, believes the activists are being taken to the Israeli port city of Ashdod (originally Isdud in Arabic pre-colonisation).

The detained Australians are Neve O’Connor, Sam Woripa Watson, Anny Mokotow, Isla Lamont, Juliet Lamont, Surya McEwen, Zack Schofield, Dr Bianca Webb-Pullman, Gemma O’Toole, Violet Coco and Helen O’Sullivan.

Greens demand government action

A DFAT spokesperson told Deepcut they were “urgently seeking confirmation of the welfare of Australians we believe have been detained”.

“We will continue to make clear our expectation that any detainees receive humane treatment in line with international norms,” the spokesperson said.

Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi slammed the Israeli raid as an act of “piracy” and accused the Albanese government of “inaction” and “complicity”.

“It is beyond comprehension that this Labor government still calls Israel a friend after two years of genocide, and even the capture of Australian citizens is apparently not a red line for them. It is appalling.

“They should have already picked up the phone to demand the release and safe passage of all Australians aboard the flotilla, and they should leave no stone unturned. Instead, we have silence,” Faruqi said in a statement.

DFAT confirmed that government officials were in touch with Israeli authorities and ready to provide consular assistance.

Breaking a siege

The 11 Australians were part of a 74-ship humanitarian fleet determined to break Israel’s crippling siege of the Gaza Strip and deliver vital humanitarian aid.

That number was reduced to 52 ships after a separate Israeli attack on the flotilla last month near Greek waters. In that attack, 175 activists, including six Australians, were held onboard an Israeli ship for two days before being released in Crete, according to GSF Australia.

The Greek government, which has taken a pro-Israel position in recent years, faced heavy criticism for allowing the Israeli attack to take place, which left 36 activists requiring medical treatment.

Federal government criticises flotilla participation

The UN says Israel continues to restrict aid to Gaza despite a ceasefire last October. During its two-year genocide in Gaza, Israel was accused of deploying starvation as a weapon to kill civilians.

The allegations amounted to an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the International Criminal Court charging Netanyahu with “starvation as a method of warfare”.

The federal government, nevertheless, repeated its call for Australians “not to join others seeking to break the Israeli naval blockade” to avoid risks.

“We encourage those wishing to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza to do so through established channels,” the DFAT spokesperson said.

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GSF Australia defended Australian participation in the flotilla, saying they had a right to deliver lifesaving aid.

“Delivering aid to civilians is always legal, and blocking aid to civilians is always illegal,” Awad said.

Deepcut asked DFAT if the foreign minister, Penny Wong, would summon the Israeli ambassador to raise the matter.

The spokesperson did not answer the question, but said: “Australia has been part of the international call on Israel to comply with the binding orders of the International Court of Justice, including to enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale.”

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