Exclusive: the stories of Zionist antisemitism the Royal Commission declined to hear
Anti-Zionist groups were refused leave to testify on 'profoundly twisted' abuse
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.”
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.
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