Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, December ninth. Syria is in full blown civil
Speaker 1: war as rebel forces who stunned the dictator Bashah al
Speaker 1: Assad by taking Aleppo last week, move into the capital Damascus,
Speaker 1: Asad has reportedly fled the country. It changes everything in
Speaker 1: the Middle East, and at the Australian dot Com dot
Speaker 1: a U we have live reporting and analysis of this
Speaker 1: fast moving story. The firebombing of a Melbourne synagogue was terrorism.
Speaker 1: That's what Anthony Albanezi says is his personal view, as
Speaker 1: a manhunt continues for the arsonists and law enforcement leaders
Speaker 1: gather this week to consider declaring the attack a terror event.
Speaker 1: It comes after Israeli PM Benjamin Ettanna, who condemned the
Speaker 1: Albanese government's handling of events since October seven, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Nettannia who said anti Israel sentiment is the same as antisemitism. Today,
Speaker 1: our correspondent Joanni Bisham joins me to explore one of
Speaker 1: the thorniest issues of our age, how we think and
Speaker 1: talk about the Middle East. Before we start. Today's episode
Speaker 1: contains some explicit language.
Speaker 2: There's outrage from around the world tonight after an arson
Speaker 2: attack on a synagogue in Melbourne's Jewish heartland.
Speaker 3: Of RiPP and Lee.
Speaker 1: This in Melbourne and this in Sydney.
Speaker 4: Jewish Australians were barricaded inside Sydney's Great Synagogue last night
Speaker 4: after a noisy and aggressive pro Palestinian group decided to
Speaker 4: protest on the street right outside.
Speaker 1: After condemnation from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nettanna who and
Speaker 1: three days of pressure led by Josh Fridenberg and Peter Dutton.
Speaker 1: On Sunday, Anthony Alberanzi defended his record on standing up
Speaker 1: to anti Semitism.
Speaker 2: If you want my personal view, quite clearly, terrorism is
Speaker 2: something that is aimed at creating fear in the community,
Speaker 2: and the atrocities that occurred at the synagogue in Melbourne
Speaker 2: clearly were designed to create fear in the community and therefore,
Speaker 2: from my personal perspective, certainly fulfill that definition of terrorism.
Speaker 1: Joanni Bishan is a senior journalist with the Australian YNI.
Speaker 1: What's your interpretation of Anthony Albanese's remarks? There Is this
Speaker 1: a new stance for Albanesi or is this business as
Speaker 1: usual for him?
Speaker 5: It's business as usual in the sense that it takes
Speaker 5: some time with Albo to.
Speaker 3: Take a bold stance and call something what it is.
Speaker 5: So Anthony Albanesi calling the fire bombing attack on the
Speaker 5: ADUs Israel Synagogue as a terrorist act or what he
Speaker 5: sees is personally being a terrorist act, well he's doing
Speaker 5: what the Jewish community.
Speaker 3: In Australia did. In about three seconds. We all saw
Speaker 3: what happened, we knew what it was.
Speaker 5: The fact it took him two days to pronounce it
Speaker 5: as a terrorist act, well that's in keeping.
Speaker 3: That's Baau for Albow. But he is right in one sense.
Speaker 5: Which is that the technical definition of a terrorist act
Speaker 5: is something that needs to be decided by the law
Speaker 5: enforcement agencies. They're going to be meeting on Monday, and
Speaker 5: in the past it's taken many months for these very
Speaker 5: agencies to figure out whether, for example, the Link Cafe
Speaker 5: siege was a terrorist attack or not. Everyone who watched
Speaker 5: that new almost on site that they were watching hostages
Speaker 5: being held up in a cafe with a shotgun while
Speaker 5: they were holding a Shahada flag, and they knew what
Speaker 5: it was. They were calling it a terrorist atackt But
Speaker 5: for many months it was described as an instance of
Speaker 5: a mentally ill manned So these things can take time.
Speaker 1: There's an author called Alex Rifchin who's also co chief
Speaker 1: executive of an advocacy group called the Council of Australian Jury.
Speaker 1: He's written a book about antisemitism called The Seven Deadly Myths.
Speaker 1: In it, he says antisemitism is as diverse as Jewishness.
Speaker 1: You can be a Jew if you are very religious,
Speaker 1: or even if you have no religious faith at all,
Speaker 1: and if you're born into a Jewish family, or if
Speaker 1: you're a convert to the religion. Alex Rifchin writes that
Speaker 1: antisemitism is similar. You can be an anti Semite if
Speaker 1: you despise the Jewish faith on religious grounds, but you
Speaker 1: don't hate the ethnic group of Jews, or like the Nazis,
Speaker 1: you can hate the Jews as an ethnic group without
Speaker 1: really focusing on their religious practices. And then he says
Speaker 1: this one can adorn the state of Israel with all
Speaker 1: manner of antisemitic conspiracy theory, yet hold Judaism and Jewish
Speaker 1: culture in high regard, as has become common in some
Speaker 1: sectors of the far left.
Speaker 3: Yanni.
Speaker 1: This is the idea I'm keen to dig through with
Speaker 1: you today, and it's big and complex. On Saturday, Israel's
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Benjamin Netna who took to social media to
Speaker 1: declare anti Israel sentiment is anti Semitism, and he was
Speaker 1: talking particularly about Australia. So let's start with that idea.
Speaker 1: Would you agree with NTNYA, who is anti Israel sentiment
Speaker 1: the same thing as antisemitism.
Speaker 5: Well, the first thing I would start off by saying
Speaker 5: is that there's a tendency even among Jews to interpret
Speaker 5: Netanya who's phrasing here as any criticism of the government
Speaker 5: of Israel or its policies is akin to anti Semitism.
Speaker 5: And that's not what I think Netanyahu meant at all.
Speaker 5: I think what he's talking about here is the anti
Speaker 5: Israel movement that broadly speaking, denies the right of Jews
Speaker 5: to live in their ancestral homeland. The anti Israel movement
Speaker 5: at its worst is not one that seeks to state solution.
Speaker 5: It's one that actually doesn't seek Israel to exist at all.
Speaker 5: But it's also and I guess this is the part
Speaker 5: that aligns a little more closely with the Albanese government.
Speaker 5: It's a mindset that tends to apportion all of the
Speaker 5: blame for all of the situation in the Middle East
Speaker 5: on Israel itself, And that's partly why Nettnyahu responded so
Speaker 5: forcefully on Friday night with that tweet. So he's responding
Speaker 5: to Australia's fresh positioning at the UN and a number
Speaker 5: of hostile steps taken by the Albanese government to distance
Speaker 5: itself from Israel over the past year, when Israel, with
Speaker 5: whom Australia is supposed to be a very warm ally,
Speaker 5: was the one that was attacked in the first place
Speaker 5: on October seven.
Speaker 1: Over the past year and a bit since October seven,
Speaker 1: you've been back and forth to Israel, covering the conflict
Speaker 1: as it's unfolded, and covering the development of sentiment within
Speaker 1: Israel itself. I've been struck in your reporting that Israel
Speaker 1: is itself a very diverse place. There have always been
Speaker 1: Arab members of the parliament, for example, there villages in Israel,
Speaker 1: and there are plenty of Israelis who strongly disagree with Netnya,
Speaker 1: who on vs On all sorts of things. So how
Speaker 1: do we square that the idea of Israelis who don't
Speaker 1: like Netnya Who and don't like the conduct of the war.
Speaker 1: With the idea that anti israel sentiment is anti Smitic
Speaker 1: by definition.
Speaker 3: They really are two different things.
Speaker 5: So again there's ordinary political dissent and disagreement, and this
Speaker 5: is abundant in Israel, as anyone who has been there
Speaker 5: will to test, and since the war began last year,
Speaker 5: there's been extraordinary disagreement over how the government, for example,
Speaker 5: should be negotiating the release of the hostages. And separate
Speaker 5: to that, there's ample criticism of netna who himself. That's
Speaker 5: not anti semitism. No one would suggest that that's anti semitism.
Speaker 5: But protesters standing outside Central Synagogue in Sydney, holding Jews
Speaker 5: here accountable for the actions of the Israeli government and
Speaker 5: forcing them to be locked inside the synagogue for their safety,
Speaker 5: that's anti Semitic. Protesting in the streets calling for an
Speaker 5: anti five or of violent uprising against Jews, that's anti Semitic.
Speaker 5: When the police tell Jews they shouldn't venture into parts
Speaker 5: of the city because their safety cannot be assured, as
Speaker 5: they were told on October nine last year, there's a
Speaker 5: word for that too. So people use the cover of
Speaker 5: anti Israel critique to mask an anti Semitism. They're never
Speaker 5: critiquing the government's domestic policies or as foreign policies. They're
Speaker 5: critiquing Israel's right to exist and boycotting Jewish products and
Speaker 5: blaming Jews in Sydney and Melbourne for events unfolding a
Speaker 5: world away. And that's what I think Bibie was talking about.
Speaker 1: Here in Australia. Since October seven, twenty twenty three, we've
Speaker 1: seen a few different types of reaction. First, of course,
Speaker 1: was the Opera House protest on October nine, where protesters
Speaker 1: were chanting something that was either fuck the Jews or
Speaker 1: where's the Jews? That has been widely interpreted, particularly in
Speaker 1: the community, as anti Semitic as well as anti Israel.
Speaker 1: What's your take on that.
Speaker 5: Well, it was a curtain raiser, like not just in
Speaker 5: terms of the grotesque messaging and violence that we've seen
Speaker 5: in the months that followed, but the response from government
Speaker 5: at the state and federal level was what.
Speaker 3: Many would describe as totally lacking.
Speaker 5: There were no arrests, There was yes condemnation, but that
Speaker 5: condemnation has always counted in language quite merely on the
Speaker 5: tongue and This is where federal labor, in particular, I
Speaker 5: feel has repeatedly failed. For example, why doesn't every statement
Speaker 5: made by this government about Israel and Gaza just start
Speaker 5: with the words release the hostages, Like, surely that's not
Speaker 5: a position.
Speaker 3: They don't support. Those words make it into the.
Speaker 5: Press statements, but they're often buried under convoluted statements about
Speaker 5: restraint and ceasefires. But generally speaking, my feeling about October
Speaker 5: nine is the leaders were probably experiencing a collective state
Speaker 5: of denial about what they themselves were witnessing, and they
Speaker 5: were probably unwilling to be sensible and call out what
Speaker 5: they were witnessing, or they were hoping it would go away,
Speaker 5: and that was naive.
Speaker 1: So after October nine here in Australia we've seen protests
Speaker 1: through city streets every weekend and university encampments inspired by
Speaker 1: the ones in America, and at those encampments and on
Speaker 1: the protest we've seen a couple of different types of people.
Speaker 1: There's people of Middle Eastern descent and then there's white
Speaker 1: Australians and they're chanting slogans like Israel is a terrorist state,
Speaker 1: accusing Israeli murdering babies. So how do we interpret all
Speaker 1: of that from that group of people. Is that level
Speaker 1: of protest do you think anti Israel or is it
Speaker 1: anti Semitic? And what would be the difference in this context?
Speaker 1: I guess I'm asking, is there a way to disagree
Speaker 1: with the way Israel is conducting the war in Gaza
Speaker 1: from here in Australia and still be an ally to Jews?
Speaker 5: Well, to go to what you just mentioned, I would
Speaker 5: say it's certainly anti Israel, and many would rightfully argue
Speaker 5: that it's flagrantly anti Semitic, as I would as well.
Speaker 5: What fascinates me about these catch cries is that the
Speaker 5: people saying them seem to display a sort of wilful
Speaker 5: disregard of Hamas's involvement in this tragedy altogether. So let's
Speaker 5: just clear away one thing first. Israelis themselves. They're appalled
Speaker 5: by the civilian deaths in Gaza, as any sensible human
Speaker 5: being would be Bibi himself. The hardline is in the
Speaker 5: Israeli government, believe it or not, they don't want innocent
Speaker 5: people to die either, but they do see Hamas as
Speaker 5: culpable for those tragedies, and rightfully so. The Australian government
Speaker 5: seems to hold a slightly different view. But to the
Speaker 5: protesters in the streets, with their kafirs and the signs
Speaker 5: calling for Antifada and other slogans, I often wonder why
Speaker 5: they aren't acknowledging what brave Palestinians in Gaza are saying themselves,
Speaker 5: which is that Hamas wilfully endangered their lives by turning
Speaker 5: their homes into rocket launching sites, or that Hamas deliberately
Speaker 5: embedded itself in hospitals and schools, or in the aid
Speaker 5: camps where the population now seeks shelter, or that Hermas
Speaker 5: wasted billions in eight dollars on building tunnels, and to
Speaker 5: state the bleeding obvious that Hamas launched this war and
Speaker 5: are still holding more than one hundred hostages.
Speaker 3: The protesters always have to.
Speaker 5: Work very hard to justify that point, to justify that
Speaker 5: morally reprehensible starting point. But to answer your original question,
Speaker 5: there's a very simple way to disagree with the war,
Speaker 5: and that is say whatever you like about it, have
Speaker 5: a view, without punctuating your point or framing your argument
Speaker 5: by saying that Israel has no right to exist in
Speaker 5: the first place and has no right to defend itself.
Speaker 3: It's pretty simple coming up.
Speaker 1: How did anti Israel sentiment become fashionable for the progressive left?
Speaker 1: That's after the break. There are plenty of Australians who
Speaker 1: would never show up at a protest, but for many
Speaker 1: of them, Palestine has now moved from the fringe where
Speaker 1: it was once the pet subject of the labor left
Speaker 1: or the Greens for example, to being now a very
Speaker 1: fashionable cause. So these are people who you would normally
Speaker 1: think of as the progressive left, and I would think
Speaker 1: they would describe themselves like that, their pro gay rights,
Speaker 1: their pro reconciliation for example. So how have they ended
Speaker 1: up being anti Israel although Israel is really the only
Speaker 1: place in the Middle East where ideas that they believe
Speaker 1: in gay rights and women's rights are fully embraced.
Speaker 5: What I would say is that if you're in your
Speaker 5: twenties and political activism is a form of identity and expression,
Speaker 5: then you can't sit on the fence. There is an
Speaker 5: imperative to voice your moral outrage, and you have to
Speaker 5: choose wisely what side you'll take or risk excommunication from
Speaker 5: your group, and you have to participate in the rituals
Speaker 5: of that group, like hosting to social media or sharing
Speaker 5: and liking, or attending a protest. So there's a lot
Speaker 5: of stake, and the incentives, which are always to be
Speaker 5: like to be accepted, are the same as they've always been.
Speaker 5: The incentive isn't to be historically literate, it's just to
Speaker 5: be aghast at something.
Speaker 3: And we've seen this before with Israel and Gaza.
Speaker 5: We're all partly surrendering ourselves to the distortion of our
Speaker 5: own social media algorithms, much as we did during debates
Speaker 5: over the vaccines and Trump and Black Lives Matter and
Speaker 5: Ukraine and Russia.
Speaker 3: What I would say is that.
Speaker 5: It would seem to me that in this debate, all
Speaker 5: roads lead back to where our attention is being focused,
Speaker 5: the information we're being provided, and in large respect, social media.
Speaker 1: So here in Australia there are some very vocal Jewish
Speaker 1: people who say Israel doesn't represent me. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be included in this group who believes that even
Speaker 1: Israel has a right to exist. How do you think
Speaker 1: those sentiments, express very vocally by certain people here have
Speaker 1: influenced the bigger conversation.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if they have.
Speaker 5: I know that there is a vocal minority that exists
Speaker 5: and who hold that view, But they are again a
Speaker 5: vocal minority, and they are part of a vanishingly small
Speaker 5: minority of the Jewish population in this country, which, for
Speaker 5: anyone wondering, is also tiny. It's about one hundred thousand
Speaker 5: strong nationally. I would say the overwhelming majority of Jews
Speaker 5: in this country are Zionus who believe in Jewish self
Speaker 5: determination and the right of Jews to live in their
Speaker 5: ancestral homeland. And I believe a bulk of them also
Speaker 5: live in hope of a country that's at peace with
Speaker 5: its Arab neighbors. And if you think that's not possible,
Speaker 5: just consider there is peace between Israel and Jordan, Israel
Speaker 5: and Egypt. These were countries with which Israel was once
Speaker 5: fiercely at war, but no longer. So it's not impossible,
Speaker 5: but it is impossible while genocidal Iranian proxy groups like
Speaker 5: Hamas and Hezbola running around destroying the joint and destroying
Speaker 5: the lives of their own populations.
Speaker 1: Joli Bishan is a senior journalist with The Australian. He's
Speaker 1: reported for US multiple times from the Middle East this year,
Speaker 1: and also writes our must read business column, margin Call
Speaker 1: You can check out Yo on his work right now
Speaker 1: at the Australian dot com dot au