The royal commission into the hurt feelings of genocidal psychopaths

Over 7400 submissions have flooded into the taxpayer-funded Royal Commission into Antisemitism. The hearings are dominated by sworn evidence from people with “lived experience”, mostly Jewish Australians, and the usual parade of experts.

Born in the aftermath of Bondi, under the heavy thumb of the commercial press and the State of Israel itself, the Royal Commission is being watched closely by Australians. Many are growing uneasy at the common thread running through it all: witnesses visibly uncomfortable with popular revulsion at Israel’s actions, working hard to smear any criticism of Zionism as antisemitism.

Prime Minister Albanese initially stood up to the powerful interests demanding the inquiry, pointing out that the Howard Government never called a Royal Commission after Port Arthur. He was soon corralled. What we now have is a taxpayer-funded circus into “antisemitism and social cohesion” and two sudden national obsessions that only became urgent the moment Israel launched its genocide in Gaza and a war on seven fronts.

The first week (Hearing Block 1) featured dozens of witnesses, mostly from Australia’s Jewish community, sharing testimonies of personal experiences of antisemitism. These included influential and high-profile figures such as former NSW Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff OAM, Alex Ryvchin (Jewish community leader), Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler, and even the antisemitism special envoy Jillian Segal herself. Most of the people giving evidence were proud Zionists.

On Monday, musician Deborah Conway took the stand and immediately declared her unwavering belief in Zionism. She lamented how October 7 changed everything for Jews, but had almost nothing to say about Palestinian children in Gaza. This is the same Conway who once notoriously claimed children in Gaza were “hard to define” – right as journalists were being sacked for reporting Israel using starvation as a weapon and dead babies in incubators at Al Shifa. She still doesn’t seem to understand why her gigs dried up.

On Tuesday, Emeritus Professor Andrew Markus presented the results of his Crossroads 25 survey. Prof Markus offered polling loaded with questions designed to manufacture antisemitism. “It’s never going to be totally reliable, and the question is, is there a pattern?” he quipped, before trying to breathe life into his concepts of the ‘judeophobic subscale’ and ‘anti-Zionist subscale’ populated with his data. “I haven’t really gotten there yet,” he said of connecting the overwhelming revulsion towards Israel with some deep-seated ancient and unrelated guttural hatred for Jews. “It’s a question of being informed or being in denial,” he smirked before lunch.

Dr Andre Oboler, honorary associate and former senior lecturer at La Trobe Law School and CEO of the Online Hate Prevention Group, was next. A committed Zionist who completed his Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Political Science at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, Oboler presented yet another subjective dataset purporting to measure hate speech in Australia. His work was laser-focused on detecting antisemitism at every turn–particularly through the supposed “coded” language of anti-Zionism that he insists is indistinguishable from Jew-hatred. While this framing may suit his minority-held beliefs, it comes across as deeply entitled when weighed against the mountain of death and destruction that the ZIonist ideology continues to justify.

Aside from submissions from the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), who spoke of the antisemitism experienced by anti-Zionist jews dealt out by Zionist jews, few sought to link the rise in antisemitism with the actions of Israel. 

Between the millionaires, CEOs, professors and cultural figures whining about their discomfort while defending genocidal warmongering, there was little introspection on display. 

People with wealth, reach and elite positions in academia, industry and the arts enjoyed every privilege Australia offered until it became clear whose side they were really on. From jaded musicians to Zionist businessmen and emeritus professors came nothing resembling reality: no criticism of Netanyahu’s brutality, no mention of settler gangs stealing West Bank homes, no alarm at the invasions of Syria and Lebanon. Just demands that Australia criminalise opposition to their foreign ideology while they wonder why the public is enraged.

A cohort of entitled extremists that refuse to take responsibility for a genocidal position while presenting as a group of marginalised victims is hard to stomach. Even more so in the context of this land. The indigenous deaths in custody Royal Commission is over 30 years old, yet Aboriginal people have hardly seen a recommendation adopted. Likewise, we have been waiting for a Royal Commission into domestic violence and a hugely popular Royal Commission into press concentration, specifically the Murdoch media. And yet this Royal Commission could go on to change the resting state of the nation by giving special protections to people who support Israel, and potentially those who return from fighting for them in Gaza.

There is a cake-and-eat-it-too attitude in the small Zionist Jewish community that sits before the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. Something that doesn’t quite stick with non-Zionist Australians (e.g. most of us) is that a majority of the people submitting before the Royal Commission still support Israel and what they think is some form of war of defence. The testimonies they give come from a place that doesn’t recognise the heinous actions of Israel. It floats over the tens of thousands of dead children and women, the ethnic cleansing, and the brazen, psychopathic crimes against humanity of the Israeli-led US war against the region that has shut down the entire global economy.

Most Australians don’t like iconic Aussie pop stars revealing that they think Palestinian children aren’t allowed to be kids. They don’t empathise with a small community that expects our country to criminalise opposition to a foreign ethno-supremacist colonist ideology, and they hate being told they are something that they are not by a group clearly trying to silence those who criticise them. Yet many giving evidence before the Royal Commission somehow wonder why people are enraged at Israel and people that support it.

Australia is a secular country full of reasonably decent people who instinctively recoil from war and injustice. The claim that this natural revulsion is actually some mysterious, pathological hatred of Jews that has suddenly bubbled up from nowhere is not just insulting – it is deranged. And it is highly political.

Increasingly over the last few decades, the Australian political class has put that inherent national morality to strive for human rights and justice in contrast with policies that have supported imperial war and adventurism abroad in the name of some nonsensical, propagandistic ideological struggle, fostering the decline of human rights and justice at home. Now the “social cohesion” and the shared values that our government hammers down on us from above like whack-a-moles is filled with a hollow disingenuousness as the population starts to glean that the whole system is rigged.

When the arguments about the need for a state of Israel are placed first in a country far away like Australia, followed by expectations for people not to be upset at that position, it comes with a hubris that is increasingly hard to ignore or to countenance. The only thing worse is seeing elected governments and officials caving to the demands of such unreasonable voices. Fact is, Israel is a belligerent warmongering state that has pushed its objectives against the grain of reason to the declaration of the United Nations and the charges of the International Court of Justice, breaking international law to force its brutal genocide upon the world, and excusing the most macabre acts such as the rape-by-death of prisoners and the deliberate sniping of children.

Like a doctor ignoring the cause of the symptoms, fixating instead on diagnosing a deep-seated hatred in the average Australian instead of noticing a sense of clarity and moral conviction against atrocity, this Royal Commission should be considered a form of malpractice. There is a sense of total fear ingrained in Zionists. And that fear has allowed them to countenance many things that normally cannot be stomached. It is within the heart of Zionism that lies a misplaced sense of supremacy and biblically motivated entitlement that is incompatible with real Judaism, and, ultimately the rest of humanity.

The majority of testimony boiled down to one pathetic theme: discomfort at the sight of Palestinian flags and keffiyehs in public, but zero discomfort at the rivers of blood Israel continues to spill in their name.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Benjamin Netanyahu sat for a soft interview on CBS — a network recently acquired by the son of his best friend Larry Ellison — and was gently asked why antisemitism and criticism of Israel have suddenly surged after decades of glowing coverage. True to form, he refused any responsibility and doubled down on the victimhood narrative. The same entitled hubris on display in Sydney is no Australian anomaly. It is a core, defining feature of Zionist ideology itself. Shame on the media and political class for imposing such a consequential and unnecessary mess on the beleaguered Australian people.