Tim Anderson, Director of the Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies, Sydney Australia, 4 March 2026
“The “rising threat of antisemitism” scam is cover for Zionist genocide and regional war, the worst campaign of racist violence since Nazi Germany. The violent, racist campaign of Zionist colonialism drives the forced displacement or extermination of the indigenous population of Palestine, destruction or Balkanisation of all neighbouring states which are pro Palestine and the targeting of voices worldwide who support equal rights for the Palestinian people.”
4 March 2026
Dear Commissioner
Submission to your Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism in Australia
My name is Tim Anderson. I am a writer and academic who has researched and written extensively on the wars in West Asia (the Middle East), including the Israel-Palestine matter. In 2019 I was expelled from my position as Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney, for comparing (both in research and graphical form) the 2014 Israeli racist massacres in Gaza to those of Nazi Germany. I and the universities union (the NTEU) mounted an industrial law dispute over my dismissal in the Federal Court of Australia (NTEU v University of Sydney) which concluded with a judgement against us in 2024. However I have an outstanding complaint with the Chief Justice against a judge in the last panel. The casting vote in this case was given to an undeclared, fervent supporter of the Israeli regime (Michael Lee J).
My recent books on the wars in West Asia are: The Dirty War on Syria (2016), Axis of Resistance (2019), West Asia after Washington (2023) and (editor and co-author of) Understanding Yemen (2026). I have published extensively in journals and online media on conflicts in the WANA region (West Asia and North Africa, formerly MENA) for most of this century.
I would like to address elements of your terms of reference under the following headings: (1) the Antisemitism Scam, (2) Semites and Antisemitism; (3) terrorism and resistance; (4) war, racism and social division; and (5) obligations under international law. I will provide a summary at the end.
1. The antisemitism scam (Tor: a, d)
The “rising threat of antisemitism” scam is cover for Zionist genocide and regional war, the worst campaign of racist violence since Nazi Germany.
The violent, racist campaign of Zionist colonialism drives the forced displacement or extermination of the indigenous population of Palestine, destruction or Balkanisation of all neighbouring states which are pro Palestine and the targeting of voices worldwide who support equal rights for the Palestinian people.
While apartheid South Africa was brutal and criminal, it did not practice racist violence on this scale or of this character. To find a parallel in ethnic cleansing, genocidal extermination and wide ranging war on independent peoples we have to go back to Nazi Germany.
The aim of this antisemitism scam is to distract from real, deep racism and present the Zionist racists as victims of some sort of unprovoked attack.
All claims that there is an unprovoked new wave of hated and attacks on innocent Jewish people are tainted by the fact that its main proponents systematically conflate the apartheid regime of Israel with ordinary Jewish people. That conflation is driven by data collecting groups like the ADL and campaigns in support of the IHRA ‘working definition’ of antisemitism. In 2025 the ADL admitted that a majority (58%) of its “antisemitic” incidents “contained elements related to Israel or Zionism”.
To disaggregate the claims of such databases we cannot simply say, if the ADL says 58% were Israeli related then 42% must have been anti-Jewish. There are two main reasons for this, (1) false flags and (2) trivial and tendentious claims.
It is very difficult to quantify false flags, as not all are made public. But in just one 2018 case a 19-year-old American-Israeli young man was convicted (in Israel) of making hundreds of threats to bomb or attack Jewish schools and community centres, including many in Australia. He had been accused of making more than 2,000 bomb threats to Jewish institutions, airlines, airports, police stations, hospitals and sporting events. In Australia in early 2025, police found that some attacks on Jewish businesses and synagogues were ‘not ideologically motivated and were instead an “elaborate scheme” concocted by organised criminals to instill fear for personal gain’. In 2024 in Canada a congregant of a Toronto synagogue was arrested for setting fire to his own North York synagogue. There have been many such incidents; and at the state level, there is a long history of Israeli false flag terrorism.
Second, groups like the ADL seek to magnify a supposed threat and so include reports that, for example, students claimed to have ‘felt uncomfortable’ about comments they heard about Israel or, by extension, Jewish people. Yet substantial racism is about abuse and massacres, not hurt feelings.
The result of data collection by Zionist groups such as the ADL is that all expressions of public outrage at the crimes of the Israeli regime are counted as acts against Jewish people, including statements by the “not in our name” Jewish protesters who are also horrified by Israeli crimes.
Colonial Zionists have pursued a systematic practice of deliberately conflating the Jewish people with the Israeli state, sabotaging any distinction between the two and “trivialising” the original European meaning of antisemitism. Israelis, including Israeli judges, have told Arab Palestinians, on some fictitious Biblical basis, that “this land belongs to the Jews” as they seize Palestinian land. Those interactions help explain why Arab peoples also make few distinctions between Jews and Zionists.
Those of us with a European sensibility make this distinction, out of deference to European Jewish history. Yet Israeli officials like Abba Eban, former Israeli ambassador in the 1950s, argue that “one of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world [sic] is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all.”
Similarly, Jonathan Greenblatt of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in 2022 declared that “Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism”, in an attempt to sabotage the better European and liberal sensibility that the actions of the Israeli state were not the responsibility of all Jewish people. Accordingly, ADL and related reports on “antisemitic” activity deliberately conflate criticism of or attacks on Israel with those on Jewish people.
Nevertheless, former Israeli Minister for Education Shulamit Aroni acknowledged that this conflation was a deception. “It’s a trick. We always use it. When from Europe, somebody criticizes Israel, we bring up the Holocaust. When, in the United States, people are critical of Israel, then they are anti-Semitic.” Jewish people who do it are branded “self-hating” Jews.
Hidden by this fictitious debate, the deeply racist Zionist project proceeds, and constitutes a threat to peace and security in the world. The openly stated Zionist claims of wiping out entire civilian populations and destroying neighbouring peoples have no parallel in living memory.
Following are the main elements of Israel’s violent, racist operation which are covered up by its “antisemitism” scam.
Elements of Israel’s violent racist operation
- Nazi style expulsion or extermination from land to be colonised; these are not partuisan assertions, the genocide in Gaza and ongoing violent ethnic cleansing of the West Bank have been recognised by several UN bodies including the ICJ;
- Destruction or balkanization of surrounding states which support the Palestinians, including annexation of some of their lands (Syria and Lebanon) and promotion of full scale wars against independent states (Iraq and Iran) under various pretexts.
- Persecution and penalisation of individuals and educational institutions which allow support for the Palestinian people.
Key features of the “antisemitism” scam
- A fake rationale which equates Jewish people (victimised in Europe) with the violent Israeli colony, seeking to spread a cloak of privilege over racist violence,
- Distortion of Jewish doctrines to present racist religious justification for crimes of the Israeli colony, including the promotion of Jewish supremacy and racist contempt towards non-Jews (“goyim”),
- Campaigns of discrimination and repression against supporters of Palestinian equality and liberation, in the name of Jewish-Israeli exceptionalism,
- Hiding the great crimes of apartheid, persecution and genocide behind a veil of European Jewish privilege.
As Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley wrote in their 2017 report for the United Nations, the Israeli regime is an apartheid state which constitutes a crime against humanity. Far from deserving some exceptional privilege, the international community has “a moral and political duty to … dismantle apartheid structures in compliance with international law.” The antisemitism scam should be exposed and denounced. Indulgence of this scam would be complicity in Israeli apartheid and, in the Israeli case, the necessary corollary of genocide.
2. Semites and Antisemitism (Tor: a, d)
Strictly speaking, Semitic peoples are those from cultures where the Semitic languages are spoken – from the western Mediterranean in the west to Iraq in the east, and from Ethiopia north to Anatolia. The major Semitic languages are Arabic and Amharic with many smaller languages including Hebrew, Aramaic and Maltese.
However in European usage, Jewish people (or those with a culture based on Hebrew traditions) were called Semites to indicate them as outsiders, from a non-European region. The outsider status for Jewish peoples originates from the various European empires which adopted Christianity as their official state religion. Thus anti-Semitic is a Eurocentric construction, used to marginalise and exclude Jewish Europeans. We might more accurately use the term “anti-Jewish” to denote hatred or discrimination against Jewish people, so as to not exclude the other Semitic peoples, in particular Arabs, and to not perpetuate the idea of Jewish people as ‘outsiders’ to Europe.
Zionism, the movement to create a Jewish colony in Palestine, was opposed by most Jewish groups before WW2 but gained much stronger support after WW2, after the revelation of the death camps and other atrocities committed by Nazi Germany against the European Jews. There was also little sign of the European states, post WW2, providing protection and reassurance for Jewish populations.
Renewal of the expulsion of Jewish Europeans was in fact a key factor in helping the Zionist movement secure its colony in Palestine. Notably, several anti-Jewish European groups supported the Zionist drive to create a Jewish colony in Palestine. Those groups included Nazi Germany and anti-Semitic leagues in Germany, Hungary, Romania and Poland.
In Britain, anti-Jewish figures like Arthur Balfour (British Foreign Secretary and architect of the 1917 Balfour Declaration) supported Zionism to divert Jewish immigration away from Britain. Balfour had backed the 1905 Aliens Act to restrict Eastern European Jewish refugees, seeing Jews as an “alien entity” destabilizing gentile societies and sometimes linked to communist Bolsheviks.
Nazi Germany actively collaborated with Zionist groups in the 1930s to assist Jewish emigration to Palestine. The first mass anti-Jewish acts by that regime focused on deportation, well before the 1940s attempt at extermination. Central to these collaborations was the 1933 Ha’avara (Transfer) Agreement, a deal between the Nazis and German Zionists to allow German Jews to emigrate with some (taxed) assets to Palestine. Many German Jews opposed this agreement as it broke their campaign for an anti-Nazi boycott.
As it happened, after WW2, the majority on a UN panel in 1947 recommended the partition of British controlled Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states, with special status for Jerusalem. A minority proposal (from India, Iran, and Yugoslavia) proposed a single federal state with autonomous Arab and Jewish areas. Australia was on the committee but abstained from both votes.
The Zionists then invaded British controlled Palestine and began their decades long campaign of destruction and displacement of the Arab Population. Perhaps the best account of this is in the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s 2006 book, ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’. The Iraqi-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim also observed in his 2023 book ‘Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew’ that Zionists bombed Arab populations in Baghdad, Iraq, to help drive Arab Jews to the new Israeli state.
In 1948 Albert Einstein and some other Jewish leaders characterised the first leaders of the
Israeli Herut Party (later Likud) as being “closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties”. There has always been a segment of the Jewish population which maintained a similar contempt for and rejection of a similar Israeli leadership today. They include religious groups (like Neturei Karta) and more secular Jewish groups (like ‘Jews against the Occupation 48’ in Australia and ‘Not in My Name’ in the USA). Even if they are minorities their choice to be Jews and not Israelis should be respected.
I have written about the problems of the IHRA “working definition” of antisemitism (Anderson 2020, ‘What’s wrong with the IHRA “working definition” of Anti-Semitism?’ Black Agenda Report, 29 Jan 2020). I note that the Federal Government, under Israeli pressure, has unwisely adopted the IHRA ‘working definition’ and that Australian Universities have also adopted a slightly amended version of the same. The main problem with this attempt to conflate anti-Jewish hatred or discrimination with anti-Israeli criticism is its guaranteed path to attract greater hatred towards Jewish people, including those who oppose or criticise the Israeli regime. But why should all Jewish people be saddled with the shocking crimes of the Israeli regime?
There is a double racism in this conflation, which is criticised and warned against by the (mostly Jewish) scholars of Jewish history in the ‘Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism’ (JDA). That is (1) it seeks to disempower and demonise the words and actions of the Arab victims of Israeli colonisation, and (2) it unfairly condemns all Jewish people as responsible for the crimes of the Israeli regime. I do not say that I agree with every aspect of this JDA, but it certainly should be considered when discussing the IHRA. It seems to have greater academic support.
An important point from this brief history, and relevant to points (a) and (e) of your Terms of Reference, is that a distinction should always be made between the Jewish people and the Zionist movement, including the Israeli state. The Israelis have never spoken for the global Jewish population nor do they represent them. There have always been important and fundamental disagreements between many elements of the Jewish community and the Israeli regime.
It might be best to speak of “anti-Jewish” hatred and discrimination rather than the Eurocentric term ‘antisemitism’, to avoid confusion. It is certainly better to not confuse the Jewish people with the colonial state of Israel which has been credibly charged with great crimes, including occupation, apartheid and genocide and, for those reasons, serves as the greatest engine of anti-Jewish sentiment in the world today.
The conflation of criticism of Israel with hatred against Jewish people – and attempts to ban the former in the name of the latter – is a powerful engine of resentment towards Jewish people. The foolish adoption of the IHRA “working definition” – by Australian governments and institutions – will only add to anti-Jewish resentment. Further, it will not stop criticism of or resistance to the great crimes committed by the Israelis. On the other hand, breaking that conflation may lessen the extent to which Jewish people are collectively blamed for those great crimes.
I suggest the Commission could endorse the judgement of the Federal Court Justice Angus Stewart in Wertheim v Haddad [2025] FCA 720, where he found that criticism of the practices, policies, and acts of the state of Israel, of the Israeli Defence Forces or Zionism, is not inherently criticism of Jewish people and is protected political speech, not hate speech.
3. Terrorism and Resistance (Tor: a, b, c, d)
One of the consequences of the ongoing strong support provided to Israel by the Australian state, mass media and other institutions is that we have ended up with a very distorted idea of what constitutes terrorism and how that differs from legitimate resistance to invasion, occupation, apartheid and genocide. The misleading shorthand which we have borrowed, often unthinkingly, from the USA and the Israelis says that any resistance to Anglo-American or European invasion and colonisation equals terrorism. Hence South Africa’s Anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandala was branded a “terrorist” by the US government until 2008, almost a decade after he had retired as South Africa’s President in 1999.
Both resistance and terrorism have been part of my studies of the 21st century wars in the West Asian region. I have long been of the view that terrorism must be conceptually distinguished from legitimate resistance. This means that the simple view of terrorism as ‘politically motivated violence’ is insufficient for a proper understanding.
In the West Asian (Middle East) wars several groups have been designated as terrorist by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). These include al Qaeda and its offshoots Jabhat al Nusra, Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) and ISIS (ISIL, DA’ESH). Those designations were accepted by the UNSC after atrocities committed against civilians, including atrocities committed on a sectarian basis (under Salafi-Wahhabi ideology) with the aim of toppling the constitutional order in countries like Libya, Iraq and Syria. The “Consolidated List” of the United Nations Security Council also includes similar groups in North Africa – like al Shabab and Boko Haram – which carry a similar Salafi-Wahhabi sectarian ideology.
Other groups which oppose Israeli invasion and occupation, like Hamas and Hezbollah, do NOT appear on the designated list of the UNSC, but DO appear on the national lists of most Anglo-American and NATO states (traditional sponsors of Israel). There are important political reasons for these differences. The Al Qaeda linked groups have been used by the USA to weaken and divide independent Arab and Muslim states, and their methods have been appalling. This is not just my opinion; senior US officials (including former Vice President Joe Biden and General Martin Dempsey) have admitted that ISIS was funded by their close allies, to help overthrow the Syrian Government. In Australia, back in October 2012 when a terrorist war raged in Syria, the then Foreign Minister Bob Carr indirectly called for the assassination of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, an objective which was actively pursued by several al Qaeda linked groups. Such official statements probably encouraged the ongoing recruitment of Australians to the ranks of Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS terrorism. More recently, the US Government has recognised former ISIS commander Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (aka Ahmed al Sharaa) as interim President of Syria. Perhaps the US allied terrorist Jolani (now welcomed at the White House) was one of the heroes of the Bondi shooters?
Terrorist groups and terrorist activity typically have illegitimate aims (undermining a legitimate constitutional order) and/or methods, with egregious breaches of the rules of war (such as targeting civilians). Resistance groups, on the other hand, have undeniable legitimacy under international law, which recognises the right to resist illegal occupation, the right to self-defence, to dismantle apartheid regimes and the responsibility to “prevent and punish” the crime of genocide. Of course legitimate aims can be undermined by illegitimate means, such as the targeting of civilians. But we should start with aims and view carefully (and with evidence) the propaganda wars over means.
The right to resistance, including armed resistance, to occupation, apartheid and genocide finds support in several instruments of international law. There are UN resolutions on the right of Palestinians to struggle against Israeli occupation in pursuit of their right to self-determination. It is absurd to apply the Eurocentric label ‘antisemitism’ to this resistance and wrong to indiscriminately brand attacks on Israeli occupying forces as ‘terrorism’.
UNGA Resolution 3314 (1974) affirmed the right of self-determination, freedom, and independence for all “peoples under colonial and racist regimes or other forms of alien domination,” and affirmed the “right of these peoples to struggle to that end and to seek and receive support.” That should mean that support for the Palestinian resistance has protection under international law.
UNGA Resolution 37/43 (1982) reaffirmed the “inalienable right” of the Palestinian people “and all peoples under foreign and colonial domination” to self-determination. It also reaffirmed the legitimacy of “the struggle of peoples for […] liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”
Supplementary amendments to the Fourth Geneva Convention under Protocol I (1977) expanded the scope of the law, explicitly affirming that it applies to situations including “armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination.” This update to international law gave legal legitimacy to “the resort to arms by national liberation movements, including the PLO,” giving Palestinians a “legal right” to use force against military occupation, similar to that enjoyed by sovereign nations”, subject to the rules of war (CJPME 2023). The ICJ advisory opinion on Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories (ICJ 2024) supports this body of law.
The provisional designation by the ICJ of the Israeli massacres in and siege of Gaza as a “plausible genocide” (2024) adds a level of urgency and legitimacy to the struggle against Israeli crimes. Under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UN 1948), state parties must “prevent” and “punish” those carrying out the crime of genocide. No court judgement is required to trigger these obligations.
To the extent that Palestine is recognised as a nation and a state, including by the Australian federal Government, Palestinian recourse to the self defence provision of the UN Charter (Article 51) adds to the right of the Palestinian people, collectively and separately, to resist Israeli incursions and occupation. Demonising this with claims of ‘antisemitism’ would be a travesty of obligations under international law.
Finally, there are a growing number of reports which cite the Israeli regime as an apartheid state (CCHS 2022). In my opinion the most acute of these reports was that prepared for the United Nations by Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley (Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid, Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley 2017). That report sets out to clarify “international responsibility and obligations with regard to combating the crime of apartheid”. The 124 state signatories to the statute of Rome, they say, “have a legal responsibility to oppose apartheid and take measures to end it wherever it may arise. That responsibility concerns not only human rights violations resulting from apartheid but the threat it poses to international peace and security.” As it happens, in January 2015 the state of Palestine acceded to ICC jurisdiction under the Statute of Rome and thus has both a right and a responsibility to dismantle apartheid, at least in its recognised territories (ICC 2018).
So far as I have been able to discover, the above is a summary of the main heads of international law relevant to the right of the Palestinian people to resist invasion, occupation, genocide and apartheid by all necessary means, including by armed struggle. Those elements distinguish many of the matters referred to as “terrorism” in popular and official accounts.
One point of this discussion of terrorism and resistance – relevant to items (a) (b) and (e) of the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference – is this: if the Jewish people are so tightly identified with the Israeli regime, as the IHRA “working definition” of antisemitism unwisely suggests (in its examples), then states and peoples, around the world have a right and indeed a duty to physically resist this Jewish-Israeli regime as if it were a coherent and unified criminal body. If, on the other hand, the Jewish people are seen as distinct from the state of Israel, they are not responsible for the crimes of the regime and should not be subject to retribution or mandated “punishment” for Israeli crimes.
Branding resistance (civil or armed) to Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide as “terrorism” to be suppressed or annihilated is such an egregious injustice that people around the world will reject and hold in contempt attempts to shield these privileged colonists. If Jewish people are so tightly linked to the crimes of the Israeli colonists, protection will breed resentment and hatred. Even if it is only a minority of the Jewish people which rejects the Israeli regime, or remains critical of it, those people should be allowed space to express their dissent and morally vindicate their community and religion. In my opinion there are already too many who blame the Jewish religion for the crimes of the Israeli colony.
4. War, racism and social division (Tor: a, b, c, d)
Australian involvement in successive US-led wars in the WANA region (aka MENA) has certainly added to resentment against Israelis and their Jewish and non-Jewish supporters. Most of those wars (like the invasions of Iraq and Lebanon, and the proxy wars against Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen) have been linked to Israeli ambitions in the region. There is no doubt that wars breed racism, against perceived enemies. For the most part they have helped generate anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred, but also anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred.
That these endless wars keep growing – against Russia, Venezuela, Iran and even China, our principal commercial partner – leads people to resent those seen at the root of the wars. Now as regards the wars in West Asia there is no doubt that Israeli leaders are influential and, in particular, Israeli leader Benyamin Netanyahu has played a leading role in creating false pretexts for US attacks on Iraq and Iran. This fact should not be a pretext for blaming Jewish people, but it becomes that, with the unhealthy conflation of Jews and Israelis.
Further, although this fact has been buried, Australia played a direct role in support of ISIS terrorists in Syria, to advance the US aim (eventually successful) of bringing down the pluralist Assad-led government. ISIS terrorists were notorious for three things: (1) their shocking public murders and mutilations (2) the fact that they mainly killed Muslims (Sunni or Shia, if they supported an independent state), yet their main ideological enemy was Shiia Iran, and (3) they never attacked Israel. This latter point has some relevance for the supposed motives of the ISIS linked Bondi shooters.
On the one occasion that a stray ISIS rocket went into an Israeli controlled part of Syria (the occupied Golan), ISIS terrorists apologised to the Israelis (Gross, Judah Ari, 2017 ‘Ex-defense minister says IS ‘apologized’ to Israel for November clash’ Times of Israel, April 24). ISIS was focused on attacking the Syrian government and army, at that time. The Israelis saw little threat from ISIS. In 2016 Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said that if he had to choose between ISIS and Iran on the country’s borders, he would “choose ISIS” every time (Jack Moore, 2016. Israeli Defense Minister: ‘I Prefer ISIS to Iran on Our Borders’, Newsweek, 20 January). The current ISIS linked regime in Damascus has not opposed the Israeli occupation of south Syria.
Bringing down an independent Syria (which refused to recognise Israel) was the same goal as that of the US military in the region, assisted at times by the Australian military. From my own direct investigations I found that, in 2016, the Australian RAAF, with the USAF, mounted a well-planned attack on a Syrian Army position at Mount Tharda, behind Deir Ezzor airport. That attack and the decimation of the Syrian troops there enabled ISIS Terrorists to take over the mountain post. The attack was admitted by the US military and by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, however those admissions downplayed the Syrian casualties and falsely claimed that the attack was a regrettable “mistake” (Zoe Daniel and Matt Brown, 2016 ‘Syria air strike: Malcolm Turnbull ‘regrets’ Australia’s involvement in attack that killed regime soldiers’, ABC, 19 Sep 2016).
One year later I personally investigated this attack, visiting the site and interviewing eye witnesses, including the former commander of the mountain post and the director of the local hospital. I discovered several things: the attack was very well planned and took the lives of more than 120 Syrian soldiers, whose camp was well marked with Syrian flags. ISIS terrorists immediately took control of the mountain (but not the airport) and there were no subsequent US-Australian air strikes to prevent or remove the ISIS terrorists. That direct assistance to ISIS terrorists came when both the US and Australia claimed they had entered Syria (uninvited) to “fight ISIS”. After I published my research report and some video interviews, not one element of the Australian media followed up, apparently content with the official story: that the attack was a “mistake” (Anderson, Tim 2017. Implausible Denials: The Crime at Jabal al Tharda – the Sept. 2016 US-Australian air massacre of Syrian soldiers, to help ISIS/ Daesh, December). As a result it is not well known that the Australian RAAF (with the USAF) directly assisted ISIS in Syria.
The combination of the absence of ISIS attacks on Israel and the Australian collaboration with ISIS in Syria has some serious implications for understanding the ISIS linked Bondi shooters. The Bondi killings are said to have been anti-Semitic and they were certainly aimed at Jewish people; yet the two shooters are confirmed to have been under ISIS influence, at least in ideas and flags. Yet how could the attack have been part of a mission from a group which had never before targeted Jews or Israelis? One possibility is that this was a rogue group, like the “blowback” of some isolated ISIS incidents in Turkey and Europe; but there is no particular ISIS logic to attacking a group of Jewish or Israeli people anywhere.
Another possibility is that the Bondi massacre may have been a false flag attack, with Israeli complicity. The Israelis certainly weaponised the incident for all they could at the earliest moment; that alone raises suspicions. It is also suspicious that Israeli propagandist Arsen Ostrovsky posted a selfie of his face covered in blood, while still at the scene and (per later photos) without any apparent real injury.
I posted an article on some of the other suspicious circumstances, given the apparent lack of motive and facing the obvious “who benefits’ questions after the massacre (Anderson, 2025 ‘What evidence is there of the Bondi massacre being a Mossad false flag attack?’ CCHS, 20 December). Those questions include the fact that Israelis have a long history of mounting false flag attacks, including those which kill Jewish people in foreign countries such as in Iraq (the Baghdad bombings against Iraqi Jews in the 1950s), and Egypt (the Lavon affair in the 1950s, which included bombings of American and British-owned civilian premises). There have been many false flag attacks on Jewish and Israeli premises around the world including in Australia (Propaganda and Co, 2025, Israel’s Long History of False Flag Terrorism, 19 December).
Some of the false flag claims seem baseless (e.g. that Bondi shooter Navid Akram served in the IDF) but there is a history of Israeli support for ISIS operatives, such as when Israeli hospitals (e.g. Ziv, Galilee and Baruch Padeh medical centers) were opened to ISIS and allied fighters seeking medical assistance after being wounded in Syria. For these reason an independent investigation into possible Mossad involvement in the Bondi massacre is essential, not least to avert the Israelis making fake links between ISIS and Iran, the current target of Israeli war ambitions.
More recently we have seen false flag admissions from former Mossad agent Avner Avraham, that “our people send missiles from inside Gaza” into Israel (Israel Ellis, 2025. ‘Exclusive Inside Mossad’s Secrets, Israel’s Spy Agency. Avner Avraham’, Ep 12). This is an admission that ruthless Israelis will even attack populated areas of their own colony (and therefore Jewish Israelis) to advance what they see as their state’s strategic interests.
Israeli leader Netanyahu has already tried to falsely link the Bondi massacre to Iran and to Australia’s recognition of the Palestinian state (The New Arab, 2025 ‘How Israel tried to pin blame for Bondi Beach shooting on Iran despite clear IS links’, 16 December). For this reason, it would be dangerous and wrong to allow the Israeli state to become involved in any part of the investigation of the Bondi massacre and its wider implications.
Matters relevant to ToR (a) (b) (c) (d) and (e) appear in this section, which has pointed out important links between war and racism, the dangers for Australia in entering an almost endless series of US-led wars in the WANA region, most which are linked to Israeli influence and which have involved direct support for allied ISIS terrorism.
I have once again stressed that any tight link between Israel and Jewish people will conflate the anger, blame and hostility that grows around the multiple Israeli linked wars as well as the crimes of the Israeli regime.
Australia’s track record of supporting ‘regime change’ wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, and directly supporting ISIS terrorists in Syria, may well have provided an opening for both the recruitment of Australian fighters and, in any case, an ongoing tolerance of informally allied extremists who were seen to be acting in the interests of the US and Australian militaries in WANA. IN the UK we saw charges fail against ISIS linked extremists (Moazzam Begg, Anjem Choudary and Omar Bakri Mohammed), due to their links with British and other western intelligence operations.
Even if the Australian public was not aware of the links between ISIS and the Anglo-American military, such ignorance is neither likely nor excusable on the part of Australian intelligence officials. It might be that this tradition of tolerance for informally allied terrorists was a factor in security officials not removing the firearms and firearms licenses from the two Bondi shooters, after they were known to share the ISIS ideology.
5. Obligations under International law (Tor: a, d)
I suggest there are specific obligations under international law (some of which find a basis in Australian law) which require great caution in making any legal or policy initiatives as regards “antisemitism”, especially if they afford further privilege to the Israeli regime.
First is the Convention against Race Discrimination (CERD), much of which finds its way into Australia’s Race Discrimination Act of 1975. Any law, policy or practice which seeks to privilege Israeli interests (or Jewish interests) above those of other groups, may well be unlawful racism. I have discussed above the ‘double racism’ of trying to block criticism of (or resistance to) the Israeli regime. The first groups discriminated against are Palestinians and their moral allies, the second are the non-Zionist, anti-Zionist or simply Israeli critical Jewish groups.
Next are the requirements to respect the rights of Palestinian people (and their allies) to resist racism, occupation, apartheid and genocide. Falk and Tilley (2017) add another step as regards Apartheid. They say that international law establishes a commitment on the international community to dismantle the Israeli apartheid regime, which (once so identified) is a crime against humanity. In this sense it is nonsense to insist that Israel has a “right to exist”; it does not, in its current apartheid form.
Finally, on genocide, there is the obligation to prevent and punish those involved (along with the accomplices) in carrying out the crime of genocide. This obligation does not require a court judgement. Already the ICJ has made some provisional findings directing states to “refrain from actions that could facilitate or contribute to acts prohibited under the Convention (e.g., providing military aid or support that might enable such acts)” and to “take reasonable measures to prevent genocide [in Gaza] where possible.” These obligations should be born in mind when interested parties urge some new or renewed privilege for the Israeli colony, or even for Jewish Australians.
Conscious of these obligations, the Commission should be careful to not assist in the normalisation of the crimes of the Israeli state, which includes at least eleven ministers (Benyamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Amihai Eliyahu, Avi Dichter, Gila Gamliel, Yoav Kisch, Israel Katz and Eli Cohen) who have made explicit statements calling for a genocide in Gaza. For example, Minister Amichai Eliyahu said that Israel “must find ways for Gazans [i.e. civilians] that are more painful than death” to defeat them and break their morale [https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240106-israel-minister-calls-for-ways-more-painful-than-death-for-palestinians/]. Prime Minister Netanyahu, wanted for war crimes by the ICC, repeatedly refers to the Palestinian people as ‘Amalek’, a Biblical reference to a race which must be exterminated [Deuteronomy 25:19: “blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven”].
Those with a conscience want to defend the Palestinian people from such extreme racism and genocide; and Jewish people who do not support Israeli crimes should not be forcibly linked to such great crimes. There should be clear legal limits to the special pleadings on behalf of both Israeli and Jewish communities. Racism will not be defeated by more racism.
Social and cultural damage flows from attempts to turn any particular group, let alone a criminal group, into a “protected species”. The Commission should take notice of the fate of recent writers’ festivals (Adelaide Writers Week and Bendigo Writers Festival) which, in their attempts to shelter Israeli or Jewish sensitivities, incited such large popular reactions that they wholly or partially collapsed. And it is not an accident that some Jewish people (e.g. chair of the Adelaide Writers Festival Louise Adler) consistently oppose attempts to cancel or censor Palestinian voices.
6. Summary of recommendations
1. The claim of a “rising threat of antisemitism” is a hoax, a scam to cover the shocking campaign of racist violence – the worst since Nazi Germany – carried out by the Israeli regime. The Zionist ADL has admitted that a majority of its “antisemitic” incidents “contained elements related to Israel or Zionism”. Only by disaggregating the criticism or attacks on Jewish people from legitimate criticism of and resistance to the genocidal, apartheid Israeli regime can any proper understanding of actual anti-Jewish acts be gained. That is not an easy task when Zionist groups like the ADL have tainted data collection processes. More than this, the smokescreen of “antisemitism” claims should not be used to cover the horrific crimes of the Israeli regime; that would be complicity in racist violence.
2. I suggest that the term “anti-Jewish” hatred or discrimination be used instead of “antisemitism”, as labeling Jewish people as exclusively as “Semites” is a Eurocentric construct which falsely labels Jewish people as ‘outsiders’ and denies the existence of other Semitic peoples, especially Arabs.
3. I urge the clear separation of references to the Jewish community and the Israelis, especially when it comes to speaking of racism, hate speech and discrimination. Conflation of the two, while urged by the Israelis, does a great injustice to (1) those Arab peoples (especially Palestinians but also Syrians and Lebanese) colonised by the Israelis, and also to (2) the multiple Jewish groups and individuals who either do not support or are critical of the Israeli regime.
4. I urge the distinction be made between groups which resist Israeli crimes and those labeled as “terrorist”. Conflation of the two does not respect international law on the right to resist the crimes of occupation, apartheid and genocide. Neither Palestinian resistance to apartheid and genocide, nor support for that resistance, should be considered egregious discrimination against Jewish people.
5. The Commission should urge respect for the legal right of all peoples (including the Palestinian people) subject to occupation, apartheid and genocide, to resist those great crimes. The body politic in Australia should note and recognise the difference between resistance and terrorism, in aims and methods. Those rights under international law come from the UN Charter and from the conventions on race discrimination, apartheid and genocide.
6. I urge the Commission to reject the involvement of any foreign state, including and especially Israel, in the investigation of crimes in Australia. The Israeli regime has a track record of false flag crimes and of presenting distorted information as pretexts for war. Australian police should be allowed to carry out impartial investigations, including into any foreign entities which may or may be involved.
7. The Commission should warn against ongoing Australian military commitments to wars in the WANA region (following US initiatives), as these wars inflame community sentiment against both Arab and Muslim as well as against Jewish peoples. The fact that those interventions have allied themselves with notorious terrorist groups (al Qaeda, ISIS, Jabhat al Nusra and HTS) in pursuit of their political aims, has most likely cultivated an official tolerance towards informally allied extremists.
8. I urge the Commission to not endorse the double racism which arises from affording special protection to the state of Israel, which (contrary to Zionist claims) has never represented all Jewish people. The first victims of this double racism are the colonised Palestinian people and second are the Jewish critics of Israeli crimes.
9. I urge the Commission to support open cultural events which do not exclude any one party due to perceived ‘sensitivities’, especially sensitivities which arise from loyalty to the Israeli regime. The disastrous collapse of the Adelaide and Bendigo writers’ festivals should be a warning sign against appeasing any ongoing privileged or racist special protection.
Yours sincerely
Tim Anderson
Director, Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies
Sydney, Australia
