Albanese’s Antisemitism Envoy Appointment Reeks of Desperation and Prejudice

The UN human rights office announced on Tuesday that the entire Gaza Strip is in famine. This is due to the apartheid Israeli state not only having been slaughtering the more than 2 million Palestinians of Gaza since October, but it too cut off the supply of food entering the region back then.

Our duplicitous PM Anthony Albanese, the political establishment and the mainstream media machine have all been suppressing the understanding that Gaza is a genocide, in order to let Israel commit this act but also to hide our nation’s continuing contribution to Israeli weapon supplies.

The issue these days is the Australian state can’t control the narrative any longer in the global digitalised age, so the mass sharing of information about Gaza, demonstrations against the genocide and support for the Palestinians has been rampant, and also condemned as antisemitic by Labor.

Albanese has criticised those protesting the genocide as threatening social cohesion by bringing a foreign conflict to our doorsteps, so on the same day as the UN called the famine, Albanese announced he was appointing a Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism in Australia.

Just to be clear, Israel is a Jewish state established on the land of Palestine in 1948. The biblically based belief that God granted the Jewish people this land and the project of establishing that nation is known as Zionism. While Palestinians are a multifaith people, but the majority are Islamic.

So, at a moment when antisemitism and Islamophobia are reportedly on the rise in Australia, Albanese has appointed Jillian Segal, a noted Zionist, who supports Israel’s actions in Gaza, and has spoken out against November ceasefire calls made by the Australia foreign minister, as the envoy.

Labor bolsters support for Israel

As the Jewish Council of Australia’s Sarah Schwartz told Sydney Criminal Lawyers back in February, while both antisemitism and Islamophobia have been on the rise in this country since last October, Zionists conflate prejudice towards Jews and legitimate criticism of Israel as both antisemitism.

And while the movement against the Gaza genocide has featured a diverse mix of the populace, with Palestinians featuring prominently, so too have significant numbers of Jewish people taken a particularly vocal role, which has actually led to some Jews being condemned as antisemitic.

The government has explained that the antisemitism envoy will be “listening to and working with” communities affected by the mass killing in Gaza, and Labor “will also appoint a Special Envoy for Islamophobia and the details of that appointment will be announced shortly”.

So, considering Labor asserted Israel’s right to defend itself as it began its colonial genocide, which it’s facilitated via the two way arms trade with Tel Aviv and it has further condemned antigenocide protesters as antisemitic, the delay in appointing the Islamophobia envoy reeks of choosing sides.

Founder and chair of the decade-old Islamophobia Register Mariam Veiszadeh wrote on X following the announcement of the antisemitism envoy, that her organisation had not been consulted by the government on the Islamophobia envoy, as the announcement was the first she’d heard of it.

The envoy appointment further smacks of bias as Segal is the past president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, which is a pro-Israel organisation that’s openly supporting the carnage in Gaza and it’s also condemned calls for a ceasefire to a slaughter that’s seen 40,000 Palestinians murdered.

And it should be noted that Albanese is doing all this after the International Court of Justice handed down an interim decision on 26 January regarding a South African brought claim against Israel, which found, based on the evidence, that the Netanyahu government is plausibly perpetrating genocide.

Islamophobic governance

The appointment of an antisemitism envoy came directly on the back of an outpouring of Islamophobic assertions from Labor and the media last week over previously Labor and now independent Senator Fatima Payman, as she quit Labor after the PM threw her out of the caucus.

Payman’s problem was that she, a Muslim Afghan Australian, had been a member of a government that had for eight months done all it could to deflect claims that Israel was, as it continues to be, perpetrating a large-scale genocide in Gaza, which is the worst atrocity since the Holocaust.

So, on 14 May, Payman appeared before the press to say that what is occurring in Gaza “is a genocide, and we need to stop pretending otherwise”. And she added that “our leaders” have been “gaslighting” the public on the point regarding Israel merely defending itself.

The WA senator then crossed the floor in support of a Greens motion calling on the government to officially recognise the state of Palestine, which is actually part of the Labor National Platform of 2021 and that of 2023.

For this transgression, Albanese banned Payman from the Labor caucus indefinitely. So, the Muslim woman then quit Labor and announced she would continue in office as an independent senator.

Federal Labor and the mainstream media’s response was to then start tossing around fears that a Muslim political party might form and attempt to overtake parliament, which is the sort of unhinged and xenophobic rhetoric that’s becoming increasingly normalised in this country.

And this culminated in Albanese making statements at a press conference last Friday, where he seemed to be suggesting that Payman had obviously been conspiring with others, presumably Muslims, due to “the meticulous timing of events” leading up to her resignation from Labor.

The authoritarian creep

Israel, a fascistic apartheid state, has not only perpetrated unfathomable horrors upon Gaza, but it’s onslaught of mass atrocities, which have been funded by the US despite their unlawful nature, has ensured that international humanitarian law no longer applies moving forward.

Attacks on hospitals, patients and doctors are now the norm. The killing of journalists that may reveal inconvenient truths has been sanctioned, while the killing of civilians and the cutting off of supplies to entire populations is all fair game under the new system of warfare that’s being birthed.

The authoritarian creep that was a major characteristic of the Morrison years is now hitting overdrive under a prime minister who had long presented himself as a champion of the rights of the underdog, but once in the top role has shown himself to be a racist, power-hungry autocrat.

And since Payman showed herself to be a person of principle, willing to take a stand against oppressors and occupiers, the right-wing chatter has increasingly focused on the idea of the major parties, Labor and the Liberals, ganging up to prevent any progressive rights-forward takeover.