Where the Bloody Hell is the Islamophobia Envoy? Labor’s Biased Social Cohesion Debacle

PM Anthony Albanese announced to the public on 9 July that he was appointing Jillian Segal as “Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism in Australia”, in line with the claims over rising antisemitism and Islamophobia in this country since last October, with the “conflict in the Middle East”.

The conflict in the Middle East, as Albanese puts it, is the Gaza genocide, which involves the Netanyahu government carpet bombing, ground invading and purposefully inflicting a famine upon the captive Palestinians of Gaza, who are confined to the region due to an Israeli built border wall.

So, when it came to appointing an antisemitic envoy, this was all about ensuring that, as the PM put it, the fallout from the carnage in Gaza doesn’t spill out locally, as rather, he’s all about preserving “social cohesion” and to that end, he’s also appointing an “Envoy for Islamophobia”.

But for some background, Labor has supported Israel in its mass colonial extermination of the people of Gaza. And the party has deemed it as self-defence, despite the Israelis being the occupying force, and Labor too has been framing pro-Palestinian demonstrations and support here as antisemitic acts.

So, in this context, providing an antisemitic envoy when anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and antigenocide sentiment is all being conflated as antisemitic, and then to simply promise an Islamophobia envoy, as multifaith Palestinians are majority Muslim, really doesn’t look like an attempt at social cohesion.

Actions speak louder than hasbara

Of course, according to the 9 July press release, this was only a delay, and the Islamophobia envoy was expected to be announced a few days later, because as if our leader with his social cohesion concerns would prioritise halting anti-Jewish sentiment and not prevent that against Muslims?

But by Sunday the 14th of July’s Insiders, guest host Patricia Karvelas asked then employment minister Tony Burke, “Why wasn’t the Islamophobia envoy announced? My understanding is you’ve had trouble hiring for that. And when will it be announced?”

Burke said that Labor has to make sure that whoever is chosen “is the right person to give advice to the government”, but also “has the broad support of the community who is subject to that sort of bigotry”. And he added there was “no point in rushing the second appointment”.

Karvelas then pushed him as to whether it would be in the coming week, which was last week, to which Bourke smiled and replied, “It will happen when it’s ready”. And he further wouldn’t confirm if he knew who it was or if anyone had said yes to the position.

The right person to give advice

One would expect that appointing both an Islamophobia and antisemitism envoy around the same time, or currently, with a three-week delay in the former, that those appointed would be generally nonracist or non-bigoted officials who would perhaps collaborate on the goal of social cohesion.

But Segal, who carries an AO after her name, is the immediate past president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, which is a pro-Israel organisation that supports the ten-month-long mass killings in Gaza, which has seen around 40,000 Palestinians murdered, as if it’s a quest for freedom.

Segal, as are others in the executive council, is a Zionist, who believes in the political colonial doctrine of establishing a Jewish state on the land of Palestine, and to this end, the violence of the current genocide is only the latest chapter in the apartheid nation’s attempt to erase the Palestinians

The Jewish Council of Australia, a group of Jewish scholars, who formed to combat the disinformation campaign conflating support for Palestinians as antisemitic behaviour, which commenced once the Gaza genocide broke out, have condemned the appointment of Segal as envoy.

“We are also concerned about the proposed envoy’s track record, in previous roles, of lobbying for Israel, opposing voices that support Palestinian human rights, and painting all Jews as supportive of Israel’s actions,” the Jewish Council said in a statement.

“By appointing a pro-war voice to this position, the government risks breeding division, increasing Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, and ultimately making Jews less safe,” the release continued, and went on to refer to Segal’s previous statements supporting the carnage in Gaza.

The Jewish Council also made the pertinent point that in appointing an antisemitism envoy, the nation has not only prioritised support for protecting against Jewish prejudice, prior to extending that to Palestinians, but it’s further prioritised this over the overt racism towards First Peoples.

We never said Islamophobia envoy…

But in considering Burke’s comments on “getting that right person to give advice to the government”, it might be hard to find such a Muslim official, who’s prepared to take on the role of Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia in Australia”, when they’ve chosen a Zionist for the antisemitic envoy.

Indeed, not only does Jillian Segal advocate for the ongoing pursuit of the genocide in Gaza, under the pretext that the Netanyahu government is trying to defeat Hamas, while Israelis conduct an old school settler colonial takeover of the region, but Albanese has taken this same position.

Going back two weeks ago, the International Criminal Court said it was adding a communiqué, presented by Australian lawyers charging Albanese and other key Labor ministers with complicity in the genocide in Gaza, to its broader Situation in the State of Palestine war crimes investigation.

And perhaps the most telling revelation as to where the bloody hell the Islamophobia envoy is came with Albanese’s cabinet reshuffle on Sunday, as the PM failed to announced the Special Envoy on Islamophobia but instead appointed Labor MP Peter Khalil, as Special Envoy for Social Cohesion.

Of course, we’ve all recognised that Albanese has become increasingly incoherent during his speeches over recent weeks, after Senator Fatima Payman jumped ship, and he really hit the heights when frothing at the mouth about a potential Muslim political takeover of western Sydney.

And it’s easy to see that this has fractured his political thinking as well, because Albanese was to appoint an envoy for antisemitism and another for Islamophobia in order to “preserve social cohesion”.

Then the top minister appointed an antisemitism envoy, who’s also pro-genocide, and he then forgot about the Islamophobia envoy and instead then appointed a minister to take on the entire role of social cohesion.

Which really leaves us with one more question unanswered and that would be, why the bloody hell do we have Jillian Segal in that position?