Australia’s former Prime Minister and faithful Pentecostal Scott Morrison never passes up the chance to express an opinion if it will net him a reward. As one of various politicians of the right (and far rightist) hue invited by Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, he was in good company. The occasion: the second international conference on combating antisemitism held between January 26 and 27 at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, ambitiously titled Generation Truth.
The December 14, 2025 attack by two ISIS-inspired gunmen on those attending a Hanukkah event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach had supplied him with a hot script. Australia’s Albanese government had been previously barked at by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for going wobbly on Israel and soft on Palestinians. Morrison was in hearty agreement, claiming that the Labor government had “walked away from the Jewish state while antisemitism has taken root in Australia,” feeding the hate through unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood.
In keeping with various Christian groups of the right, Morrison is of the view that Israeli interests need to be protected, shielded and treasured against other, undesirable members of the Book. Christians and Jews can make a common alliance against their enemies, even if evangelical Christianity has a well-stocked reserve of antisemitic attitudes. As Prime Minister, Morrison recognised West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, despite its contested status in international law, going so far as to open a Trade and Defence Office there in 2019. In 2021, his government officially adopted the definition of antisemitism proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), one that fudges criticism of Israeli policies with antisemitism. Since losing office he has been further courting Israel’s favour by attacking the United Nations for being a forum for antisemitism garbed in the argot of human rights.
The January 27 address recapitulated these points, and more. He pointed to a five-fold rise in antisemitic incidents in Australia following the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas. Context, such as Israel’s historical suppression of Palestinian autonomy and its ruthless campaign of pulverisation in Gaza, was absent. Regular protests in Sydney and Melbourne, including a Sydney Harbour Bridge march numbering 100,000 people, were all cut from the same cloth of antisemitism. Again, Israel’s conduct and policies deserved no mention, while slogans such as “from the river to the sea” and “globalising the intifada” could only be seen as antisemitic declarations.
With political illiteracy typical of the man, Morrison then linked the protests and a softer approach to Palestinian statehood directly to the Bondi attacks, his mind unblemished by any understanding about what ISIS is, and its hostility to Hamas. Shades, here, of the sham groupthink that marked Cold War analysis from Washington to Canberra on monolithic communism. Just as communism of the Chinese, Soviet and Vietnamese character was just communism, so can all forms of Islamism be considered identical.
The usual cod analysis of the “progressive Left,” with its “neo-Marxist identity frameworks” and the “radical Right,” with its “conspiratorial and ethno-nationalist forms,” are offered, both serving as the conduit for “grievance politics.” “When failure is moralised as systemic injustice, liberal norms collapse.” This is the golden apologia for Israel writ large: do not blame institutions and injustice as having any consequences, the spawn of their practices. Abandon grievance; it has no role.
This sets the scene for Morrison’s real concern, and in this, he was keeping to the theme pushed by Chikli from the outset. Whatever the issues on the Left and Right of politics, Islam posed the greatest antisemitic threat, with its “imported European conspiracy theories, recasting Jews as a hidden enemy responsible for global disorder.”
His solution to such malignancy in a Western secular context? More religion, not less. Morrison quotes Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks quoting Jonathan Swift: “we have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love.” But the faith in question had to be of the “good” sort, an inward individual consideration, rather than the “bad” variety that externalised the grievance and made people rush for placards, street rallies and arms.
That bilious right-wing figures demanding the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza have more than enough religion to go around (Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich come to mind) suggests this formula to be flawed. But Morrison singles out Islamic leaders and institutions within Australia as alone in lacking accountability. What was needed was “a recognised accreditation framework for imams, a national register for public-facing roles, clear training and conduct requirements, and disciplinary authority for governing councils.” Sermons should also be translated into English, and links to foreign Islamic groups policed and curbed.
In Australia, Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg spoke approvingly of the former PM’s tarnishing method, with Australian Muslims having to “take some responsibility” for terrorist acts. “Unfortunately,” he told ABC radio on January 28, “there has been a mutation of Islam in Australia and other Western countries where they have sought to kill citizens, not just Jewish people, but other citizens.”
The Australian National Imams Council (ANIC), the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) and the Islamic Council of Victoria were suitably unimpressed. Chief executive of the Islamic Council of Victoria, Zakaria Wahid, made the far from startling point that the Australian government did “not hold entire communities accountable for acts of violence committed by individuals, and the same standard must apply to Muslims.”
Morrison has shown that he can be a good Pentecostal when required, demonstrating the sort of charity that never leaves his home or the halls of the Hill Song Church. As a cabinet minister and prime minister in various conservative governments, he showed a glacial contempt for women, welfare recipients, refugees, asylum seekers, those warning about climate change and open government. As prime minister, he gave Australia AUKUS, a criminally exorbitant, foolishly negotiated security pact between Canberra, London and Washington that has turned his country into an American satellite and forward base against China. But his less than secular admiration for Israel has won him friends, a point Chikli has unreservedly acknowledged. No doubt some well remunerated consultancy work is in the bag.
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If Scott Morrison is a true Christian he would conscientiously have nothing to do with any conference that is supported by Benjamin Netanyahu. As former Australian Prime Minister he would know better than any other Australian citizen how pervasive the international Zionist movement has become. This is not about Judaism, this is about the moral depravity of those who deny the truth.
I wonder when he is going to start speaking in tongues?
– Oh wait a minute he is already and most of it is absolute crap.
With more than ample evidence, I always viewed Scumo as a weak minded, sanctimonious, hypocritical and dangerous, low life, piece of shit. After the events of this week, I now realised I was insulting low life pieces of shit.
I hope Binoy sent a copy of this missal to Morrison’s inbox, albeit the tin-eared drongo’s default receptivity is to discount or ignore anything that smacks of personal critical appraisal.
Scummo’s one of a select few that need to be tied to a chair in a sparse isolated room and have a loudspeaker playing these sorts of accurate analyses 24/7 for as long as it takes for the man to have a major breakdown…
Depth? You want depth? Morrison is lower than eelshit in the Marianas Trench, deep, thick, sick and sanctimoniously smarmily soggily stenchy. Ultragrubby.
Great takedown Dr Kampmark.
Morrison’s sickening piety sticks in the craw. So much more than your common garden variety hypocrite, this slippery & destructive python loiters on the moral high ground until it’s time to strike a blow for himself, impervious to the collateral damage, the deaths, the suffering, the social division, whatever.
Will we never be rid of this despicable personage?
You can bet Scummo got a great big chunk of cash to spew his garbage at the conference because he doesn’t do anything for free. Does his bullshit also include all other religions that do their services in their own languages or is it just Muslims? He makes pond scum look good.
“Andrew Bragg spoke approvingly of the former PM’s tarnishing method…” This creature should, to use an Americanism, be run out on a rail and dumped in a cesspit.
If you became PM because god did it by not helping shorten explain labor’s policies or is that cheating i?
My guess is morrison won legitimately by praying out loud, head up and hands clapping to little billy’s silent mouth moving, with the head down and hands clasped approach?
Haaretz reports on same event Morrison attended, under the guise of one Israel’s and Pompeo’s Evangelicals for The Rapture.
‘A New Holocaust Is in the Making’ Global Far Right Flocks to Jerusalem to Bash Muslims and Migration at Israel’s Antisemitism Confab
The conference, held on International Holocaust Memorial Day, hosted several leading figures of parties with a history of Nazism. Speakers blamed Islamism for global antisemitism and accused both their opponents and the UN of anti-Jewish hatred. One Israeli speaker noted, ‘We need all the allies we can get”
Many of the same far right support Putin, Trump, Netanyahu and PM ‘mini Putin’ Orbán vs Ukraine & EU, by following &/or platforming Mearsheimer, Sachs, Bannon, Fox News etc.
Confused?
Dear Editor, Would you be so kind as to advise your talented authors to discover the usual definition of the word ”Semetic”.
For your easy reference, the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it thus:
Semite: (Member) of of any of the races supposed to be descended from Shem,son of Noah, including Jews, Phoenicians and Assyrians; so semetic – languages of family Hebrew and Arabic.
This conflation for the convenience of propaganda is widespread and matches the deliberate confusion of Judaism, an ancient theology of the Book that pre-dates ZIONism, the 19th century Viennese colonist settler theology to provide a solution to about a millennium of European persecution that has been entangled around Judaism. This later theology encourages displacing and dispossessing Indigenous Palestinian land owners without compensation since the Declaration was conned out of the feeble Lord Balfour by European bankers in 1916 as part of the re-financing of the inept WWI English war against Germany and Austria Hungary.
The recent GAZA GENOCIDE by the amoral Israeli ZIONAZI IDF authorised by the Israeli ZIONAZI Knesset resulting in the complete demolition of structures by artillery barrage, warfare by siege starvation and simple displacement & dispossession at gunpoint without accountability, is merely the practice of ZIONISM by the surviving generations of the victims of the 1933-1945 democratically elected German government population control policies.
Funny how such behaviour in 1933-1945 is unacceptable genocide but unquestioned in 2023 when there is obviously huge profits to be made by US armaments manufacturers.
Oh dear New England Cocky, that is asking for semantics around the definition of Semetic
Don’t worry about poor little Scott and his employment future, or indeed, present. He already has comfortable situations advising weapons corporations.
I wonder, with hope, whether the NACC will get around to doing a proper investigation of the six in the Robodebt RC sealed section. Odds-on it includes Morrison.
From the Region (6 Nov2025 by Chris Johnson), “Cabinet Minister Murray Watt and officials from the Attorney-General’s Department confirmed under questioning in Senate Estimates on Tuesday (5 November) that the Federal Government is considering releasing the sealed section of the report.”
There is no question in my mind that Morrison is up to his gills in corruption and criminality in this matter.
It would be great if he was pursued by the courts, extradited to face the music, prosecuted and sent to rot (further) in jail.
Herewith my unpublished comment btl after Jacqueline Maley’s op-ed on Morrison’s treachery this morning:
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/he-didn-t-hold-a-hose-but-morrison-s-still-happy-to-fan-the-flames-20260130-p5nybn.html
‘And how would such a lessening of niceness achieve the strategic objective – to stamp out terrorism and antisemitism?’.
Perhaps Orwell’s essay on “Politics and the English Language” may provide a clue.
In this eloquent take-down of Morrison’s quisling behaviour (in trumpeting Israels’s message to Australia to get tougher on terrorism and antisemitism), the reference to “strategic objective” without specifying whose “strategic objective” it is, is problematic – as is the authoritarian flavour of the phrase “to stamp out”. Furthermore, no attempt has been made to qualify the nature of the ‘antisemitism’ referred to.
Though not so far provided by our political leadership in timely manner, clarifications by academics and independent media are now being made regarding crucial terminological distinctions between ideological antisemitism (e.g. that of Islamist terror group Isis), anti-Zionism (such as expressed through critiques of Israel’s right-wing government) and less ideologically-based broadly racist forms.
Here, Mr Netanyahu has merely recruited Mr Morrison to assist in the perpetuation of the conflation between anti-Zionism and antisemitism and thus to frame critiques of Israel’s war as ‘antisemitic’ in Australia.
Imagine being an Australian Jew critical of Israel’s war in Gaza and labelled an ‘antisemite’.
Surely even inadvertently placing “terrorism and antisemitism” together without qualification is to perpetuate a mischievous if not dangerous conflation.