By R. Najjar
The federal government has announced its intention to introduce harsh penalties for antisemitic behaviour and language. On the surface, this is a welcome move. Antisemitism is a vile, corrosive force that has no place in any civilised society, and it must be actively stamped out – not tolerated, not debated.
But as someone who is half Middle Eastern and half Aboriginal, I find myself wondering: why is it that some forms of hate spark urgent political action, while others are quietly ignored?
I have witnessed racism my entire life. I’ve seen it in everyday slurs. I’ve heard it in jokes told at my expense, with the expectation that I should laugh along. I’ve felt it in the subtle unease in a room when people realise where my family is from, and in the sudden interest in whether I “speak English well.” I’ve watched people flinch when they hear of my surname and assume things about me – before they even know me.
And yet, despite all this, there is no national task force against anti-Arab racism. No threat of prosecution for vilifying Aboriginal people online. No prime minister standing at a podium saying, “Never again,” when yet another Indigenous person dies in custody or a mosque is vandalised. Where is the same fierce urgency when it is our communities being dehumanised?
This is not a competition in suffering – it never should be. But justice must be consistent. Protection should not be based on political expedience, media pressure, or the fear of being labelled one thing or another. If we are serious about stamping out hate, we must call it out wherever it exists – whether it’s directed at First Nations people, Middle Eastern Australians, Jewish Australians, Palestinians, Muslims, African Australians, or anyone else.
To stand up against antisemitism but stay silent on anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia, or the casual erasure of Aboriginal pain – that is not justice. That is selective outrage. And selective outrage is just another form of discrimination.
For many of us, the message from our government seems to be: Your hurt doesn’t count as much. And if you try to speak about it, you risk being dismissed, gaslit, or labelled divisive.
It shouldn’t be this way. Australia prides itself on being a multicultural, fair-minded country. If that’s to mean anything, then fighting hate must be more than just symbolic gestures or politically safe positions. It must mean protecting everyone – equally, honestly, and without fear or favour.
Until then, those of us who’ve lived through racism will continue to carry its weight – and continue asking a painful question: Why does our pain matter less?
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I’m with you 100% and have been asking that same question for some time, including of Albanese. The silence was deafening, of course.
I agree as well. The problem with Albanese is that he’s sensitive to the Jewish lobby, as are others, and may go too far in appeasing it.
We made this observation in our household, only yesterday.
It looks to be very selective indeed.
I saw Jillian Segal’s 7.30 interview and she didn’t present her report, or her case, well.
I wonder how it would go down if Aboriginal, Indigenous, Muslim, Arab, Asian, were substituted in this report and recommendations to the govt.
Recently there was court decision that racism contributed to Cassius Turvey’s murder in WA, and NT police officer Zachary Rolfe’s killing of Kumanjayi Walker and the culture of the NT police. This is racism against Indigenous Australians.
I think it is asked in every household, why does the Jewish lobby attract such obeisance?
Whilst the persecution of their race/religion is historically significant and monstrous, so is their own persecution of their neighbouring race/religion. I was astounded at the outrage of Netanyahu after the bombing of a hospital by Iran – “these are just babies!!” he said with tears in his eyes. Where are those eyes every day watching what the babies, as well as children, women and men EVERY day are enduring?
We must impress on our political representatives that we need to see them outraged at ANY bigotry,racism,exclusion,vilification,vandalism against ANY persons in our country – it has to stop, from kindergarten onwards – EDUCATE. And for those who are old enough to know better, serious justice, prison time.
Thank you for writing this.
I have been questioning online why the Jewish nation should be singled out when surely we are concerned about discrimination of all peoples?
Why not Gillian Triggs? A legal scholar with no skin in the game?
Asking a person of a particular ethnic or cultural group to assess the effects on their own group is like asking a football coach to assess the report of a player on his team.
If Albanese truly wants to attack the alleged anti-semitism issue then he must approach this report as a generalised set of suggestions that pertain to all ethnic and cultural groups within Australia.
If feeling “unsafe” is license to change laws and stifle scholarly commentary then women, gays, transgender and others deserve a change before religio/ethnic groups. With the exception of Australia’s long vilified indigenous population.
As it stands, this report will do more harm to the Jewish citizens of Australia than if it had never been commissioned.
Me thinks it’s a minority, the pro-Israel Jewish lobby allied with far right (like Netanyahu is for legal survival) have been given way too much space and platforming by RW MSM which often has whiff of anti-semitism and Islamophobia; to wedge the ALP and centre.
However, it’s not the majority and worse, the minority above and the RW MSM will continue dog whistling to divide Australia for the right and white Christian nationalists, but that’s okay?
Following from the ancient Greko-Roman ambitions and lies against the Scythians, enthno-cultural-religious skullduggery was set by writs in law via the papal bulls of Alexander VI and gave rise to imperialist adventurism against the whole non-European world. It seems however, from the middle ages, in western and central Europe, antisemitism became indeed valid as an expression, particularly as the Europeans had invited the Jews there after the Crusades and subsequently brutally subjugated, oppressed and murdered them wholesale. From there through to the end of WWII, various opressions, pogroms and massacres were committed upon Jews in a spread to northern Europe and eastward, including via the holocaust by Nazi Germany.
After WWI the British ‘mandate’, ‘Balfour declaration’ and ‘Sykes-Picot’ debacles in the Levant (particularly Palestine) and development of the League of Nations through to after WWII and the formation of the UN, there were supposedly International Humanitarian and Human Rights laws put in place that made all such ethnic / racial / cultural / territorial abuses unlawful. A situation where no-one was ‘special’ as it applied equally to all.
In consideration of the post-WWII formation of modern Israel within Palestine, whose Palestinians are predominantly more semitic than the superimposed Jews of other ethnicities, it would seem that the olde term ‘antisemitic’ had become an anachronism prone to divisive misuse. The Palestinians were hardly ‘antisemitic’ they were merely defending their rights from being erased by the ‘West’.
It would appear that the term ‘antisemitism’ became the political Zionist ‘stick-of-guilt’ to be wielded against the old imperialists of the ‘West’. And today, with history selectively revised, and with supremacy in mind, (particularly under the Netanyahu regime) they wield it with a venom and hatred in conjunction with the crumbling American hegemon (particularly the T-Rump regime) in their brutal dance across the world.
That divisive use of the term ‘antisemitism’ by political Zionist Israel and America in particular, is now being increasingly taken across the world as a linguistic device of arch hypocrisy, that does Jews everywhere more harm than good.