This week a 16-year-old boy in Western Australia was arrested following an alleged online threat to a Sydney mosque that referenced the 2019 attack in Christchurch, where more than fifty worshippers were murdered.
The prime minister condemns the alleged threat, saying that “racism and Islamophobia will not be tolerated”. Perth police are investigating a spate of antisemitic graffiti that has appeared across the city in the last month.Police wouldn’t stop “until the thugs responsible were caught”, Premier Roger Cook says.
Antisemitism is a distinct and more complex problem than Islamophobia.
These incidents follow recent attacks on two hijab-wearing women in the Melbourne suburb of Epping that showed Muslims experience discrimination because they’re Muslims. It’s to be condemned.
Anthony Albanese’s mantra speaks a truth: Islamophobia and antisemitism are both unacceptable. He’s instituted a special envoy for each. But he’s created a false equivalence – the two are very different.
Antisemitism is a distinct and more complex problem than Islamophobia. It’s the oldest and the deadliest group hatred. Jews are targeted not only as a religion but also as a race, ethnicity and nation. The Jewish community is this country’s principal hate target: synagogue arson, car fire bombings, home business and office vandalism, doxxing and hate speech are all intended to intimidate Australian Jews.
Australian Jews are afraid. That’s not surprising.
In Islamophobia, the “phobia” is a fear of societal violence. This isn’t mere irrational prejudice. Islam is associated with terrorism because a small but significant proportion of Muslims support it as resistance to Zionist and Western oppression or as the path to sharia rule. Terrorism is intended to cause fear.
Senator Fatima Payman and Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja argue that the Epping attacks showed that Islamophobia should be our focus at least as much as antisemitism. But this just flips the dinner table to serve a deceptive red herring. It diverts attention away from the culprits perpetrating antisemitic acts.
The Australian Human Rights Commission buries antisemitism under tired concepts of intersectional and structural racism.
Even talking about antisemitism is seen as Islamophobic. Yet, antisemitism is preached in some Australian mosques – some Islamic leaders even welcomed the October 7 Hamas massacre. It is so normalised that Muslim organisations defend those who brag on social media about murdering Jews who enter their patient care. Graffiti in Jewish suburbs praises Allah.
A year ago, ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said pro-Palestine rallies were a useful pressure release. But he recently pointed out that narratives that originally focused on “freeing Palestine” had expanded to include incitements to kill Jews. “I am concerned these attacks have not yet plateaued,” he says.
Now we have the supposedly mainstream Australian Sheik Ibrahim Dadoun absurdly claiming that there was a conspiracy, with a real possibility that the wave of antisemitism here had been manufactured by Mossad.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has been keeping statistics on formally reported antisemitic attacks for decades. ECAJ’s definition of an attack excludes speech and social media posts that don’t contain specific threats of violence. It captured 2062 incidents in 2024. If online antisemitic content were included, the number of attacks would be closer to 6700.
Not to be outdone in a competition for victimhood, the Islamophobia Register of Australia was established 10 years ago. It claims 932 incidents during 2024. When you consider that the 115,000 members of the Australian Jewish population are an eighth the size of the 900,000 Muslim populace, it’s possible to see the relative intensity of the two problems – for Jews it’s worse by about sixty to one.
Senator James Paterson points out that one of the reasons why we talk about antisemitism more often than we talk about violence against Australian Muslims is because it’s far more prevalent and prolific. “Thank God we have not seen any places of worship important to Muslim Australians firebombed, as we have seen a synagogue,” he notes.
Moreover, no rabbi in Australia has preached hate against our Muslim communities and Jews aren’t a significant source of Islamophobic attacks. It was widely reported that the woman charged over the Islamophobic attack in Epping has long suffered mental health disorders.
Yet the ABC would have us think that antisemitism and Islamophobia are equivalent. It’s to the great shame of our national broadcaster that it’s failed to cover antisemitism in Australia in any meaningful way – no Four Corners treatment or documentaries. Not even any long-form journalism. Similarly, the Australian Human Rights Commission buries antisemitism under tired concepts of intersectional and structural racism.
National resolve and firm action are needed to respond to both Islamophobia and antisemitism. But the two illnesses have very different histories, reasons, intensities, culprits, victims and cures. The first step is to understand the differences between them.
Greg Rose is professor of law at University of Wollongong and co-author of Two States for Two Peoples: The Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Anthony Bergin is a senior fellow at Strategic Analysis Australia.
This article was first published in the Australian Financial Review.