Latest / The Front / A dispute between two Australian Jewish lawyers hits the courts

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A dispute between two Australian Jewish lawyers hits the courts · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, March twenty five, twenty twenty five. Don't tell Donald.
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  Speaker 1: a second election victory. You can read all our analysis
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  Speaker 1: and scoops all day at the Australian dot com dot
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  Speaker 1: a U. Police are seeking a personal safety intervention order
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  Speaker 1: on behalf of one Jewish Australian lawyer after a series
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  Speaker 1: of social media posts made by another Australian Jewish lawyer.
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  Speaker 1: The two women with differing opinions on a very hot debate.
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  Speaker 1: Both women claim they're fighting for the same cause, so
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  Speaker 1: why have they landed in a court room? That's today's episode.
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  Speaker 2: Zionism is inextricably linked to Judaism, no matter what a
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  Speaker 2: tiny fringe minority of Jews led by Sarah Schwartz pretending
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  Speaker 2: to be a legitimate Jewish Council.
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  Speaker 1: Tell you this is an Instagram post made by campaigner
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  Speaker 1: Zara Cooper in early March. We've used a voice actor.
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  Speaker 2: Almost all Jewish people are Zionists. The word Zionist is
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  Speaker 2: another word for jew.
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  Speaker 1: Zara Cooper is a former corporate lawyer from Melbourne who
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  Speaker 1: started a shoe company and now runs an advocacy group
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  Speaker 1: called Digital Defense. She's Jewish and so is one of
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  Speaker 1: the people she's criticized on social media, another Melbourne lawyer
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  Speaker 1: named Sarah Schwartz. Schwartz is the executive officer of an
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  Speaker 1: organization called the Jewish Council of Australia. Cooper has taken
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  Speaker 1: aim at Schwartz, accusing her of.
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  Speaker 2: Being out partying with insta famous jew hater extraordinaire Clementine Ford.
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  Speaker 1: And now this dispute is hitting the court this morning,
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  Speaker 1: that's Tuesday, Victoria Police will be in Melbourne Magistrates Court
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  Speaker 1: applying for a personal safety intervention order on behalf of
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  Speaker 1: Schwartz to protect her from Cooper.
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  Speaker 3: This is quite an escalation of this dispute that's happening
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  Speaker 3: between two Jewish women on social media. Some of these
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  Speaker 3: posts may have been negative towards Sarah and towards the
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  Speaker 3: Jewish Council of Australia, but the question is whether that
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  Speaker 3: warrants an intervention order that is protecting someone's safety.
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  Speaker 1: Joina Panagopolis is a journalist with The Australian and she
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  Speaker 1: and our colleague Liam Mendez have been reporting on this
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  Speaker 1: court action ever since October seven, twenty twenty three, when
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  Speaker 1: her mass fighters went over the border from Gaza into
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  Speaker 1: Israel and attacked Israeli settlements and civilians, triggering an almighty
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  Speaker 1: military assault from Israel on Gaza. There's been a difference
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  Speaker 1: of opinion bubbling away within the Australian Jewish community. To
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  Speaker 1: put it simply, it's this, if you're Jewish, do you
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  Speaker 1: also automatically or at all support Israel. Some Jewish Australians,
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  Speaker 1: and this includes the mainstream Jewish organizations like the Executive
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  Speaker 1: Council of Australian Jewy and the Zionist Federation of Australia.
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  Speaker 1: They have fiercely backed Israel's right to defend itself. They
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  Speaker 1: say the vast majority of Australian Jews would agree that
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  Speaker 1: no matter how sad the carnage in Gaza has been.
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  Speaker 1: Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and
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  Speaker 1: if it doesn't eliminate her mass, its citizens can never
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  Speaker 1: live in peace. And then on the other hand, and
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  Speaker 1: there's the Jewish Council of Australia, which describes itself like
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  Speaker 1: this on its website.
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  Speaker 4: We provide an independent, expert Jewish voice supporting human rights
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  Speaker 4: and opposing anti Semitism and racism. We support Palestinian freedom
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  Speaker 4: and justice and are united in our opposition to Israel's
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  Speaker 4: continued policies aimed at the destruction of Palestinian life.
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  Speaker 1: These are two very outspoken women. Clearly they're not shy
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  Speaker 1: about sharing their opinions. They've both gone and created social
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  Speaker 1: media presences and in Sarah Schwartz's case, a council to
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  Speaker 1: express their very strongly held views about the conflict in
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  Speaker 1: the Middle East. It's interesting to see them now in
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  Speaker 1: this mode of statements through the lawyers, isn't.
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  Speaker 3: It It is? And they both say that they are
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  Speaker 3: in a way fighting anti Semitism, but the way that
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  Speaker 3: they do it is opposite and so different.
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  Speaker 1: So both parties.
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  Speaker 3: The goal of their Instagram pages and their movements or
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  Speaker 3: campaigns is to fight anti Semitism. On the one hand,
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  Speaker 3: Zara Cooper's camp, it is that Zionism is the belief
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  Speaker 3: of the majority of Jewish people in Australia, And on
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  Speaker 3: Sarah Schwartz's side is that you can separate Zionism from
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  Speaker 3: Jewish identity. And these things are playing out differently in
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  Speaker 3: both these Instagram accounts.
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  Speaker 1: Joe, it seemed like it was difficult to get information
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  Speaker 1: out of both of these sides about exactly what was
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  Speaker 1: going on and how they feel about it. They're being
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  Speaker 1: very cagey, aren't they.
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  Speaker 3: So both parties appear to be very controlled about what
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  Speaker 3: they were saying. They definitely wanted this to play out
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  Speaker 3: in the courts. On Tuesday rather than saying too much
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  Speaker 3: to the media, we got statements from both sides. On
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  Speaker 3: Zara Cooper's side, it was clearly a statement that had
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  Speaker 3: gone through her lawyers and it was basically saying that
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  Speaker 3: this is not a for the courts. And then on
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  Speaker 3: Sarah Schwartz's side, she said this was a matter to
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  Speaker 3: leave up to police. You can tell what's going to
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  Speaker 3: be argued in the courts. One saying let's leave u
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  Speaker 3: to social media the other saying no, we need this intervention.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the things that's bubbled away in the
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  Speaker 1: Jewish community in disputes even within Jewish families, is some
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  Speaker 1: members accusing others of weaponizing the Holocaust. There is an
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  Speaker 1: accusation that if you say, Israel has to defend itself
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  Speaker 1: otherwise it's going to get wiped out. There are some
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  Speaker 1: members of the Jewish community who will say, we can't
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  Speaker 1: invote the Holocaust every time Israel is threatened, and the
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  Speaker 1: history of the Holocaust doesn't justify everything that Israel does.
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  Speaker 1: Zara Cooper really went there with the Holocaust in her post,
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  Speaker 1: didn't she.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, we haven't seen one of the most contentious posts
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  Speaker 3: that the police allude to in the complaint, which is
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  Speaker 3: the claim that Sarah Schwartz's face was in onto a
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  Speaker 3: train that was meant to be going to a concentration camp.
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  Speaker 3: And the idea invoked was that Sarah Schwartz is working
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  Speaker 3: for the other side. That in Nazi Germany there were
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  Speaker 3: Jews that supported Hitler initially, and the idea was that
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  Speaker 3: they were taken on the same trains to these concentration
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  Speaker 3: camps as all the other Jews, and that was one
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  Speaker 3: of the sort of images invoked by Zara Cooper. It
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  Speaker 3: appears on her Instagram feed and something that the police
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  Speaker 3: have expressed as something Sarah Schwartz is really upset about
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  Speaker 3: and can't reconcile.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's that idea that if you are Jewish, the
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  Speaker 1: enemies of Judaism, the racist the anti Semites, will come
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  Speaker 1: for you in the end, just like all the other Jews,
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  Speaker 1: that it doesn't matter what you say. Now, this is
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  Speaker 1: the Zara Cooper kind of perspective, isn't it.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, And you can see both women Jewish. Obviously they
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  Speaker 3: have very different political ideologies. But I mean invoking one
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  Speaker 3: thing on the other, for whichever sort of side you take,
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  Speaker 3: is probably hard to stomach. So either way, whatever sort
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  Speaker 3: of political view you take as a Jewish person, invoking
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  Speaker 3: the Holocaust is obviously a very serious thing.
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  Speaker 1: Coming up where opinions clash with freedoms and how this
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  Speaker 1: has wound up in court. For nearly a year, the
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  Speaker 1: conversation in Australia has been about social cohesion and hate speech.
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  Speaker 1: What are people allowed to say in which forum to
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  Speaker 1: whom our chants like from the River to the Sea, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: have certain artists or thinkers been silenced or deplatformed, and
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  Speaker 1: now we're saying an online conversation become a police matter.
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  Speaker 1: Just like a lot of the reporters of The Australian,
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  Speaker 1: ever since October seven, twenty twenty three, you've been involved
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  Speaker 1: in covering the way this has played out in Australia,
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  Speaker 1: the big Street marches, the disputes that are going on,
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  Speaker 1: say within universities. It's amazing, isn't it that it's still
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  Speaker 1: so hot eighteen months or more on, Yeah, it is.
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  Speaker 3: And people just have such incredibly strong views and opinions
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  Speaker 3: on this, be that the pro Palestinian side or Jewish
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  Speaker 3: people who are afraid for their lives and are just
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  Speaker 3: moving around in the world. And you can just see
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  Speaker 3: how it's very emotional for everyone involved. And obviously you
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  Speaker 3: can take a political stance, but at the end of
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  Speaker 3: the day, when it boils down to is just emotions
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  Speaker 3: and safety and feeling like you know what's right and
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  Speaker 3: what's wrong.
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  Speaker 1: I hope you won't mind me saying that you're pretty young,
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  Speaker 1: you're a digital native. You're a member of the generation
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  Speaker 1: that old people like me would say are obsessed with
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  Speaker 1: social media. That you live on your phone. Your generation
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  Speaker 1: is very comfortable communicating in that sphere. But these communications
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  Speaker 1: that we're talking about that are going to be in
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  Speaker 1: court on Tuesday, these are not really young people, are they.
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  Speaker 1: These are adult women.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, these are adult women who feel very strongly about
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  Speaker 3: this cause. On Zara Cooper's side, it's what are perceived
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  Speaker 3: as bullies and anti Semitic people and people who don't
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  Speaker 3: want social cohesion in Australia, and that is what she
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  Speaker 3: on her Instagram page believes that she is fighting for.
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  Speaker 3: And then on the other side, it's trying to have
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  Speaker 3: this voice for maybe a lesser heard group of Jewish people.
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  Speaker 3: Be that right or wrong, and both are just very
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  Speaker 3: passionate about that, and it comes across in the posts.
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  Speaker 3: When you look at Zara Cooper's Instagram, it's capital letters
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  Speaker 3: and everything's bolded, and there's really intense imagery and the
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  Speaker 3: criticism is repeated and repeated, and that's how she's getting
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  Speaker 3: her message across to her some six thousand viewers.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So for a lot of younger people, social media might
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  Speaker 1: be a retreat or a place to totally be nostalgic
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  Speaker 1: or to have fun. Yeah, for a big group in
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  Speaker 1: our population, that maybe this is more so with slightly
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  Speaker 1: older people. Do you think that it's very serious?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's a way to campaign and to do
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  Speaker 3: something when I guess there's no way, no other way
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  Speaker 3: to get that message across. If you feel like the
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  Speaker 3: government's not listenstening to you, or the media is not
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  Speaker 3: listening to you, this is your avenue to get your
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  Speaker 3: message across. And the way you're going to do that
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  Speaker 3: is to be, you know, as a motive as possible
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  Speaker 3: to cause a scene, to make noise and that so
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  Speaker 3: I think what's coming across in these Instagram pages.
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  Speaker 1: Join a Panagopolis is a reporter with The Australian. You
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  Speaker 1: can follow that case live all day today and of
• 12:30
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• 12:33
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• 12:35
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