Latest / The Front / Why did Australians walk into Hamas’ racist trap?

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Why did Australians walk into Hamas’ racist trap? · 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 Thursday, October 8, 2026. When the world seems huge
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  Speaker 1: and horrifying, we bring in Greg Sheridan to help make
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  Speaker 1: sense of it all. Today, Greg's here to talk about
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  Speaker 1: three years since the Hamas attack that changed the world
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  Speaker 1: and what it tells us about modern Australia. Greg Sheridan
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  Speaker 1: is the Australian's foreign editor, and over the past three years,
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  Speaker 1: he's been writing about the consequences of Hamas's attack on
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  Speaker 1: Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023. During the attack, about
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  Speaker 1: 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage. Greg,
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  Speaker 1: one of the things that's arisen in Australian society as
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  Speaker 1: probably a consequence of that is a realisation from a
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  Speaker 1: lot of people about how deep antisemitism runs in our community.
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  Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time wondering if the antisemitism
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  Speaker 1: that we've seen since then was latent in our society
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  Speaker 1: and it just needed something to trigger it, to bring
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  Speaker 1: it up, or if... Hamas has succeeded in sowing the
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  Speaker 1: seeds of antisemitism among a generation of people who had
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  Speaker 1: never had any negative thoughts about Jews before. What do
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  Speaker 1: you think and how do you reflect on all of that?
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  Speaker 2: Well, Claire, it's great to be with you. It's a
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  Speaker 2: complex matter.
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  Speaker 3: Generally, Australia was not an antisemitic nation. You know, John
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  Speaker 3: Monash was our military leader in World War I.
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  Speaker 2: He was Jewish. He was a militiaman.
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  Speaker 3: He was a migrant from Poland that was part of Germany.
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  Speaker 3: Sir Isaac Isaacs was our governor general in the 1930s
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  Speaker 3: when Europe was ripped apart by anti-Semitism and the controversy
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  Speaker 3: about Isaac Isaacs was that he was born in Australia,
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  Speaker 3: not that he was Jewish.
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  Speaker 2: And the traditional source.
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  Speaker 3: Of anti-Semitism in the West, which was often Christian prejudice
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  Speaker 3: against Jews, had probably been exhausted and repudiated by Christians.
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  Speaker 3: There's no mainstream Christian denomination now. which holds onto any
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  Speaker 3: trace of anti-Semitism. It was never the mainstream Christian position,
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  Speaker 3: but there was a lot of it there. But what Hamas'
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  Speaker 3: attack did, I think, has turbocharged the two great contemporary
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  Speaker 3: sources of anti-Semitism in the West. And they are the
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  Speaker 3: ideological anti-Semitism of the left, which sees Israel in identity
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  Speaker 3: politics terms as a colonial oppressive state. And because most
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  Speaker 3: Jews in the West are Caucasian, It sees everything in
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  Speaker 3: racial and identity politics terms, and it sees Jews who
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  Speaker 3: generally support Israel as an extension of the Israeli state.
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  Speaker 3: The Israeli state is an oppressor colonial state, so Jews
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  Speaker 3: are condemned by associations. That's one big source of contemporary antisemitism.
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  Speaker 3: The other big source of contemporary antisemitism is Islamic, Arabic,
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  Speaker 3: and North African traditions of antisemitism. These go back hundreds
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  Speaker 3: of years, hundreds.
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  Speaker 2: And hundreds of years.
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  Speaker 3: There are problematic writings about Jews all through Islamic history.
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  Speaker 3: And we saw, after the establishment of Israel, virtually the
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  Speaker 3: whole Jewish population of North Africa and the Middle East
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  Speaker 3: expelled from their countries. You know, Baghdad used to be
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  Speaker 3: a third Jewish, and there were big Jewish populations in
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  Speaker 3: Morocco and Egypt and so on.
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  Speaker 2: They were all basically chased out, a lot of them killed.
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  Speaker 3: And this tradition of anti-Semitism is quite strong in the
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  Speaker 3: Islamic world. made much stronger by their resentments over Israel.
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  Speaker 3: But what you've seen now over the last 30 years
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  Speaker 3: is the development of a big Muslim population in all
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  Speaker 3: Western societies. So most of these Muslim populations are very law-abiding,
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  Speaker 3: good citizens and everything, but they virtually all would be anti-Israel.
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  Speaker 3: And those who consider themselves Islamists, even if they're non-violent Islamists,
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  Speaker 3: are very, very anti-Semitic. I mean, Islamism as a political
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  Speaker 3: ideology is hostile to Jews, hostile to the West, hostile
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  Speaker 3: to Christianity. Now, in crude electoral terms in Australia, there.
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  Speaker 2: Are more than a million Muslims.
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  Speaker 3: There's 110,000 Jews. And the Muslim hostility to Israel and
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  Speaker 3: the traditions of anti-Semitism within that world have come to
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  Speaker 3: the fore. Now, they've been turbocharged by the Hamas killings,
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  Speaker 3: which didn't elicit lasting sympathy for Israel, but as Hamas
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  Speaker 3: designed elicited revulsion at Israel's reaction to those killings. It
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  Speaker 3: was the protest that brought Sydney to a standstill, thousands
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  Speaker 3: marching across the harbour bridge. So Hamas has succeeded in
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  Speaker 3: demonising Israel and generating massive hatred for Jews. The ideological
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  Speaker 3: left and the Islamic and Arab traditions of anti-Semitism have
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  Speaker 3: come together and they haven't been properly countered. by mainstream
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  Speaker 3: Australian leaders.
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  Speaker 1: If you're at uni today and you're a future prime
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  Speaker 1: minister or a future federal or Supreme Court judge or
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  Speaker 1: a future CEO, you have been kind of saturated in
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  Speaker 1: the anti-Israel protest movement. Even if you weren't a participant
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  Speaker 1: or even a casual supporter, you've had to walk past
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  Speaker 1: an encampment on the way to your classes. How can
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  Speaker 1: that generation have possibly emerged from the past few years, Greg,
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  Speaker 1: without a sense that Israel is somehow bad kind of
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  Speaker 1: lurking in the back of their minds? And has Israel
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  Speaker 1: kind of failed to tell the other side of the
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  Speaker 1: story or have the sensible parts of Western society failed there?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so in a sense, Claire, all of the above.
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  Speaker 2: I'd say all of the above.
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  Speaker 3: Even worse than the encampments and the savage, ugly, racist,
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  Speaker 3: anti-Jewish protests is what's in the classroom. I was an
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  Speaker 3: undergraduate way back in prehistory in the mid-1970s, and there
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  Speaker 3: was a sort of a left hegemony in the humanities
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  Speaker 3: way back then.
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  Speaker 2: At Sydney University, economics.
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  Speaker 3: Was divided between a Marxist department and a mathematics department.
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  Speaker 3: Philosophy was divided between so-called traditional and modern philosophy and
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  Speaker 3: general philosophy, which was essentially Marxist. And Marxism shares with
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  Speaker 3: Islamism a hatred of the West, hatred of capitalism, a
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  Speaker 3: hatred of the United States, a hatred of the West.
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  Speaker 3: And the great Marxist states, you know, the Soviet Union
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  Speaker 3: and China, see the United States as their polar opposite
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  Speaker 3: and their enemy. Now, that has all come down into
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  Speaker 3: our classrooms. You're seeing it with these French high school
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  Speaker 3: students rioting now.
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  Speaker 4: Between 400 and 500 high schools across France had classes
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  Speaker 4: fully or partially suspended today. The protests began last week
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  Speaker 4: over teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms... They're.
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  Speaker 3: Allegedly rioting over classroom conditions.
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  Speaker 2: It's ridiculous.
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  Speaker 3: France spends more per head on students than Germany does.
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  Speaker 3: What do their riots really embody? They embody a hatred
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  Speaker 3: of their own society. And you see all over the
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  Speaker 3: place Palestinian flags there. So the left internationally has made
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  Speaker 3: hatred of Israel, its number one protest issue for the moment.
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  Speaker 3: So it's completely indifferent to the tens, perhaps hundreds of
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  Speaker 3: thousands of people killed in Sudan. It's completely indifferent to
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  Speaker 3: Muslim on Muslim killing in Syria or Iran.
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  Speaker 2: Or Iraq or anywhere like that.
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  Speaker 3: But the very existence of Israel, we've just seen the
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  Speaker 3: British Greens Party pass a resolution saying that Zionism itself
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  Speaker 3: is racism. So Zionism means the idea that there should
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  Speaker 3: be a Jewish state in the Middle East. So the
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  Speaker 3: very existence of Israel for the left is racist. So
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  Speaker 3: coming back to your question, Claire, the students emerge from
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  Speaker 3: school and from university with these hatreds. Our cultural institutions
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  Speaker 3: have been shocking in their failure to deal with anti-Semitism.
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  Speaker 3: The ABC has promoted anti-Semites and stopped Jewish creatives from
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  Speaker 3: telling the story of their own cancellation. And then finally,
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  Speaker 3: what is Israel's responsibility? Well, I love Israel and I'm
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  Speaker 3: inspired by it, but I think some of its actions
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  Speaker 3: have been disproportionate and extreme. That's not a council of perfection.
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  Speaker 3: I think they had every right to react very, very
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  Speaker 3: strongly to October 7th. Calls for a ceasefire are calls
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  Speaker 3: for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism,
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  Speaker 3: to surrender to barbarism.
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  Speaker 2: That will not happen. This is a time for war.
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  Speaker 3: I'd criticize some of their actions, but there's not a
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  Speaker 3: nation in the world that I wouldn't criticize some of
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  Speaker 3: their actions. The broader thing, have they told the PR
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  Speaker 3: story well?
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  Speaker 2: No, they haven't.
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  Speaker 3: It's a very unlevel playing field, but You know, I've
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  Speaker 3: interviewed Benjamin Netanyahu many times, many more times, I'm sure,
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  Speaker 3: than any other Australian. And you've got to respect his
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  Speaker 3: enormous achievements for Israel.
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  Speaker 2: Over the years.
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  Speaker 3: But he has become a very stark confrontational figure on
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  Speaker 3: the international stage. And any Israeli prime minister will preference
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  Speaker 3: Israeli security over Western good opinion. But Netanyahu has kind
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  Speaker 3: of stylistically followed Trump. a bit, and there hasn't really
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  Speaker 3: been a concerted effort by Israel to tell its story.
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  Speaker 3: I remember when the Australian Mark Regev was Netanyahu's spokesman,
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  Speaker 3: it seemed to me Israel was much more effective. They
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  Speaker 3: had an extremely competent, very, very convincing English-speaking spokesman who
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  Speaker 3: was on TV every night rebutting the charges and so forth. So, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: the good guys could have done a lot more, I think. And,
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  Speaker 3: you know, I think the Albanese government has been just
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  Speaker 3: appalling in further demonising Israel. Today I can confirm that
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  Speaker 3: Australia will recognise the state of Palestine. So declaring their
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  Speaker 3: recognition of a Palestinian state They know there's no prospect
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  Speaker 3: of a Palestinian state at the moment. You'd have to
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  Speaker 3: have years of normalization before you could get to a
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  Speaker 3: Palestinian state. So they know that this move will have
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  Speaker 3: no beneficial consequence, but it reinforces the message to all
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  Speaker 3: those undergraduates you're talking about, to all those high school students,
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  Speaker 3: to all the people in book clubs around Australia buying
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  Speaker 3: books that demonize Israel, that Israel is a uniquely wicked,
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  Speaker 3: demonic state. And It's easy for them to do that
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  Speaker 3: because they don't care about the 100,000 Jewish voters. They
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  Speaker 3: do care about the million Muslim voters and they do
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  Speaker 3: care about the millions of green voters who hate Israel
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  Speaker 3: and by extension hate Jews. And it's just too easy
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  Speaker 3: to go along with that.
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  Speaker 1: One of the really interesting parts of it, I think,
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  Speaker 1: has been the confidence with which people have opinions about
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  Speaker 1: this incredibly complex issue. Thousands of years of conflict. We
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  Speaker 1: could talk about the Crusades for half an hour, Greg,
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  Speaker 1: I'm sure you would love that. You could talk about
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  Speaker 1: the Jews being expelled from England in the 11th century.
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  Speaker 1: There's so much kind of rich history here. And I mean,
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  Speaker 1: I think personally, the more I learn about it, the
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  Speaker 1: less easy it is to have a strong opinion. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: it didn't stop me having stupid opinions when I was
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  Speaker 1: at uni or I sort of remember with some embarrassment
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  Speaker 1: buying some merch for something called Kony 2012, which was
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  Speaker 1: about a Ugandan warlord. But I didn't think I was
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  Speaker 1: an expert on Uganda. Each bracelet has a unique ID number.
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  Speaker 1: That's why I'm asking this question about latency of antisemitism.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, for me, the only explanation for why everybody
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  Speaker 1: is so confident in having this opinion that Israel is
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  Speaker 1: bad is that there must be a well of antisemitism
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  Speaker 1: kind of deep underneath our society that bubbles up when
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  Speaker 1: there's an excuse. You sound more optimistic about it than me, though.
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  Speaker 3: No, I think you're right, Claire. I think your analysis
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  Speaker 3: is right. There is a tradition of Western antisemitism with
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  Speaker 3: a long fallout, and that leaves these resonances, these echoes,
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  Speaker 3: these viruses in the Western. And let me say absolutely clearly,
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  Speaker 3: nothing troubles the Christian conscience through history more than the
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  Speaker 3: Christian inheritance of antisemitism. So Christians have carried antisemitism. As
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  Speaker 3: I say, it was never the The main position was
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  Speaker 3: never really the official position. But for a long time,
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  Speaker 3: Christian anti-Semitism was very strong. There were pogroms in Europe.
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  Speaker 3: And as you say, the Jews were expelled from England.
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  Speaker 3: There were terrible things in Ireland. And all of that
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  Speaker 3: remains in the residue, as it were. So you're seeing
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  Speaker 3: in America now, with Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens and
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  Speaker 3: so on, a kind of a recrudescence of right-wing anti-Semitism.
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  Speaker 3: And it feeds partly on the media images of Gaza
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  Speaker 3: and all that. But it also draws on this old
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  Speaker 3: tradition of Christian civilizational, Western civilizational anti-Semitism. And one of
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  Speaker 3: the tragedies for Jewish people is that we live in
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  Speaker 3: a time of conspiracy theories. And a lot of conspiracy theories,
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  Speaker 3: they're like what psychologists describe as free-floating anxieties. So if
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  Speaker 3: you're just naturally anxious, you find something to be anxious about.
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  Speaker 3: Is your plug switched on? Have you washed your hands properly?
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  Speaker 3: They're completely irrational things to be anxious about, but they're
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  Speaker 3: not what's causing your anxiety. You're just anxious and you
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  Speaker 3: find something to fixate on. Well, people who are prone
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  Speaker 3: to conspiracy theories and a combination of the internet and
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  Speaker 3: everything else and artificial intelligence, the algorithms and everything, have
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  Speaker 3: made people very prone.
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  Speaker 2: To conspiracy theories.
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  Speaker 3: And the Jews always figure in the conspiracy theories because
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  Speaker 3: they've figured in so many conspiracy theories historically. You know,
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  Speaker 3: the famous document, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
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  Speaker 3: was a forgery by the Tsarist secret police showing a
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  Speaker 3: world Jewish conspiracy to take over government and murder Gentile
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  Speaker 3: babies and drink their blood. And so it was grotesque.
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  Speaker 3: And it was a Tsarist secret police forgery. And yet
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  Speaker 3: you'll find it on the net. You'll find references to
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  Speaker 3: it all over the place. So I think your analysis
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  Speaker 3: is right.
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  Speaker 2: It's there.
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  Speaker 3: But I don't think it mostly.
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  Speaker 2: Animated Australian society.
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  Speaker 3: And we were like America in a sense. We were
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  Speaker 3: a society of the new world. We intentionally left the
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  Speaker 3: old world hatreds behind us. You know, Alfred Deakin was
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  Speaker 3: against us having knighthoods and things because he just didn't
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  Speaker 3: want any of that old world stuff. We were a
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  Speaker 3: new egalitarian society. And the outbreak of antisemitism, which is
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  Speaker 3: the most shameful thing I've ever known about modern Australia,
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  Speaker 3: It's driven by the left and the Islamists, but it's
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  Speaker 3: now finding fertile ground on the right, on conspiracy theories generally,
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  Speaker 3: not on the mainstream right. You don't find it in
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  Speaker 3: the Liberal National Party, not even really in One Nation,
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  Speaker 3: but you are seeing it. online a lot. And you
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  Speaker 3: certainly see it amongst the neo-Nazis and the racist far
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  Speaker 3: right and so on.
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  Speaker 1: Well, Greg, I promise I will get you on to
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  Speaker 1: talk about the Crusades one day, because even if the
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  Speaker 1: audience wouldn't enjoy that, I really would. But thank you
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  Speaker 1: very much for joining us today.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks, Claire. Great to be with you.
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  Speaker 1: Greg Sheridan is The Australian's foreign editor. While I've got you,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: we're hosting a live event for our investigative podcast, The
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Poisoned Wife, on Wednesday, October 14 in Melbourne with Hedley Thomas,
• 16:23
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• 16:26
  Speaker 1: for a great conversation and some drinks and canapes. Check
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• 16:33
  Speaker 1: the meantime, you can get the best journalism in the
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: world anytime at theaustralian.com.au.