Jailing won't help stop racism

It didn't take long to realise this was no ordinary trial. Within minutes of the jury filing into the courtroom, the defendant, Brendan O'Connell, fired his lawyer, declared the court without jurisdiction and attempted to arrest the judge for treason. There were stifled giggles from the public gallery, but O'Connell is no comedy act. Last Monday, the 40-year-old former registered nurse was sentenced to three years jail for racial vilification for views expressed in his online blog. For more than two years, O'Connell has waged an online campaign against Perth Jews, posting long, rambling anti-Semitic diatribes and videos across the internet. His hate campaign eventually culminated in a video he made of himself chasing 21-year-old Jewish man Stanley Keyser down a South Perth street, accusing him of being a "racist, homicidal maniac". He then went to the Perth Bell Tower, looked into the camera and in a chilling monologue called for the public to rise up and consign Jews to the "dustbin of history". It is the first time in WA that someone has been jailed for racial vilification, an offence introduced by State Parliament in 2007. During the two-week trial, which at times threatened to descend into farce, O'Connell and his small band of followers in the public gallery refused to acknowledge the authority of the court. They sat as District Court Judge John Wisbey entered and left the room and stood as the jury did the same. Far from denying his actions, O'Connell told the jury he would "proudly . . . do it all again, 1000 times again". O'Connell referred to three books throughout the trial: the Bible, the Australian Constitution and an anti-Semitic tome called Judaism Discovered. He compared Judaism to an organised crime syndicate and made wild statements that Israel was planning to invade Australia within a decade. O'Connell intimated that he was somehow responsible for the resignations of several high-profile West Australians, including former Director of Public Prosecutions Robert Cock. He also accused police of deleting from his computer footage of UFOs that he had taken in Esperance. "Jews control the entire world," he told the jury. "It seems like something from nazi propaganda but it's true." O';Connell's actions have struck fear into the Jewish community in Perth since 2008, when he started to harass a Jewish man employed by an Australian Defence Force contractor - a combination O'Connell found unpalatable. He has stated in online political forums that he was willing to die fighting for what he calls "the truth". He caused the leaders of one synagogue to ask for police protection for the property after he posted photos of it online - it looks like a private house from the outside. He also wrote in an online forum he was planning to "pack 100kg of powergel and 40 bags of ANFO on to the back of a scooter and park it at the local synagogue - shout 'free bagels and kiddie porn' - and then run like hell." The rabbi and his family who live at the synagogue spent two nights elsewhere, terrified that O'Connell would turn his words into actions. Perth MP John Hyde requested assistance from the WA Police Dignitary Protection Unit after O'Connell made a public appeal for what Mr Hyde referred to as "an incitement for action at my office". But it was O'Connell's blog which eventually landed him before the courts. "Fairly soon Jews will realise that people are thoroughly sick of them," he wrote in a typical post. "Their whining. Their perpetual victimhood and their demands for people to bow down and worship their dodgy religion of 'holocaustianity'". Although he had been monitored for years by the WA State Security Investigation Group and was known to the Jewish Community Security Group, his bullying was taken only half seriously. When he sent a menacing email to a number of Jewish community leaders in early 2009 it was passed on to police but soon forgotten. It was the video of him chasing Mr Keyser down the street yelling abuse which prompted a shift in thinking about O'Connell from fringe lunatic to serious threat. "When the video appeared on YouTube it was like wildfire through the community," Steve Lieblich, director of public affairs at the Jewish Community Council, said. "I called a public meeting because there was an incredible amount of concern.". The film was taken at a Friends of Palestine protest outside a South Perth supermarket on May 2, 2009. O'Connell went along to take part in the protest against the sale of Israeli fruit. Mr Keyser and Timothy Peach, who were members of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, went to the protest intending to hand out pamphlets with an opposing point of view. But as the protest was small and peaceful, they instead decided to take a photo and leave. In the paranoid mind of O'Connell, however, they were Israeli spies, sent to gather information. The film shows O'Connell yelling at Mr Keyser that Judaism is a religion of "racism, hate, homicide and ethnic cleansing". He then filmed himself at the Bell Tower calling Judaism a "death cult". "I want the Judaic community to listen to those bells because they toll for you," he tells the camera as the bells rang out. "Their mass murder, their homicidal mania, their disgusting religious texts which they claim to be wise wisdom from the rabbis - it's time to consign them to the dustbin of history.". O'Connell may be in jail but his supporters still spew their own brand of racist hate online and Mr Keyser is still feeling its effect. Since the sentencing he has received hate mail from around the world, including emails telling him "your days are numbered". Though he has not been physically harmed, Mr Keyser said O'Connell's views were menacing. "We live in Perth and in a great country, but we also lived in freedom in Germany in the 1930s and then all of a sudden there was the Holocaust," Mr Keyser said. "My grandmother, her entire family died in the Holocaust and when she was in court, she couldn't deal with it because the things that were being said were exactly what happened in Poland, the same comments, same theories and it was horrible and horrific."