Jews for Palestine WA released the following statement on February 3.
• • •
Over the weekend this hateful graffiti, “F*ck Jews” and a swastika, was sprayed on the wall of a house in Perth. Our sympathies go to the household that was the victim of this attack.
Antisemitism is abhorrent and, like all forms of racism, it must be confronted.
We don't yet know who was responsible for this or a number of similar incidents in other states, so it’s not helpful to speculate.
What we can say, is that the rise in confidence of the far-right following the election of [Donald] Trump is fueling antisemitism.
Following on from his double Nazi salute, tech billionaire Elon Musk is now lauding British far-right racist bigot Tommy Robinson.
While the far-right now directs most of its hate towards Muslims, it has never let go of its virulent antisemitism.
There is no contradiction between this and its support for Israel. The far-right believes in “pure” ethno-states and opposes multiculturalism.
Likewise, Netanyahu has been more than happy to court far-right antisemitic political parties in Europe.
For over a year, the corporate media and a number of senior Liberal and Labor politicians, have dishonestly tried to smear supporters of human rights and international law as antisemitic in order to deflect from their own complicity in Israel’s genocidal violence.
In fact, the organised Palestine solidarity movement has always been totally vigilant about giving no space to antisemitism.
This doesn’t mean that there are never cases of people who sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians lapsing into antisemitism. Sadly, this is inevitable as Israel claims to represent all Jews in the world, while carrying out its genocidal violence.
Make no mistake, we will confront this if and when it rears its head.
However if [Prime Minister] Anthony Albanese, the state premiers and the media are serious about tackling antisemitism then there are three things they need to do:
1. Stop confusing the issue by deliberately and dishonestly smearing the movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people as being antisemitic. This is offensive and wrong, and only makes it harder to name and confront antisemitism.
2. Confront Islamophobia too. The horrible outbreak of antisemitic attacks has been accompanied by an even steeper rise in Islamophobia. We reject the idea that antisemitism is a special form of racism, worse than any other. The politicians that claim to oppose antisemitism while ignoring or even encouraging attacks on Muslims are not our friends.
3. Call out the blatant racism, in all its forms, being whipped up by Trump, Musk and their hangers-on.
We support democratic secular societies that treat all citizens as equals, regardless of race, religion or ethnicity. This is the only path to peace and justice, both in Australia and historic Palestine/Israel.