Jillian Segal, Anthony Albanese’s appointed antisemitism envoy, has produced a series of Trumpian recommendations that have drawn widespread shock.
Her calls to withhold funding from universities, cultural institutions and artists and to monitor media reporting are an echo of Donald Trump’s efforts to defund universities unless they shut down research and teaching he opposes.
Anthony Albanese appointed Segal as the government’s “special envoy to combat antisemitism” in July 2024, and appeared alongside her at the press conference to launch the recommendations.
Her plan is a continuation of the efforts to smear the movement for Palestine as antisemitic, and to launch a desperate defence of Israel in the face of growing public disgust with its genocide in Gaza.
As Max Kaiser of the anti-Zionist Jewish Council of Australia put it, “Consistent with her past statements erroneously linking antisemitic attacks with Palestine solidarity protests, Segal seems fixated on driving a pro-Israel narrative and repressing legitimate criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
Antisemitism is a real issue and should always be opposed—just as the movement for Palestine has done since 7 October 2023 and before. Rallies have frequently featured Jewish speakers and Jewish contingents and have never accepted any instances of anti-Jewish racism.
But the media and the government have constantly sought to conflate opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza with antisemitism. Earlier this year there was an effort to blame supporters of Palestine for a series of attacks on synagogues—even though it turned out organised crime was responsible.
In the latest example, The Age alongside other media outlets labelled a protest against restaurant owner Shahar Segal an “antisemitic attack”, linking it to the firebombing of a synagogue that took place in Melbourne the same night despite the lack of any connection between them.
Shahar Segal’s restaurant Miznon was targeted over his work as a media spokesperson for the Israel-backed “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” that has turned aid distribution in Gaza into a death trap. The protest was clearly driven by horror at Israel’s actions in Gaza, not hatred towards Jews.
Jillian’s Segal report is noticeably vague about what constitutes antisemitism. But it’s clear from her sweeping denunciation of universities as supposedly showing a “tolerance for antisemitic conduct” and her reference to “a stark divide between Australians under 35 and those over 35” in their attitudes that she wants to target opposition to Israel’s genocide—and anti-Zionism in particular.
Pressed on ABC radio about what “manipulated narratives” she wanted censored from media reporting, Segal pointed immediately to coverage of Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza.
She cited a 20-month-old ABC story about the bombing of a hospital in Gaza, which was quickly corrected after sources argued that the deaths were actually the result of a misfired Hamas rocket. Most of Israel’s relentless destruction of hospitals and health facilities in Gaza since 7 October 2023 has been ignored by the mainstream media.
But Segal’s attack on the ABC shows clearly that criticism of Israel’s genocide is her target.
Anti-Zionism
Her report also calls for the government to “require consistent application and adoption” of the widely rejected International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism across government and public institutions.
This definition “has been used to silence legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism”, as the Jewish Council of Australia puts it, since it defines opposition to the existence of the state of Israel as antisemitic.
Already Palestinian-Australian academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah has been branded as antisemitic simply for calling for an end to the state of Israel—with her research grant suspended following a right-wing media campaign.
Zionism is the political ideology behind Israel’s existence as a state that privileges Jewish people above others. As a result, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has explained, “Israel is not a state of all its citizens”. There is systematic discrimination against the Palestinian minority inside its 1948 borders.
Israel also imposes a regime of apartheid on the occupied West Bank and Gaza. There is nothing antisemitic about anti-Zionism and support for a single democratic state in Palestine with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians—yet this would require an end to the existence of the state of Israel.
Jillian Segal is a pro-Israel activist and an apologist for its genocide who should never have been appointed to her government position.
She is the immediate past president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an hardline Zionist organisation. While in that role she defended Israel’s bombing of hospitals and condemned calls for a ceasefire in late 2023 six weeks after Israel’s genocide in Gaza began.
In December last year she labelled weekly protests for Palestine “intimidatory”, claiming without any evidence whatsoever that they were “attacking the Jewish community” and calling for them be banned from the inner city.
Her husband donated $50,000 to far right campaign group Advance Australia, which is viciously anti-immigration and labels welcome to country ceremonies a plot by “elites” to “delegitimise Australia’s history”. Segal has claimed she had no knowledge of the donation.
Her antisemitism plan is so extreme that even the Albanese government can see she has gone too far. The government is now stalling as it tries to work out which recommendations it can get away with adopting.
Education Minister Jason Clare has said they will wait for reports from the government’s special envoy on Islamophobia and the Race Discrimination Commissioner later this year before making any decisions.
But the efforts to undermine support for Palestine with false accusations of antisemitism are only going to continue.
The scale of the horror in Gaza continues to escalate, with tens of thousands at risk of starvation and over 1000 Palestinians shot dead while waiting for aid at Israel’s distribution sites. More and more people are disgusted by Israel’s continuing genocide.
Smearing the movement for Palestine helps distract attention from Albanese’s refusal to end weapons exports or impose sanctions on Israel. It is the last line of defence for Israel’s supporters in the face of its now widely recognised genocide.
