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After months of social unrest that has followed the October 7th attacks on Israel, and subsequent IDF military campaign in Gaza, Australia has appointed a special envoy to combat antisemitism and preserve “social cohesion”, amid rising community tension over the war.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced lawyer and businesswoman Jillian Segal would head up the envoy to advise the government on the rise of antisemitic sentiments that have emerged as lazy protesters and opportunists equate the war hawk agenda of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Australia’s generational Jewish population.
Countries like the US, Canada, Greece and the UK have all had similar antisemitism envoy positions for years, but it is now evident that Australia needs one of our own. This is because our country has one of the worst cases of ‘main character syndrome’ in the developed world, as local protestors of every stripe convince themselves that the War in Gaza is being directly influenced by sinister forces within our backwater British colony of 26 million.
This means the currently heightened 76-year conflict in the Middle East has become a volatile political issue in Australia. One that has activated previously dormant activists who kept their heads very low during the Indigenous Voice referendum.
It has resulted in politically motivated attacks on both the Muslim and Jewish communities, and forced the Australian political class to finally interrogate the latter.
After months of screeching from the newly self-appointed saviours of Jews known as the Liberal Party, the Albanese government has this week declared that Jillian Segal will fielding and investigating all instances of antisemitism on their behalf.
And first cab off the rank is the disgusting treatment of Jewish people by the very political party that has demanded the government do something to stop all this.
Namely, the fact that despite Sydney having one of the largest and oldest Jewish communities in Australia, it still took until 2016 for the noble allies in the NSW Liberal Party to be represented by a Jewish MP in Federal Parliament. This glass-ceiling of blue-blooded Christian elitism was finally shattered when sixth-generation Jewish-Australian Julian Leeser was elected as the Member for Bewowra just a couple months before the gays started getting married. A man that seems to be very aware of the extreme culture of racial bigotry that exists within his own party, especially given his decision to stand down as Shadow Attorney-General during Peter Dutton’s blood-thirsty campaigning against the self-determination of Indigenous Australians last year.
While the clear discrimination against Jews by the old boys club of half-arsed Presbyterian and Catholic Liberal party heavyweights is a rather unfashionable brand of antisemitism, it seems that this new envoy would not be doing their job if it wasn’t highlighted.
One shudders to think of some of the remarks that Leeser hears from his own colleagues after a few bottles of Koonunga Hill Shiraz at the Manuka Public Bar.
A special envoy for addressing Islamophobia will also soon be appointed by Albanese, but it probably won;;t be getting a press conference, because things aren’t as bad for them, and haven’t ever really been – not even during the Cronulla Riots.
