Fighting Antisemitism and Winning

Given the widespread rise in blatant anti-Semitism around the world following Hamas' medieval massacre of innocent civilians attending a music festival, one has to wonder why it was allowed to persist. After all, in every Western democracy, while citizens have a right to protest, there are a whole swag of laws to ensure that such protests are civil. There are laws protecting property, against physical violence and against hate speech and discrimination.  Many of the demonstrations have clearly violated these, but have had no response from the police.  As a consequence, anti-Semitism has become 'mainstream'. If you do not enforce a law, then it is not the law.

Just on the past weekend, the Glastonbury music festival had a shameful episode where one of the acts had the audience chanting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hate-speech ..." death, death to the IDF" was chanted by most of the thousands of youth attending the event. 

This shameful episode reminded me the mass rallies in Nazi Germany with Hitler exhorting vile anit-semitism to an adoring crowd. 

So, how can this evil be fought? Australia's Jewish community may have found one way to fight back. They took one of the radical Islamic hate preachers to court under Australia's discrimination act, which rather too broadly criminalises racial vilification. The preacher, whom I shall not name,  had presented vile anti-Semitic sermons and had these circulated on the internet for years. Indeed, following complaints from the community, the Australian state and Federal police had studied the material to determine if hate speech laws had been broken. They had decided not to charge him. Why? The better option is that they thought the laws were not adequate, but possibly, and far worse, they did not want to rock the boat, starting some inter-ethnic conflict by charging a Muslim preacher. 

This same inaction has been evident for increasingly blatant anti-Semitic acts in Australia's capital cities.  These included weekly demonstrations with violent chants, intrusions into the Jewish communities, graffiti, vandalism, and even burning synagogues and the offices of Jewish members of parliament. All in all, it was a rather terrible period for Australia's Jews. 

It was this increasingly violent antisemitism AND the failure of police to act to prevent it, that forced the Jewish community to initiate action under the Racial Discrimination Act.

The judgment was rendered today, with the preacher found guilty. This is a welcome result for all Australians, including peace-loving Muslim Australians, as it establishes a punishment for blatant hate speech. The ruling requires the preacher to pay substantial costs and commit to removing all offensive material from circulation, as well as not to reoffend. It may also prompt the police to reconsider their failure to act and enforce the law in the future. 

This type of action should be taken by all Jewish communities around the world to fight back against the hate speech they have had to face. 

Here is a brief summary of the final judgment by Australia's Channel 10

 https://youtu.be/1vdt9OkbH8w?si=jAwUeTa4m2m40lrK