My Submission to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism

Regular readers will find little here that is new. This is the submission I recently lodged with Australia’s Royal Commission into Antisemitism, published here for transparency and to keep it all in one place. For Australian readers considering making a submission of their own, submissions close on 14 June.

My name is Lucy Tabrizi. I am an independent Australian writer who has spent several years researching and writing about antisemitism, antizionism, propaganda, misinformation, political extremism, and social cohesion.

I didn’t expect to lose life‑long friends over this, or to feel family conversations turn into loyalty tests, but that is what the last two years have brought. People I know, including ordinary Australian Jews, have taken mezuzot off their doorframes, tucked Stars of David under shirts, told their children to hide school emblems, avoided public transport after marches, and asked whether they still belong in this country. For a nation that once prided itself on multiculturalism and tolerance, that is a profound shame.

I have stood on city streets and watched processions dressed as moral crusades chant slogans long tied to anti‑Jewish hostility. I have read posts from people who once campaigned for refugees and animal welfare now sharing claims that Jews are uniquely malevolent, that they control the Australian government, or that Israel’s very existence is a crime to be undone. What chills me most is not only the hostility, but how easily it now passes for compassion among people I know.

What troubles me, however, is not only the rise in hostility, but the collapse of trust. I know Australians who once felt entirely at home here and now think twice before displaying a Jewish symbol, attending a community event, or speaking openly about their identity. A community that feels compelled to make itself smaller in order to feel safe is not a sign of a healthy multicultural society. It is a warning sign, and history suggests we should take it seriously.

Australia is rightly examining incidents of antisemitism. But incidents grow from narratives that make hostility feel moral. History teaches that hatred rarely returns in uniform; it comes wrapped in the language of justice. In Australia today, one of the primary vehicles for anti-Jewish hostility is antizionism: hostility directed at Jewish collective identity and self-determination as well as at individual Jews. Unless we name that framework, we will continue to miss what is happening in plain sight.

We have created a strange split-screen. For years, activists and organisations have branded the world’s only Jewish state as genocidal, apartheid, colonial, or Nazi-like. When Jews are then attacked, the violence is condemned as antisemitism, yet the narratives that made it feel justified are defended as “just criticism of Israel.” We fixate on the perpetrator and ignore the permission structure.

My concern is that Australia increasingly treats antisemitism as a problem of individual offenders while neglecting the narrative environment that licenses, normalises, and rewards hostility.

While individuals define the term differently, antizionism as a political project ultimately seeks the elimination or replacement of the world’s only Jewish state. For that reason, it is qualitatively different from criticism of government policy. It concerns not what Israel does, but whether Jewish self-determination may exist at all.

Its vocabulary (“Zionist entity”), its end-state (dismantlement, not reform), and its lineage (including Nazi and Soviet propaganda) reflect that distinction. Where older antisemitism targeted Jews for existing, antizionism targets Jewish nationhood for existing, using today’s moral keywords (colonialism, apartheid, genocide) as weapons rather than analyses. Only one people is told their collective nationhood is inherently immoral.

Prejudice adapts to the age. Across centuries, Jews have been cast as Christ‑killers, racial contaminants, capitalist exploiters, or communist infiltrators. Today, hostility concentrates on Jewish collective identity and the Jewish state, shielded by the claim that it is merely “criticism.”

Terms such as “genocide” and “apartheid” do not merely describe hostility; they can help generate and legitimise it. They supply a moral frame that makes exclusion feel justified and aggression feel virtuous. Once that lens is in place, every Israeli action becomes evidence of inherent evil, while every counterexample is dismissed as propaganda or exception.

The Soviet Union systematised antizionist propaganda—“Zionism is racism/Nazism”—and exported it; those slogans migrated into international bodies, NGOs, media, and universities, where they evolved into unquestioned assumptions. The vocabulary increasingly overlaps with far‑right hatreds: slurs like “Zio,” Nazi texts and symbols at rallies. To those on the receiving end—Jews—whether hatred wears an armband or a keffiyeh, the function is the same.

In 1968, after the Six‑Day War, communist Poland, aligned with Moscow, mounted an officially “anti‑Zionist” campaign at a time when antisemitism was formally outlawed. Under that cover, it became a purge of Jews. Even fully assimilated Polish Jews with no connection to Zionism were recast as security risks: thousands were fired or expelled from universities and public institutions, removed from the military and civil service, harassed by security services, and pressured to emigrate, often after being stripped of citizenship. In practice, “Zionist” became a stand‑in for “Jew,” detached from any real belief or affiliation. The lesson is not archival: when antisemitism is condemned in name but “anti‑Zionism” is legitimised as moral duty, the label slides from policy disagreement to collective punishment under a respectable banner. We see echoes of this whenever “Zionists” are excluded from campuses, associations, or workplaces as if naming a political category, while Jews bear the burden.

In Australia, we have seen large antizionist marches in our capitals, with chants and banners long associated with anti‑Jewish hostility, praise for violent groups, and depictions of Israel as uniquely genocidal and illegitimate. After October 7, Sydney heard “Khaybar, Khaybar ya Yahud” and “f*** the Jews.” Some organisers later “condemned antisemitism,” without any reckoning that years of portraying Jewish collective identity as uniquely evil help normalise hostility at home. Jews are reclassified as “Zionists,” stripped of individuality, and treated as contaminants to be excluded; violence then becomes the logical conclusion rather than an aberration.

The practical consequence is that many Australian Jews increasingly experience public life as conditional. They are told they may participate only if they denounce Jewish collective identity, distance themselves from Israel, or accept accusations that would never be levelled against any other ethnic or religious community. This creates exclusion without formally calling itself exclusion.

Increasingly, Jewish Australians are expected to answer for the actions of a foreign government in a way no other ethnic or religious group is. They are asked where they stand on Israel before their views on entirely unrelated issues are considered legitimate. The burden of collective responsibility is imposed on them, then denied when they object to it.

We flatter ourselves that we would have recognised hatred in the past. But cruelty rarely returns in the same form; it comes disguised as a crusade for justice. Across the last century, movements that promised liberation ended by making righteousness a licence to harm. Antizionist narratives exploit that weakness by converting the language of justice into a warrant for exclusion and, in time, violence.

Legitimate criticism of Israeli policy is vital in a democracy and must be protected, but it is distinct from antizionism:

• Object vs existence: critique of actions and policies versus rejection of a state’s right to exist.

• Standards: consistent criteria applied to all states versus a double standard applied uniquely to Israel.

• Tropes: evidence‑based analysis versus the recycling of classic antisemitic themes—unique malevolence, conspiratorial control, blood‑libel updates.

• Goals: reform and accountability versus dismantlement, expulsion, or eradication.

Recommendations

1. Recognise narrative harms across government

• Formally acknowledge that anti‑Jewish animus is now expressed primarily through antizionism, directed at Jewish collective identity and self‑determination as well as at individual Jews.

• Issue guidance that identifies existential delegitimisation, discriminatory double standards, and recycled antisemitic tropes when they appear in antizionist language.

2. Refocus education on narrative structures

• Train educators and professionals to recognise recurring antisemitic narratives and the ideological lineage of antizionism (including Soviet and Nazi propaganda), not just historical episodes.

• Teach how “virtue‑wrapped” movements weaponise moral language and how to apply consistent standards across cases.

3. Research misinformation pipelines

• Fund research into how social media and activist networks amplify accusations like “genocide” and “apartheid,” how those claims operate as rhetorical weapons, and how they translate into offline harassment and violence.

• Test counter‑misinformation strategies in Australian contexts and publish effectiveness data.

4. Institutional standards for critique

• Provide universities, media, NGOs, and venues with decision frameworks that separate: a) Policy criticism grounded in facts and consistent standards; from b) Narratives that deny Jewish peoplehood, single out Jewish sovereignty for unique delegitimisation, or recycle antisemitic tropes.

• Link funding and platforming to these standards while protecting genuine academic freedom.

• Require publicly funded institutions to demonstrate that anti-discrimination policies protect Jewish identity and Jewish self-determination on the same basis that they protect other ethnic and national identities.

5. Formal recognition of antizionism as a hate ideology

• Recognise antizionism’s logic of existential condemnation, its propaganda lineage, and its documented role in the persecution and exclusion of Jewish communities.

• Build this recognition into incident tracking, risk assessment, community safety planning, and a dedicated stream for lived‑experience testimony.

If we look only at offenders and incidents, we will keep treating antisemitism as spontaneous and causeless. The stories that make hostility feel moral will continue to spread, unchallenged. Australia can do better: identify the ideology, map the narratives, protect robust policy critique under equal standards for all states, and draw a bright line at the existential delegitimisation of one people’s collective life.

The most dangerous forms of hatred are rarely experienced as hatred by those expressing them. That is why understanding the narrative matters as much as condemning the act.