Curious Christian

The hearings of the Bondi antisemitism Royal Commission have highlighted something that deeply concerns me: the growing conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. I absolutely oppose antisemitism, just as I oppose any discrimination on the basis of race, culture, or religion. Jewish people should never be targeted, threatened, or made to feel unsafe because they are Jewish. But I am increasingly concerned that our public discourse is collapsing important distinctions in ways that are dangerous for everyone involved.

One danger is that the label of antisemitism can be used so broadly that it shields the Israeli government from legitimate moral and political criticism. The ABC reported that Commissioner Virginia Bell acknowledged submissions warning that definitions of antisemitism could be “weaponised in order to suppress criticism of Israel.” Criticising a government is not the same thing as hating a people. Christians especially should understand this distinction. The biblical prophets fiercely criticised the kings and rulers of Israel, not because they hated Israel, but because they believed no nation stands above moral accountability before God. When criticism of Israeli policy is automatically treated as antisemitism, genuine moral debate becomes harder, fear increases, and public trust erodes.

But there is another danger moving in the opposite direction: Jews around the world are increasingly being treated as though they are personally responsible for the actions of the Israeli state. This too is profoundly unjust. The ABC hearings included testimony from Jewish Australians describing fear, intimidation, and the sense that they were being reduced to symbols of a foreign conflict. Jewish Australians are not extensions of a foreign government. Many do not support the policies of the current Israeli administration; many hold a wide range of political views. To target Jewish people for what Israel does is a form of collective guilt that should alarm anyone concerned with justice. Jesus consistently rejected this kind of moral shortcut. He refused to reduce people to tribal categories and warned against judging entire groups as though they shared a single moral identity.

This is why the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism is so dangerous. Once Jews become indistinguishable from the Israeli state, criticism of Israel can easily spill over into hostility toward Jewish people. But once criticism of Israel is automatically labelled antisemitic, people become afraid to speak honestly about war, nationalism, power, and justice. In both directions, the result is the same: truth becomes harder to pursue, and people become trapped in rival identity camps rather than seeing one another as human beings made in the image of God.

Perhaps one of the questions Christians especially need to ponder is this: have we become so captive to tribal thinking that we can no longer distinguish between loving a people and defending a state, between opposing hatred and avoiding accountability, between protecting the vulnerable and protecting power? Jesus never called his followers to abandon truth for the sake of tribal loyalty. He called us to love our neighbour, refuse partiality, and hunger for righteousness even when it unsettles our own side.

Source: ABC News coverage of the Bondi antisemitism Royal Commission