The publishing of a Jewish creatives WhatsApp group chat and the contact details of alleged participants has led to death threats and forced one family into hiding, Labor MP Josh Burns has said.
Writer and commentator Clementine Ford on Thursday published a link on her Facebook page to the log of a group chat of over 600 Jewish writers and artists. The Age, which first reported the story, alleged the link also contained a spreadsheet of links to social media accounts and another file that contained the photos of over 100 Jewish people.
Ford was not the only person to have shared a copy of the log, but she said it was to provide her 239,000 followers with an insight into “how coordinated efforts are to silence Palestinian activists and their allies” via a transcript of the leaked chat.
“This is a group of ‘creatives’ working to silence voices calling for Palestinian liberation,” she said.
Both the Bitly link and the host site for the document had removed the log at the time of reporting, on privacy grounds.
Burns, who is the federal MP for Macnamara, said it was “very distressing” to see people’s contact information be posted online
“This is beyond the sort of trivial social media posts that some people are putting up,” he said. “This has resulted in really serious consequences where people have received death threats.”
Burns said he had been in contact with a family who had to go into hiding after receiving an “avalanche of threats” and had to switch off devices and move to a different location.
“They were completely shattered by this whole experience, where … a sort of lynch mob of people were attacking them,” he said.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s co-chief executive, Alex Ryvchin, said there was “shock and disbelief” that a list of the names of Jews was being drawn up.
“We call on our fellow Australians to resist the harassment and bullying, and when asked to sack or blacklist Australian Jews, to say not in our time and not in our country,” he said.
A spokesperson for Victoria police confirmed it is investigating earlier reports of the personal details of people who belong to a private social media chat group appearing to have been released online.
Guardian Australia has not verified the other documents, but has seen the purported log of the chat, which are believed to be the same as those posted by Ford and others, albeit without the social media details of the members of the group.
The chat includes members of the group, similar to the Lawyers for Israel group, encouraging contacting Ford’s publisher and others in the media over coverage of Israel and Palestine and the response to the leaked WhatsApp chats for Lawyers for Israel and its alleged campaign to oust journalist Antoinette Lattouf from a casual on-air role at the ABC.
Guardian Australia has contacted Ford.
The president of the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network, Nasser Mashni, said APAN was concerned by purpose of the WhatsApp group saying it appeared to be focused on targeting and “attempting to silence” people speaking out on Palestine.
“Palestine supporters from a range of backgrounds have been targeted for months, sometimes leading to job losses, sometimes resulting in threats to people’s physical safety.”
One of the former members of the group, journalist Ginger Gorman, said in a statement published on X she joined the group after the 7 October attack on the understanding it was a Jewish creative group about human rights. She said she muted the group and only viewed it occasionally, and missed what she said was bullying and harassment in the group and the targeting of public personalities.
She said once she became aware, she left the group before it was mentioned in the media. She said she condemned the bullying and harassment of anyone.
“Now that I am aware of what was happening in this group, I want to apologise to those who were victimised or targeted. You didn’t deserve this,” she said.
But Gorman said she and her family were the target of online abuse and threats due to being a member of the group.
“Personally, I support all calls for a ceasefire. Innocent civilians should not be targeted and killed,” she said.
Burns defended the members of the group organising together to express their views.
“There’s been a number of groups where some have been really focused on defending the Jewish community against attacks. And I don’t think it’s true to say that they have been focused on shutting down Palestinian voices,” he said.
“We have to be very careful about attributing some sort of sinister motivation with democratic activity.”
He said encouraging letter-writing is different to publishing someone’s personal information in a public arena and defended the group chats.
“I don’t have any issue with people in any organisation and any who were involved in any part of this conversation or any other conversation to associate with one another,” he said.
“That’s one of the fundamental rights of being an Australian is to be able to freely associate with your fellow citizen, and to come together and express your view.”
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told Radio 3AW it had been a real tragedy that there had been rising social disharmony, and while people had strong views about the conflict it was unacceptable that people do not feel safe in their communities.
“It’s not the Australia I want to see,” he said.
“The great thing about our country is we can be a microcosm for the world. And by and large we are a peaceful country – we live in harmony.
“The great thing is that people whether they be Catholic or Jewish, or Hindu, or Buddhist or Muslim, live side by side and enriched by the diversity which is there and that’s a sort of Australia but I want to see.”
Lattouf’s unlawful dismissal case with the ABC returns to the Fair Work Commission on Tuesday.
