In the history of News Corp holy wars against the company’s ideological and commercial enemies, rarely has there been one with less basis in reality than that being conducted against Human Rights Law Centre legal director and Jewish Council of Australia executive officer Sarah Schwartz.
Over the past week, Schwartz has been attacked across multiple News Corp outlets, right-wing pro-Israel Jewish groups have been pressed into service to criticise her, university vice-chancellors have been forced to apologise for her, and gullible politicians like Labor’s Jason Clare have joined in.
The charge? That Schwartz was antisemitic in her presentation to a comedy debate on bad racism takes, held as part of a Queensland University of Technology symposium on racism. How? Schwartz — who routinely comes under vile antisemitic attacks from neo-Nazis online, and who has worked with pro-Palestinian groups to block recruitment efforts by Nazi groups — put up a slide referring to “Dutton’s Jew”, which she argued is a creation of the opposition leader for his political benefit.
All the tropes of a News Corp holy war have been on display. Multiple articles saying nothing but repeating attacks on the target. Inviting op-ed comment, followed by news articles about the comment and comments on the comment. And the conflation of unrelated issues, such as Schwartz being blamed for the “coordinated humiliation” a Jewish academic claimed he experienced, allegedly at the hands of other delegates at the main symposium event which Schwartz didn’t even attend. And that’s as nothing compared to the online onslaught Schwartz has endured as a result, including vexatious threats to pursue her under the Racial Discrimination Act.
If you actually read Schwartz’s presentation, you’ll see she’s making a thoughtful and well-evidenced point: Jews have long been instrumentalised by political elites for their own purposes: “This idea of Jews as political footballs to be used by the elite ruling class has a long history. Anti-Jewish conspiracies have historically provided elites with a shock absorber, to prevent popular rage from reaching the kings, queens and tsars,” she said in her presentation.
“Dutton’s Jew” is a variant on this instrumentalisation, a construct peddled by the crudely racist Dutton to enable him to attack Labor on national security, to demonise Palestinians as automatically a security threat, and to endorse the industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians inflicted by the Israeli Defense Forces, as part of a broader narrative of Israel as worthy emissaries of Western civilisation fighting the barbaric hordes of the Middle East.
‘Dutton’s Jew’ has really helpfully provided him with a human shield to talk about some of his favourite topics — hating on migrants by invoking Jews and the Holocaust when arguing against taking in Palestinian refugees, protecting everyday Aussies from left-wing anti-war protesters and, of course, opposition to international law and bolstering support for Israel as it commits a genocide.
Sarah Schwartz
Crucially, “Dutton’s Jew” relies on insisting that Australian Jews are monolithically right-wing and pro-Israel, and lack the basic differences — political, social, economic, cultural, religious — that other racial or religious groups share. And it relies on suppressing any Jews who fail to toe the line.
This, of course, is Schwartz’s real crime: demonstrating that many Australian Jews are horrified at the genocide being inflicted on Palestinians, and thus that it is not — contra the Coalition, many Labor politicians, much of the media and the Israeli government — antisemitic to criticise Israel.
Thus, in a wilful misreading of her speech — if they read it at all, rather than watching The Australian’s partial video of it — her critics have had to conjure up a straw man: “Dutton’s Jew” (and the innocuous image accompanying it) is alleged to be a vile, antisemitic portrayal of actual Australian Jews, rather than a political tactic.
In The Australian, Marcia Langton — who should know a thing or two about the way Peter Dutton instrumentalises racial groups — charged Schwartz with contrasting a “good Jew” like herself and a “bad Jew” who she “imagines has lost all agency and is an unwitting puppet of various warmongering masters”. “It was objectively antisemitic in its depiction,” Langton insisted.
Problem is, nowhere does Schwartz mention good Jews or bad Jews. As her speech makes clear, “Dutton’s Jew” is a construct created for political purposes. Only someone who hasn’t read her speech would think otherwise (Langton appears confused about the speech: she dismisses the fact that Schwartz’s presentation was at a comedy debate as Schwartz “claiming” it was “a comedy event”: “Her claim to being satirical is deluded.” If Langton had bothered spending 10 seconds googling, she would see that, indeed, Schwartz was speaking at a comedy event).
The irony of this fabricated campaign against Schwartz is that it’s a perfect example of what she’s talking about: the instrumentalisation of a Jew for political purposes by powerful groups. Schwartz must be demonised and forced out of public debate because she threatens the right-wing narrative. Like other dissenting Jews, she illustrates that one can be proudly Jewish, indeed, to fight hard against antisemitism — harder than many of her critics ever have — and be critical of the Israeli government, to oppose its genocidal actions and the colonialist project of the Israeli right.
To achieve that demonisation and delegitimisation, any tactic is justified — wilful misinterpretation of her statements, conflation of unrelated events and, most of all, the charge of antisemitism, which increasingly is a refined phenomenon that only right-wingers can detect the presence or absence of. Schwartz is an antisemite, but the Nazi-saluting, antisemite-enabling Elon “there is too much focus on past guilt” Musk can’t be.
The intention is exemplary punishment, the fate meted out by News Corp and the right in this country, particularly to women who dare question power. Brittany Higgins is only the most extreme example of how relentless such campaigns can be, aimed at personal and professional destruction. Others who see what has been done to Schwartz will be deterred from speaking out against genocide and colonialism. That’s the point. Free speech must only be used in the service of power, not to ever question it.
Have something to say about this article? Write to us at letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
