{"id":266351,"date":"2026-08-27T04:39:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T04:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/266351\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T04:39:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T04:39:18","slug":"nsw-court-draws-a-line-between-criticism-of-israel-and-antisemitism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/266351\/","title":{"rendered":"NSW court draws a line between criticism of Israel and antisemitism"},"content":{"rendered":"

A landmark NSW Supreme Court ruling challenges attempts to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark<\/a>.<\/p>\n

THE TERM \u201cantisemitism\u201d is now so commonly used as an accusation as to be beyond questioning.\u00a0This is particularly so in countries claiming some protections for free speech or lawful assembly. Use that term to your heart\u2019s content and stifle discussion.<\/p>\n

Carry a placard accusing Israeli policy of genocidal propensities \u2014 antisemitic. Raising the issue of dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israeli authorities \u2014 antisemitic. Mention specific slogans, some used with full-throated approval by Israeli Zionists themselves \u2014 antisemitic.<\/p>\n

But an interesting New South Wales Supreme Court decision<\/a>, delivered by Justice Desmond Fagan<\/a>, restores much-needed and merciful balance. Put it simply, not all acts directed at Israel or unflattering views held about that country, however crudely framed, carry the antisemitic streak.<\/p>\n

The acts in question in the case before Fagan were certainly crude. The 22-year-old Mohommed Farhat<\/a> had been a vandal for hire, defacing parked motor vehicles (nine in total) and the walls of various buildings (four in total) in the eastern Sydney suburb of Woollahra using spray paint. His November 2004 acts featured slogans including \u2018PKK\u2019, \u2018PKK coming\u2019 and \u2018Fuk Israel\u2019. A vehicle was also set alight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Jillian<\/a><\/p>\n

It transpired that $4,000 had been given to Farhat to execute his acts of arson and graffiti, including a complement of drugs. The recruiter also suggested the wording used in the vandalism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On pleading guilty, Farhat was given a term of imprisonment of a year and eight months by the NSW Local Court Magistrate Scott Nash<\/a> on 18 November 2025. Important in this case was the use of powers available to the State Government under the Terrorism (High Risk Offenders) Act 2017 (NSW)<\/a> to deem an offender an \u201cunacceptable risk\u201d in committing a serious offence in the event of being released on parole.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Farhat would have been eligible for release after ten months, but for the concerns of the Corrective Services, which deemed him a \u201cnational security risk\u201d inmate in January this year. The State then requested an extended supervision order of a year\u2019s duration with 55 attached conditions. The proceedings, taking place over four days of hearings, centred on whether Farhat\u2019s crimes could be regarded as posing such a risk.<\/p>\n

While Fagan delivered his decision on 30 July, the reasons were published on 17 August. In his reasons<\/a>, a controlling factor for Fagan was the Federal Court case of Wertheim v Haddad (2025)<\/a>, where Justice Angus Stewart<\/a> postulated what \u2018the reasonable, ordinary listener\u2019 would understand as being said in the context of critiquing Israel and Zionism. Depending on the context, such a reasonable person could \u2018understand that not all Jews are Zionists and that disparagement of Zionism constitutes disparagement of a philosophy or ideology and not a race or an ethnic group\u2019.<\/p>\n

It also followed that political criticism directed at Israel \u2018however inflammatory or adversarial, is not by its nature criticism of Jews in general or based on Jewish racial or ethnic identity\u2019.<\/p>\n

Fagan reasoned that such phrases as \u2018Fuk Israel\u2019 could only be considered antisemitic as \u2018dictated… according to established common usage in Australia\u2019. He found that Farhat had not intended to \u2018express hatred of Jews\u2019. Slogans such as \u2018Fuk Israel\u2019, construed objectively, were \u2018crude expressions of political hostility to the state of Israel\u2019, a \u2018curse against a foreign state\u2019.<\/p>\n

They were \u2018not antisemitic according to the ordinary understanding of that concept in the Australian community\u2019. It also did not matter that the graffitied slogans had been made in a locality with a high proportion of Jewish residents: this did \u2018imbue the curse with an antisemitic character\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"Royal<\/a><\/p>\n

The judgment also gave the definition of antisemitism so treasured by the Australian government, most state governments and their agencies, and the Special Envoy for Antisemitism Jillian Segal, a frightful dressing down.\u00a0 The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA<\/a>) definition deems antisemitism to be \u201ca certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and\/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

This semantic spray did not impress Fagan. With bracing clarity, he stated<\/a> that the text was \u2018so verbose and imprecise that it could not realistically be attributed to the ordinary, reasonably informed member of the Australian public\u2019.\u00a0It was unclear what a \u2018certain perception\u2019 was. Might it manifest \u2018in the expression of some other, less egregious, sentiment towards Jews and, if so, what?\u2019<\/p>\n

The inclusion of \u2018non-Jewish individuals\u2019 was also baffling and \u2018counterintuitive\u2019, as was the lack of limits to the notion of which \u2018rhetorical [or] physical manifestations\u2019 might amount to antisemitism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Justice was far from alone in making remarks about the shoddy formulation. He noted the views<\/a> of Sir Stephen Sedley<\/a>, a former judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales who accepted the proposition that the\u00a0IHRA\u00a0failed \u2018the test of any definition: it is indefinite\u2019.<\/p>\n

Fagan also drew<\/a> on the critical submission by the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA<\/a>) to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion<\/a>, established in response to the Bondi terrorist attack<\/a> of 14 December 2025:<\/p>\n

\u2018Discussion of the IHRA wording and adoption of it by some institutions does not change the established meaning of a word that has been in use in the English language for 150 years.\u2019\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Many of the submissions made to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee informing its October 2024 report on the Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024 (No. 2)<\/a> also noted the conflation of \u2018political criticism of Israel with antisemitism\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"Curated<\/a><\/p>\n

The IHRA definition was, the judgment asserted, not intended to give effect to common understandings of antisemitism but aimed at furthering another goal:<\/p>\n

\u2018Its tendency and the apparent purpose of promoting it, is to graft onto the community\u2019s abhorrence of antisemitism, understood as hostility to Jews for their Jewishness, a parasitic rejection of protest against Israel.\u2019<\/p>\n

Such a rejection refused to acknowledge the public repudiation by a majority of Australians of Israeli policies (a Pew Research Centre poll<\/a> from 4 June 2026 found that 79 per cent had an unfavourable view of that country) reflecting a \u2018humanitarian reaction to Israel\u2019s genocide of the Gazans since 7 October 2023, the livestreaming of which to mobile handsets would be difficult to ignore\u2019.<\/p>\n

It followed that any assertion that 79 per cent of Australians might be \u2018antisemitic because they disapprove of Israel\u2019s treatment of the Palestinians\u2019 was bound to be \u2018preposterous\u2019.<\/p>\n

Justice Fagan was convinced<\/a> that the state had not made the case \u2018that the defendant poses an unacceptable risk of committing a serious terrorism offence if not subject to extended supervision\u2019. What mattered was whether he might succumb to using \u2018illicit drugs and lower order crime\u2019; there was no evidence that Farhat had been \u2018politically radicalised\u2019.<\/p>\n

Beyond court proceedings, there have also been broader concerns that Farhat\u2019s case has seen fiddling on the part of NSW Police.<\/p>\n

\"Antisemitism<\/a><\/p>\n

Greens MP Sue Higginson<\/a> wrote\u00a0<\/a>to the NSW oversight body, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\u2018The material failure of police to provide critical evidence to the court has resulted in Mr Farhat\u2019s prolonged and quite possibly wrongful incarceration, as well as serious errors of fact and law.\u2019<\/p>\n

Fagan\u2019s reasons provoked howls of protest from the offices of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ<\/a>). This was a dangerous example of judicial \u2018activism\u2019 that avoided \u2018the community impact\u2019. (Presumably a judge favouring an aggressively wide interpretation of antisemitism, one armouring and fortifying Israeli policy from scrutiny, would not be entertaining activism.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

The co-chair of the ECAJ,\u00a0Alex Ryvchin<\/a>, \u00a0groaned<\/a>\u00a0on Sky News:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite extraordinary [given] where we are as a society, as a country, globally with antisemitism, that we\u2019re still being dragged back to these foundational discussions about is and what isn\u2019t antisemitism.\u201d <\/p>\n

Jamie Hyams<\/a>, director of public affairs at the Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC<\/a>),\u00a0chastised<\/a> Fagan for appearing \u2018to range a long way past the question the court had to decide, into contested questions of history, politics and international law on which his honour appears to have had no independent expert evidence\u2019.\u00a0Such expert evidence, it would seem, can only be sought by those sacred sources approved by a select cartel, one sympathetic to Israeli policies, whatever their import.<\/p>\n

The authorities in NSW have shown what can only be contempt for Justice Fagan\u2019s ruling that Farhat had been subject to a \u2018serious miscarriage of justice\u2019. The commissioner for corrective services, Gary McMahon<\/a>, had already intervened last December to have the parole order revoked without a hearing from the defence team, a nasty denial of natural justice that should provoke further comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The parole authority\u2019s 24 August decision also refused to acknowledge<\/a> the ruling and the reasons by Farhat that he had been a vandal for hire: he would be kept in prison as \u2018the offending was reflective of a deep-seated adherence on the part of the offender to an extremist ideology of an antisemitic character\u2019. The purported ignorance of the meaning of the phrases used was also rejected. It follows that this miscarriage of justice, and the project of inoculating Israeli policy from stern and valid criticism, continues.<\/p>\n

Dr\u00a0Binoy Kampmark<\/a>\u00a0was a Cambridge Scholar and is a lecturer at\u00a0RMIT University<\/a>. You can follow Dr Kampmark on Twitter\u00a0@BKampmark<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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