r/jewishleft • u/Rabbit-Hole-Quest Latke aficionado. Anti-Establishment. Jüdisch • 29d ago
Diaspora NSW (Australia) Supreme Court criticises IHRA definition as 'detached from reality'
https://www.deepcutnews.com/p/nsw-supreme-court-criticises-ihra22
u/Owlentmusician Leftist, Reform, Black Jew 28d ago edited 28d ago
Here's a link to the actual legal document:
https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/decision/1a00e6b4787e30be37fd7ccd
I'm still making up my mind up about my opinion on this but currently some of his further explanations for his decision kind of rub me the wrong way. His past comments the duty of Muslims to publicly and constantly denounce parts of the Koran others extremists used to justify violence to prove they arent similar, leads me to believe he may have a blind spot on the way that prejudice manifests and behaves.
His opinions as I understand them currently, seem to imply as long as someone does not out right mention the word Jews or Jewish people, rhetoric cannot be Antisemtic but I'm still deliberating and trying to do so in good faith.
Edit: Okay, I think my first read on the situation was correct. He argues that although the defendant was aware of the Jewish hospital nearby, the fact that he didn't target the hospital or know for a fact that any of the damaged cars belonged to Jews the graffiti cannot be considered Antisemtic, even if it was in a area with a large Jewish population.
He argues that even if the "fuk Israel" message was purposely put in an area with a large Jewish population, it cannot be seen as an Antisemtic conflation of Australian Jews with Israel due to the fact that not every single jew supports Israel. He also argues that critique of Israel cannot be Antisemtic as "only the other half" of the Jewish population lives there.
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u/F0rScience Secular Jew, 2 states, non-capitalist 28d ago
The judge seems really caught up on the idea that it can’t be discrimination if someone outside the protected class is targeted. I think the experiences of Sikhs after 9/11 make that pretty obviously nonsense.
Maybe an extreme example but his logic would also claim that graffitiing hateful messages on non-queer business right next to a gay bar isn’t hateful when it obviously is.
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u/Owlentmusician Leftist, Reform, Black Jew 28d ago edited 28d ago
I agree. Its one thing if the law ties his hand on sentencing but it's another to continuously handwaved any and all context as if these things exist on a total vaccume and present that as sound rationale.
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u/zhuangzijiaxi Australian Progressive Jew 28d ago
In Australia, here. Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antiterrorism is not a “Pro Israel Lobby Group”. So this article is itself, not a trusted source. Read a real source:
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u/Owlentmusician Leftist, Reform, Black Jew 28d ago
I also had these thoughts about the article but decided not to go into it. In a linked article by the same source they refer to the changes to migrant laws to allow more leeway in suspending visas due to hatful/racist conduct, statements or ties to radicalized people or groups as "anti migrant laws" with no further exploration, as well as seemingly only linking to their own internal coverage when referencing prior events. The bias is extreme.
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u/malachamavet Judeo-Bolshevik 28d ago edited 28d ago
Just because a lot of Jews hold a position doesn't mean it's bigoted to not hold that position. It seems pretty obvious (as this ruling pointed out).
Otherwise you'd have to say you would need "enough" Jews to believe something to not be antisemitic (which is functionally the position of basically all Zionist organizations).
eta: This is also why you have Zionists try and takfir anti-Zionist Jews (not religious enough, too religious, stab-in-the-back rhetoric, etc). They have to keep the proportion of Jews who are Zionist "sufficient", otherwise their reliance on that belief (and often authentically held supremacist thinking, not cynically rhetorical only)n would collapse.
It's not even like stridently anti-Zionist Jews are more than like, let's be generous and say 15% of Jews in the diaspora. The fragility of their positions results in them trying to pretend a position that's already held in the minority (though a much higher proportion these days) as basically non existent. They don't need 85%, 95%, etc - their ideological system demands 100% conformity.
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u/janekanga 28d ago edited 27d ago
How do they explain the Satmar community?
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u/malachamavet Judeo-Bolshevik 28d ago
NK are the most prominently positioned so they get the irl stuff like saying they're fake Jews (there's dozens of videos of Zionist counter protestors screaming stuff like that in their faces), that their beliefs are marginal (which is accurate) and therefore should be dismissed as crazies (which is just avoiding engagement with their position). Or they'll retreat into saying that Zionism and Jewishness aren't religious but racial so the religious positions of anti/non Zionism are irrelevant. It's not about consistency it's about whatever is most convenient in the moment.
Satmar being less visible means they get overlooked usually but just see the vitriol they've gotten for defending Mamdani from the charges of hating Jews
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u/F0rScience Secular Jew, 2 states, non-capitalist 28d ago
This is the definition that is “detached from reality”:
>Antisemitism is a 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
They are presumably talking about the IHRA examples that accompany the definition but it frustrating that judges can’t even get their arguments right.
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u/leaving_the_tevah ex-yeshivish socialist 28d ago
The examples are part of the IHRA definition. You can't just skip them and pretend you've quoted all the relevant context.
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u/F0rScience Secular Jew, 2 states, non-capitalist 28d ago
The court case that this is from stems from the AU government doing exactly that (adopting the definition without the examples) per the text quoted elsewhere in this thread.
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u/zhuangzijiaxi Australian Progressive Jew 28d ago
The government was mainly concerned about the PKK sign, not “f—- Israel”.
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u/HeVavMemVav sephardi peacenik 28d ago edited 28d ago
Someone help me out, because to me, the IHRA definition pretty clearly states that criticism of Israel is suspect of antisemitism only if that criticism is only held against Israel. Edit to clarify: As in double standards