The newly minted Jewish Council of Australia may be a product of the Israel-Gaza war but the group of progressive Jewish academics, teachers, writers and lawyers is continuing a long tradition.
“There have always been progressive threads in the Jewish community in Australia,” says the historian Max Kaiser, an executive officer of the council, which he co-founded in February. His grandfather was a member of the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Antisemitism, established in 1942. Before that, from 1928, there was the Jewish Labor Bund in Melbourne, born as an outpost of the largely Yiddish-speaking socialist movement in eastern Europe (and still active).
“At different stages of Australian Jewish history there have been different organisations that have taken up that mantle,” Kaiser says.
The mandate of the new council, led by Kaiser, Sarah Schwartz and Elizabeth Strakosch, all in their mid-30s to early 40s, is to combat antisemitism and racism in Australia – and to provide an alternative perspective to the organisations that claim to represent Australian Jews.
“We came together because of the abject failures of many of our Jewish representative organisations in Australia to truthfully portray the Jewish community as being diverse,” says Schwartz, a human rights lawyer. “[Those organisations have failed] to portray Jewish people who are critical of Israel’s conduct, particularly at this time in Gaza.”
Like Strakosch and Kaiser, she volunteers her time and the group has no external funding.
They say the dominant voices in the Jewish community have come from the conservative Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the umbrella body for state-based representative bodies, and a handful of what they see as rightwing political groups.
The ECAJ adheres to and encourages the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which states in part: “Manifestations [of antisemitism] might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
It is the definition that Strakosch’s workplace, the University of Melbourne, has adopted, raising what the political scientist calls “problematic implications” around academic freedom while weakening the charge of “actual” antisemitism.
“If [antisemitism] gets weaponised to shut down Palestinian voices, it becomes much harder to call out real antisemitism, which I feel is growing in a number of ways,” she says.
Since the terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas on 7 October and Israel’s retaliatory bombardment of Gaza, antisemitic incidents in Australia have multiplied, with the ECAJ recording a 482% increase in the seven weeks after the attacks.
But Strakosch says the harassment of Jews has come from fervent supporters of the Israeli government among the Jewish community as well as from “more blatant and openly violent” neo-Nazis.
At the same time, some Australian Jews have called for a ceasefire in Gaza, reflecting US Jewish movements that are critical of Israel. Jewish groups in Australia including the Tzedek Collective and Jews Against the Occupation have staged sit-ins and protests against war in Gaza – and the council believes the sentiment is growing, particularly among young people.
“Most Jews our age and younger do not read the Australian Jewish News, do not know who the head of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria is, have no real buy-in into those [conservative] institutions,” Kaiser says.
But while the council has also enjoyed what he calls “unexpected” and “overwhelming” support from older people and those who feel they are unable to speak out against Israel publicly, they were prepared for a backlash from the organisations they exist to counter.
In an op-ed for the Jewish Independent (the liberal Jewish platform formerly known Plus61J), Schwartz and Kaiser wrote that Jewish representative leaders had criticised the council – some of whose committee members are descended from Holocaust survivors – in the weeks after its launch.
“One post said the council was formed to deny antisemitism, another said we ‘might as well join Hamas’ and a third, sent to a supporter, said ‘not surprised by your support of the Jew Haters Council of Australia’,” they wrote.
As an unelected voice that does not claim to be representative, the council has spoken out against “the vicious and escalating” assault on Rafah, withdrawal of Unrwa funding and the “moral bankruptcy” of neo-Nazis at a screening of the Holocaust film The Zone of Interest in Melbourne. It strongly supports an immediate ceasefire in Gaza but does not have a formal stance on a two-state solution.
Its advisory committee includes the director of the Adelaide writers’ week, Louise Adler, the academic and Israeli Australian citizen Dr Na’ama Carlin and the publisher and Stella prize co-founder Aviva Tuffield.
There is talk of joining forces with international groups to create a globally connected network of Jewish organisations that support Palestinian freedom, while locally the council plans to work with interfaith groups and politicians.
Strakosch says antisemitism cannot be singled out as a form of racism that is not connected to other forms of it, such as that towards Australia’s Indigenous people.
Kaiser, like his grandfather, is responding to a constantly shifting political landscape. With the ebb and flow of progressive and conservative views of Israel come moments of deep polarisation within the community.
“Particularly around times of war … the right takes up a lot of space,” Kaiser says. “A lot of Jews like ourselves are very, very uncomfortable about that.”
