Understanding Contested Language

What the term means: Apartheid is a crime defined in international law. It is set out in the 1973 Apartheid Convention and in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It means an institutionalised system of oppression and domination by one racial group over another. It is a legal term with defined elements that can be argued and tested with evidence. It is not a general term of abuse, and it is not a comparison to the Holocaust. Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, to which Australia is a party, separately prohibits racial segregation and apartheid. In its 2024 Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice found that Israel’s legislation and measures in the occupied Palestinian territory breach that article.

How it is used: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation based in Jerusalem, have each published detailed analyses. Each concludes that Israeli policies toward the Palestinian people meet this definition. Several United Nations bodies and human rights mechanisms have reached similar conclusions on the facts. The Israeli government and supporters of Israel contest these findings.

Is it antisemitic? No. A person who says that Israel practises apartheid is making a claim about the conduct of a state, measured against a legal standard. The claim may be correct or incorrect. Either way, its subject is a state, not Jewish people. The term is used in this context by major international human rights organisations, including an Israeli one. A standard that treated the term as antisemitic would describe that work as antisemitic as well.

What the term means: Genocide is the most serious crime in international law. The 1948 Genocide Convention defines it as specified acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The prohibited acts include killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction. Public and direct incitement to commit genocide is a separate crime under the same Convention. The definition turns on these acts and on intent. It is not confined to the methods or the scale of any particular historical case. Genocides have been committed against many peoples, in modern and in ancient history. Acknowledging this does not diminish the Holocaust, the genocide committed against Jewish people in Europe by the Nazis and their collaborators. Like apartheid, genocide is a legal standard with defined elements. It is currently the subject of proceedings before the International Court of Justice.

The current state of the question: South Africa has brought proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention, in relation to its destruction of Gaza. The Court has issued provisional measures, which are binding interim orders. In doing so it found that ‘at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible’. It also found ‘both urgency and a risk of irreparable prejudice to the rights of Palestinians under the Genocide Convention’. It has not delivered a final judgment.

Separately, United Nations investigators and a number of scholars of genocide and international law have published their own assessments. Human rights organisations have reached their own conclusions. In 2025 the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry found that genocide has been committed in Gaza. In the same year the International Association of Genocide Scholars resolved by a large majority that Israel’s conduct meets the legal definition of genocide. Others, including the Israeli government, reject that characterisation.

The charge of genocide is a serious legal question, and it is currently being determined. However, whether genocide is occurring does not depend on a court decision. All states are bound to act to prevent genocide wherever there is a serious risk that it may occur. The International Court of Justice has held that this obligation arises ‘when the State learns, or should normally have learned, of the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed’. The duty to prevent exists precisely so that a state cannot watch and afterwards plead that it was waiting for a court to decide. That is what ‘never again’ commits states to.

Is it antisemitic? No. A person who uses the term ‘genocide’ in relation to Israel’s conduct is taking a position in a serious and current dispute in international law. It is the same dispute now before the International Court of Justice. Taking a position in that dispute, on either side, is participation in a debate. Its subject is the conduct of a state, not Jewish people.

Many of those who use the term are themselves Jewish scholars and organisations. Reputable jurists, United Nations bodies, human rights organisations and independent scholars have all published considered assessments. There is a substantial public record of both conduct and statements of intent. On that basis it is legitimate for members of the public to take a position on whether a genocide is occurring in Gaza. Doing so is an exercise of political judgment on a question of international law. It is not an expression of hostility toward Jewish people.

This is a legal term with a high threshold. Those who use it are making a serious claim, and those who dispute it are entitled to contest it, on the evidence and on the elements of the definition. Neither taking nor disputing the position is, in itself, antisemitism.

What the terms mean: ‘Nakba’ is Arabic for ‘catastrophe’. It is the name Palestinian people give to the events of 1947 to 1949, in which around 750,000 Palestinian people were expelled from or fled their homes. They were terrorised and were trying to escape the war surrounding the establishment of Israel, and they were not permitted to return. ‘Ethnic cleansing’ is the description that many historians, including Israeli historians working from Israeli archives, apply to those events. Aspects of the causes, circumstances and interpretation of these events remain contested. However, the mass displacement of Palestinian people and their exclusion from their homes are established historical facts.

Is it antisemitic? No. When Palestinian Australians speak of the Nakba, they are describing their own family history. The historical debate about 1948 is a matter for historical evidence and argument. Describing the displacement of Palestinian people between 1947 and 1949 is not hostility toward Jewish people.

What the term means: Settler-colonial societies are established through the settlement of an incoming population on territory that is already inhabited. This framework is applied in a large scholarly literature to many countries, including Australia, Canada, the United States, New Zealand and South Africa.

Is it antisemitic? No. Whether the framework describes Israel accurately is a scholarly question, and serious scholars hold different views on it. Applying an established analytical framework to a state is ordinary scholarship. The same framework is routinely applied to Australia in Australian universities and public life. A standard under which it became antisemitic only when applied to Israel would be an example of the differential treatment it is important to avoid.

Some argue that applying the framework to Israel delegitimises the Jewish state and denies Jewish self-determination. However, examining how Jewish self-determination has been pursued, and its consequences for Palestinian people, is not antisemitic.

What the term means: Occupation is the established term in international humanitarian law for Israel’s control of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and, according to the International Court of Justice and the prevailing international legal view, Gaza. In 2024, in an Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice found Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory to be unlawful.

Is it antisemitic? No. Describing territory as occupied, or criticising the occupation, reflects established international legal terminology and does not in itself express prejudice against Jewish people. The International Court of Justice, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations and the Australian Government all use the word.

What it is: BDS is a campaign first called for by Palestinian civil society organisations in 2005. It asks governments, institutions, companies and individuals to withdraw economic and institutional support from Israel until, in the campaign’s terms, it meets specified obligations under international law. Boycott, divestment and sanctions are long-established, non-violent methods of political pressure. They have been directed at many states, and were central to international opposition to apartheid in South Africa.

Is it antisemitic? No. Boycott, divestment and sanctions are ordinary, non-violent forms of political protest directed at a state and its policies. The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism states directly that such measures, in the case of Israel, are not in themselves antisemitic. Choosing not to buy particular goods, or asking an institution to withdraw an investment, is a form of political expression, not hostility toward Jewish people, and in some cases may even be required by international law. Indeed, in its 2024 Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice affirmed that states have a legal obligation not to recognise or assist Israel’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, including by preventing trade or investment relations that help maintain that situation.

When it would be antisemitic: The same test applies. A boycott would be antisemitic if it were directed at Jewish people or businesses because they are Jewish, rather than at the state of Israel, its institutions and people representing it. Refusing to deal with a person because they are Jewish, or targeting a business because its owner is Jewish, is racial discrimination. A boycott of Israeli state institutions, or of individuals or businesses supporting the occupation, is not.

What it is: The cultural and academic boycott is a particular form of BDS. It asks artists, writers, performers, academics and institutions not to take part in certain events, and not to collaborate with certain institutions. The events and institutions in question are those the campaign regards as representing the Israeli state, or as funded by it. It applies until specified international legal obligations are met. In practice, it is the form of boycott most often encountered in Australia, through decisions by writers, festivals, unions and universities.

Is it antisemitic? No. A person may decline to perform at a state-sponsored festival. They may also decline to collaborate with a state institution, or with someone funded by or publicly affiliated with the state of Israel. Each of these is a form of political protest directed at that state and its institutions. It is a form of political expression. It is contested, and people disagree in good faith about whether cultural boycotts are effective. However, that is a disagreement about tactics, not a question of antisemitism.

When it would be antisemitic: Again, the same test applies. If an artist or academic were excluded because they are Jewish, rather than because of their political affiliation or because they represent or are funded by the state of Israel, that would be antisemitic. A person’s Jewish identity is not a legitimate basis for exclusion. Their choice to represent a state institution is a different matter, and one they can be asked about. The distinction is between a person’s identity and their institutional role. The academic boycott is also institutional by design. Its own guidelines are directed at institutions rather than at individuals. For example, they do not ask anyone to refuse collaboration with Israeli academics as individuals, or on the basis of nationality or identity. A boycott that operated on nationality or identity would fail the test. This one does not.

The river is the Jordan and the sea is the Mediterranean. The territory between them is historical Palestine, now Israel and the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza.

What it means to those who use it: The slogan expresses an aspiration that Palestinian people throughout that territory live in freedom and equality. Palestinian analysts and scholarly accounts describe it as a call for liberation and equal citizenship. In this usage it concerns who should be free. It does not mean that Jewish people should be removed or harmed.

Why some people hear it differently: A claim expressed over the whole territory can be understood as excluding the other people who live there. Understanding what the people using it mean requires context. At Australian demonstrations, the slogan is chanted alongside calls for a ceasefire, for equality and for human rights, often by crowds that include Jewish participants. Jewish Australians who attend these demonstrations, including some who take part specifically as Jews, consistently report that the slogan is understood in the sense of freedom and equality.

Two further points assist. First, a closely similar territorial phrase has a long history in Israeli politics. The 1977 founding platform of Likud stated that ‘between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty’. A formulation used in both settings cannot be inherently antisemitic in one and ordinary politics in the other. Second, where Australian law has recently prohibited this slogan, it has prohibited only the opening words, ‘from the river to the sea’. It separates them from ‘Palestine will be free’, the part of the sentence that states what is being called for.

Is it antisemitic? No, not in its usual contemporary usage. Its subject is Palestinian people’s freedom, not Jewish people. As with any slogan, a speaker who clearly intends expulsion or violence can use it in an objectionable way. However, that has to be shown from what a particular speaker has said and done, in context. It is not a property of the words. The claim that the slogan is antisemitic reads it as a demand that Jewish Israelis have lesser human rights, or be expelled, because they are Jewish. That reading gives the words a meaning they do not automatically carry, and that those chanting them reject.

What it means: ‘Free Palestine’ is the most common and most general slogan of the Palestine solidarity movement. It expresses support for Palestinian freedom from military occupation and for Palestinian rights, in the same way that ‘Free Tibet’ or comparable slogans express support for other peoples. It is used by a very wide range of people, including governments and international organisations that support Palestinian self-determination.

Is it antisemitic? No. The slogan calls for the freedom of a people. Its subject is Palestinian people and their rights, and it says nothing about Jewish people. It is one of the plainest examples of ordinary political expression. A call for one people’s freedom is not, in itself, hostility toward another.

What it means: The word ‘Intifada’ is an Arabic word from a root meaning ‘to shake off’. It refers to an uprising against oppression and is used across the Arab world for many kinds of popular mobilisations, including non-violent movements. It is not a synonym for terrorism and does not in itself mean violence, in the same way that the English words ‘uprising’ and ‘revolt’ do not.

The history that shapes how it is heard: The First Intifada in the Occupied Territories (1987 to 1993) was largely a mass civil movement of strikes, boycotts and protest. The Second Intifada (2000 to 2005) included attacks that killed Israeli civilians, and for many Jewish people the word carries that memory. When some Jewish Australians hear ‘globalise the intifada’ as threatening, that response primarily relates to the Second Intifada.

What it means to those who use it: In the international solidarity movement, ‘globalise the intifada’ is used as a call to extend support for the Palestinian cause beyond Palestine, through protest, boycott, sanctions and political pressure. Expert linguistic evidence prepared for Australian legal proceedings in Queensland supports this reading of current usage.

Is it antisemitic? No. Its subject is opposition to occupation, not Jewish people, and its usual contemporary usage is a call for solidarity and protest. A negative reaction to the slogan from some who misunderstand it is understandable. Its actual usage is, overwhelmingly, a call to political action. The claim that it is antisemitic rests on treating ‘intifada’ as a synonym for attacks on Jewish people. That is a claim about what a word means. It can be tested with evidence about how the word is actually used, such as the expert linguistic evidence prepared for the Queensland proceedings.

What it means: This slogan states a position on a long-standing question in political ethics and international law: whether, and how, people under military occupation may resist. International law recognises a right of peoples to self-determination and has long considered the legitimacy and limits of resistance to occupation. The same question has been considered in relation to occupied Europe, colonial rule, and apartheid South Africa. Taking a position on it is a legal and political argument.

Is it antisemitic? No. The slogan makes a claim about occupation by a state. It does not concern Jewish people. The objection to this slogan is more serious than the objections to the slogans above. It is that ‘resistance’ is heard as endorsing attacks on Israeli civilians. The right recognised in international law is a right of a people under occupation. It is bound by the same law that bounds all use of force. It does not extend to attacks on civilians, to hostage-taking, or to the use of weapons that kill and maim indiscriminately. Asserting the right is not asserting a licence to do those things, and it should not be read as though it were. Some speakers do go further and endorse attacks on civilians. Endorsing violence against civilians is wrong, whatever cause is invoked. It is only antisemitic when the people attacked or threatened are targeted because they are Jewish.

What it means: ‘Zionism is racism’ is the argument that Zionism has in practice involved a form of ethnic or national privilege that is inconsistent with full equality for all people. The argument points to a state constitutionally defined as the nation-state of one people, in a territory whose population includes another Indigenous people. It is a structural criticism of an ideology and of a form of state. It is the same kind of argument made about ethnic nationalism in other settings.

Is it antisemitic? No, not in itself. Critics argue that the claim denies Jewish self-determination and the legitimacy of the state of Israel, and so is antisemitic. However, questioning the racial or discriminatory character of a political ideology is not inherently antisemitic. Nor is questioning how that ideology has been theorised, pursued and implemented at the expense of another people. An argument about ethno-national privilege is not racial hatred of Jewish people.

What it means: Anti-Zionism covers a range of positions opposing Zionism as a political ideology. It includes opposition to the establishment or maintenance of a state defined by Jewish national identity or Jewish supremacy. It also includes the rejection of two claims. The first is that Jewish national aspirations are a necessary part of Jewish identity, religion or tradition. The second is that Jewish self-determination can only be realised through an exclusive ethno-national state. Anti-Zionism has a long history within Jewish political and religious thought. It overlaps with other approaches, including post-Zionism, counter-Zionism and non-Zionism.

Is it antisemitic? No, holding anti-Zionist positions is not antisemitic in itself. Critics argue that anti-Zionism denies Jewish self-determination and is therefore antisemitic. Others point to the way anti-Zionism was used during the Cold War to justify antisemitic policies in the Soviet bloc. However, opposition to Jewish statehood is not hostility toward Jewish people. Nor is it necessarily opposition to any form of Jewish self-determination. Historical misuse of anti-Zionism does not mean that people who hold anti-Zionist views on legitimate political grounds are hostile to Jewish people.

An Australian court has spoken directly on this issue. In a 2025 racial vilification case, the Federal Court held that an ordinary, reasonable listener would understand that not all Jewish people are Zionists or supporters of Israel’s actions. It held that criticism of Zionism is criticism of a philosophy or ideology, not of a race or ethnic group. The same judgment found that certain other statements before the court did amount to unlawful racial vilification. That is a reminder that the distinction in discrimination law is real, and that a line exists which a court can identify.

Jewish Australians who take an anti-Zionist position today are part of the community whose protection is at stake. So are the longstanding Jewish anti-Zionist traditions they draw on. Labelling anti-Zionism as antisemitism would characterise those Jewish people as antisemitic. A definition that did so would not reliably protect Jewish people. It would marginalise part of the Jewish community and deny the diversity of Jewish identity and Jewish political belief. That is the opposite of what a definition of antisemitism is for.

What it is: The keffiyeh is a chequered embroidered scarf, most often black and white, that has become a widely recognised symbol of Palestinian identity and of solidarity with Palestinian people. It is a traditional item of dress across the Middle East, and its association with the Palestinian cause dates back many decades.

Is it antisemitic? No. Wearing the keffiyeh expresses Palestinian identity or solidarity with Palestinian people. It is a cultural and political symbol, in the way that a flag or a ribbon is, and it says nothing about Jewish people. Treating the keffiyeh itself as a threatening or hateful symbol mistakes an item of cultural identity for an act of hostility.

What it is: The Palestinian flag is the national flag of the Palestinian people, recognised internationally and flown at the United Nations. Australia recognised the State of Palestine in 2025. Displaying the flag is lawful expression of national identity.

Is it antisemitic? No. A national flag expresses national identity. Flying or displaying the Palestinian flag is an expression of Palestinian identity or of support for Palestinian statehood, both of which are ordinary political expression. It is not hostility toward Jewish people.

What it is: The watermelon shares the red, green, black and white of the Palestinian flag. It is used as a symbol of Palestinian solidarity, particularly online. It came into use at times and in places where displaying the Palestinian flag itself was restricted. It has since become a common shorthand for support for Palestinian people.

Is it antisemitic? No. The watermelon stands in for the Palestinian flag and carries the same meaning: support for Palestinian people. It is among the mildest and most indirect symbols, and it says nothing about Jewish people.

What it is: The red triangle appears in the Palestinian flag. It is also used in footage published by Hamas’s military wing to mark Israeli military forces as targets. Since 2023 it has been used more widely as a symbol of Palestinian resistance and solidarity, including online as an emoji. Like any symbol, it does not carry a single meaning. What matters is how, against whom, and why it is used.

Start with the law: In Australia, threatening violence against a person is a crime, whoever the target is and whatever cause is invoked. So the first question about any use of this symbol is not whether it is antisemitic. It is whether the symbol is being used intentionally to threaten violence against a person or people. If it is, that is unlawful and a matter for the police, whether or not it is also antisemitic. The two questions are separate.

A second legal question sits alongside the first. Commonwealth law makes it an offence to display a prohibited symbol in public. However, the prohibited symbols are specified: the Nazi hakenkreuz, the Nazi double sig rune and the Islamic State flag. The red triangle is not among them. Separate offences apply to supporting or advocating for a listed terrorist organisation, and Hamas is listed in Australia. So where a particular use conveys support for a listed organisation, rather than solidarity with Palestinian people, that raises a question under those provisions. That is a criminal law question. It is a separate question from whether the use targets people because they are Jewish.

When the use is antisemitic: The symbol is antisemitic when it is used to target people because they are Jewish and not for some other reason. The clearest example is its documented use overseas to mark the homes, synagogues and institutions of Jewish people simply because they are Jewish.

Why a person is targeted is the test: The question is not whether a target happens to be Jewish. It is whether the target is chosen because they are Jewish, as distinct from their politics, their support for a state, or their role in an institution.

The right to resist, and its limits: International law recognises that people under occupation have a right to resist. Political argument about resistance to occupation is legitimate expression, not antisemitism. That right is bound by the same law that bounds all use of force. It does not extend to violence against civilians, and it provides no cover for threats or violence directed at people because they are Jewish.

Is it antisemitic? Not in its ordinary use. As part of the Palestinian flag, or as a general expression of solidarity with Palestinian people, the triangle threatens no one and says nothing about Jewish people. In that use it is not antisemitic.

Because the symbol carries a range of meanings, its use in a threatening context is reasonably experienced as menacing, and should be treated seriously. That includes use directed at a specific person or building, or use paired with support for violence. Used on a placard or flag at a demonstration, in the way the watermelon or the Palestinian flag is used, it is a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Without further context, it should not be taken to be a symbol of support for Hamas or of a threat of violence.

What it means: Chants that call for the death or destruction of the Israeli military differ from the language in the entries above, because they can be read in two ways. One is a call to defeat or abolish an institution. The other is a wish for harm to the people in it, rather than a claim about conduct or a call for a freedom. The Israeli military is an institution of a state, not Jewish people. Hostility toward a military institution whose conduct a person regards as unlawful is a recognisable form of political expression.

Is it antisemitic? No. The target of the chant is an institution of the state. The chant is not antisemitic in the sense of racial hostility toward Jewish people. The chant names an army, and an army is an institution of a state. Military service in Israel is compulsory. If naming a conscript army were racial hostility toward the people conscripted into it, no conscript army anywhere could be criticised at all.

Many Jewish people find such chants distressing, in part because most Jewish Israelis serve in the Israeli military through conscription. Others respond that this is the reason the institution, rather than any individual, is named. What can be said is that a chant may be harsh, alienating and ineffective as persuasion without being antisemitic. These are different assessments, and law and public debate should keep them distinct.

Comparisons between Israeli policy and Nazism are the most difficult case.

What it means: A historical comparison between the conduct of states, however extreme or offensive, is on its face a claim about states. The legitimacy of such comparisons has been debated by scholars, including scholars of the Holocaust. Such comparisons are often made for political and rhetorical effect, and they are not automatically antisemitic. Jewish Israelis, including former senior political and military figures, have themselves compared contemporary Israeli policies to those of Nazi Germany. Treating every such comparison as antisemitic would classify at least two groups of people as antisemitic. The first is the Israeli political and military figures who have drawn the comparison. The second is the historians of the Holocaust who debate whether it is apt.

Nazi or Holocaust-related phrases or imagery are sometimes used against Jewish people because they are Jewish, rather than in relation to the state of Israel. Directing Holocaust imagery at a Jewish school or a synagogue because they are Jewish institutions is an example. In those cases the target is Jewish people as a group, and the use is antisemitic.

Is it antisemitic? It depends on the target. A placard comparing a military campaign to historical events is a political claim, and a contestable one. Holocaust imagery directed at a synagogue because it is a Jewish institution is not a political claim.

The word ‘Zionist’ describes a person who holds a political position, and criticism of Zionists in that sense is political expression, as the Federal Court recognised. The word is, however, sometimes used as a substitute for ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish’, and where it is, the substitution is what makes the speech antisemitic. To distinguish between these two uses requires a clear understanding of who is targeted and why, shown by content and context of the speech.

Is it antisemitic? It depends on how the word is used. Where ‘Zionist’ refers to supporters of a political position, for example the policies of the state of Israel, criticism of them is legitimate and is not antisemitic – for example a politician defending settlement expansion, or the advocacy of a pro-Israel group’s leader. Where ‘Zionist’ is used in place of the word ‘Jew’, or used as a term of abuse against all Jews, in phrases such as ‘all Jews are dirty Zionists’, it is antisemitic.

What is being claimed: The formulation has been used to treat certain criticisms of the State of Israel as a denial of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, and therefore as antisemitic. The criticisms in question concern its founding, or its constitutional character.

Why it does not follow: Self-determination in international law is a right held by peoples. It is the right of a people to determine its political status and pursue its economic, social and cultural development. It is not, in law, an entitlement to a separate state, still less a guarantee of a state of any particular character. Moreover, international law is clear that one people’s self-determination cannot be exercised at the expense of another’s.

This has two consequences. First, a person can affirm the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and still argue that the Palestinian people were wronged. The argument may concern the way the state of Israel was established, or the way it is now constituted. Those two positions are not contradictory. Treating them as though they are is a logical error, not a finding of racism. Nor does questioning whether Jewish self-determination requires a separate Jewish state amount, in itself, to denying Jewish people the right to self-determination.

Second, when invoked without regard to equivalent Palestinian rights, the formulation becomes one-sided. Used this way, it does not protect a right – it shields a state from criticism by attaching the language of anti-racism to it.

What this means for the ‘racist endeavour’ phrase. To call the establishment of a state a ‘racist endeavour’ is to make a historical and political claim. It is a claim about how that state came to be and how it treats those within it. It can be supported or contested with evidence, about land, law and the treatment of non-Jewish citizens and residents. Reasonable people, including reasonable Jewish people, take different views of it. Whether or not the claim is correct, making it is not an attack on Jewish people.

Geoffrey Robertson AO KC has addressed this in a legal opinion on freedom of expression. He writes that criticism of the founding circumstances of Israel is vigorously disputed, but that it is not off-limits in a society that values freedom of expression. That includes the view that Israel’s establishment involved ethnic cleansing or colonialism. Its proponents, he writes, are not automatically or even presumptively antisemitic. It follows that advocating a single state for both peoples cannot be treated as antisemitic simply because it declines the premise that the state must remain as constituted. That position has had supporters among Israeli, Jewish and Palestinian people alike.

When it would be antisemitic: The same test applies. The claim is antisemitic where it expresses hostility to Jewish people because they are Jewish. That is the case where it carries the message that Jewish people, uniquely among peoples, may not have collective political life. What makes the difference is the content and context of the claim, not simply its subject or even the speaker’s motivation.

What is being claimed: This framing holds that it is antisemitic to question or reject the claim that Jewish people are indigenous to the land of Israel. The basis given is that Jewish indigeneity is the foundation of the right asserted above.

Why it is used to suppress discussion: The historical and cultural connection of Jewish people to the land is real and long. The difficulty is with how the language of indigeneity is used. ‘Indigenous’ is a contested term when applied to Jewish history. Serious scholars use it on more than one side. Some apply it to Jewish people, some to Palestinian people, some to both, and some question whether the modern category fits either. Requiring one position to pass a test of non-antisemitism closes down a scholarly and political debate. The same framing is used to reject Palestinian claims to the land, which denies Palestinian people the ability to describe their own belonging to it. A framing that settles a genuine historical argument by ruling one side of it racist does not protect Jewish people. It prevents discussion.

How to resolve it: A person may accept the deep Jewish connection to the land and still contest particular claims made in the language of indigeneity. They may also maintain that Palestinian people too belong to that land. Doing either is participation in historical and political argument. It becomes antisemitic where it is used to deny Jewish people’s history and identity – for example, the claim that Jewish people have no connection to the land at all. That targets Jewish people because they are Jewish, whatever reason is given. The line, again, is who is being targeted and why.

Defining antisemitism accurately protects Jewish people from genuine hatred and harm. The same precision protects Palestinian people from being silenced. These are not competing goals but two results of the same careful work, and getting the definition wrong damages both.

When the definition is drawn too broadly, the charge of antisemitism is attached to ordinary Palestinian people’s speech. That charge is one of the most serious that can be made against a person. Criticising the actions of the State of Israel, opposing Zionism as a political ideology, and advocating for Palestinian rights are political expression, not hatred of Jewish people. Australian courts have confirmed that this speech is lawful. An over-broad definition treats it as suspect anyway.

Palestinian people can then be discouraged or prevented from speaking about historical facts. Examples include naming the Nakba, describing what has happened to their own families, and expressing their culture, for example by wearing the keffiyeh. They also include expressing a political view, or asserting an entitlement to the same rights and freedoms as everyone else. When a definition made in the name of protecting Jewish people places another people’s factual account of their own history out of bounds, it has stopped identifying antisemitism. It has begun to operate as a form of anti-Palestinian racism. The examples that follow, in Germany, in Queensland and elsewhere, show this happening in practice.

The harm is not only in what is prohibited. It is also in the suspicion that comes before it. When any criticism of Israel risks being recast as antisemitism, Palestinian people’s voices are doubted before they have spoken. Palestinian people are in effect asked to prove that their humanity, their history and their claim to equal rights pose no threat to others. No community should carry that burden as the price of speaking, and a definition that imposes it does not protect anyone. Naming this misuse of the antisemitism charge is not the same as minimising antisemitism. Protecting Jewish people and protecting Palestinian people depend on the same accurate definition.

Germany has applied the approach of treating criticism of Israel as antisemitism more comprehensively than any other democracy. Since 2017 the German state has adopted the IHRA working definition of antisemitism across government. Parliamentary resolutions have declared the boycott movement antisemitic and withdrawn public funding from organisations regarded as questioning Israel’s right to exist. Citizenship applicants are now required to affirm Israel’s right to exist. Domestic intelligence has classified a non-violent political movement as a suspected extremist threat.

On the evidence of Germany’s own monitoring institutions, these measures have not reduced antisemitism. Germany’s principal civil-society monitor is the Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism, known as RIAS. It recorded an increase in antisemitic incidents of 77 per cent in 2024, and the highest level in the post-war period. The measures have, however, had other effects. The CIVICUS Monitor, which rates civic freedoms worldwide, downgraded Germany from ‘narrowed’ to ‘obstructed’ in December 2025. Among its reasons it cited the suppression of pro-Palestinian expression. United Nations human rights experts called on Germany to end the criminalisation of peaceful solidarity activism. German Jewish organisations critical of Israel have had bank accounts frozen, events cancelled and members arrested at peaceful protests. Each of these measures was presented as combating antisemitism. Jewish organisations in more than 20 countries jointly stated that Germany’s approach narrows Jewish life to a single issue, the state of Israel. German police statistics attribute more than 90 per cent of antisemitic offences to the far right.

Australia has begun to apply the same approach. In March 2026 the Queensland Parliament amended the Criminal Code. The amendment prohibits the public use, display or publication of two phrases: ‘from the river to the sea’ and ‘globalise the intifada’. The maximum penalty is 2 years’ imprisonment. The amendments were introduced late in the parliamentary process, with 7 days allowed for consultation. The speaker’s intention is not an element of the offence. The test is whether the words are used in a way that might reasonably be expected to cause a member of the public to feel menaced, harassed or offended. That is an objective question about the manner of use, not about what the speaker meant. A reasonable excuse is available as a defence once a charge has been laid.

Within weeks, the consequences became apparent. At a peaceful demonstration in Brisbane in April 2026, 22 people were arrested for using words, rather than for violence, threats or damage to property. They were held for several hours. Among those arrested and charged were Jewish Australians. One was a 73-year-old clinical psychologist and the child of Holocaust survivors. He was charged over a shirt reading ‘Jews for a free Palestine from the river to the sea’. He was also charged over a speech in which he advocated harm to no one. A law introduced to protect Jewish people had, within a month, been used to charge a Jewish Australian for expressing his conscience in public.

Constitutional experts have assessed these laws as vulnerable to challenge under the constitutional implied freedom of political communication. Their reasoning is that it is not clear the prohibited phrases meet any threshold of incitement. The broader point concerns consequences rather than drafting. Once Palestinian political vocabulary is treated as inherently antisemitic, the measures that follow are prohibitions, arrests and detention. They fall on protesters, on Palestinian people describing their own aspirations, and on Jewish people who support them.

The same pattern appears elsewhere. The European Legal Support Centre has documented many cases across the United Kingdom, Germany and Austria in which the IHRA working definition was used to investigate or penalise expression. Those affected were academics, students, artists and journalists. A study of 40 cases at United Kingdom universities found that no allegation was ultimately upheld by the courts. Those accused still experienced months of investigation and reputational harm. In the United States, courts have found that applying such definitions to campus expression breached constitutional protections. An employment tribunal in England found the dismissal of an academic for anti-Zionist views to be unlawful discrimination.

The most significant effect is one that does not appear in any complaint. For each person formally investigated, many others decide not to speak, to organise or to publish, in order to avoid the risk of an allegation. Those others are particularly Palestinian people speaking about their own history, and Jewish people who dissent from established communal positions. No complaint is recorded, but the effect on expression is real.

Public concern about antisemitism is informed by numbers: incident counts, survey results and measures of online activity. Some of these describe real and serious matters. Data on antisemitism is, however, easy to misread, and four distinctions help in reading it accurately:

• Different kinds of evidence: Verified incidents, perception surveys and online content measure different things, and careful reporting keeps them separate. Figures that combine them, or that scale small self-selected samples to national totals, can appear precise while being very misleading.
• Severity matters: A count in which a serious assault and an offensive sticker are each recorded as one incident does not convey what a reader needs to know. Before drawing conclusions from the size of a total, it helps to ask how that total is composed.
• Online visibility is not prevalence: Online platforms amplify some content by design, and a small number of accounts can generate a large volume of hostile material. Volume measures amplification rather than the distribution of views across the population.
• Correlation is not cause: Incident counts in Australia rose during a period that also saw large demonstrations concerning Israel, and it is sometimes suggested that the demonstrations caused the antisemitism. The same period saw sustained news coverage, online amplification and far-right activity, and, where attribution data exists, it points away from the demonstrations. The relevant question is who is committing antisemitic acts.

None of this diminishes what accurate data shows: real antisemitic incidents are occurring and are causing real harm to Jewish Australians. It is because the reality is serious that measurement should be careful. Figures that are inflated or combined are of little use to those seeking to address antisemitism, and are readily dismissed by those inclined to minimise it.

If prohibiting slogans does not reduce antisemitism, it is fair to ask what does. Research on how prejudice develops into violence identifies a consistent set of drivers. That research draws on comparative history, genocide studies and criminology. The drivers are the political scapegoating of minorities, discrimination embedded in institutions, economic insecurity and social fragmentation, online environments that spread conspiracy claims, and the breakdown of solidarity between communities. Low-level prejudice exists in every society. These conditions are what turn it into organised hostility and violence.

The same research points to what is effective. Enhance civil protections against racism. Teach about antisemitism and its history, as part of teaching about all forms of racism. Hold online platforms accountable for amplifying hostile content. Address the social and economic conditions in which extremism develops. And, consistently across settings, build solidarity between communities, so that each community’s safety is treated as a shared concern. It is this solidarity that approaches based on the conflation of Jewish people with Israel tend to weaken. They do so by presenting Jewish safety and Palestinian freedom of expression as opposed. The next page sets out what a solidarity-based approach involves.