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Yet there is also a large body of Islamic teaching that points in a different direction. The Koran refers to Jews and Christians as ahl al-kitab, People of the Book who are close to Muslims and may not need to convert to Islam to ascend to heaven. Mohammad himself married a Jewish woman, and the Koran speaks at length of Bani Isra’el, the Children of Israel (known similarly as Bnei Yisra’el in Hebrew), retelling many stories from the Torah including those of the prophets Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon.
Deradicalisation programs overseas have shown that Islam itself can be an effective tool to steer radicals away from extremism when a credible religious counter-argument is presented. Alongside policing and intelligence work, there is value in supporting approaches that strengthen contextual religious literacy, including teaching about the Jewish roots and references within Islamic scripture and history, and in expanding meaningful contact between Muslim and Jewish Australians.
Politically speaking, cracking down on Neo-Nazis would be a much simpler affair, particularly for Labor-led federal and state governments, which rely on large Muslim constituencies in a number of crucial seats.
Neo-Nazi antisemitism has its roots in the blood libels of medieval Europe, witness to centuries of state and Church-sanctioned pogroms against Jews justified by Christian scripture, papal edicts, hateful conspiracies and old-fashioned economic opportunism. It is from this Eurocentric ideology that many familiar antisemitic tropes have sprung, including white supremacist ideas about Jews sullying European racial and cultural purity.
The Islamist threat may be predominant; however, the dangers posed by neo-Nazi ideology should not be underestimated. We can’t forget what happened when the antecedents of the current neo-Nazi movement held power in Europe. Neo-Nazi groups have brazenly asserted their presence in recent years in a series of violent protests including on the steps of both the Victorian and NSW parliaments. There is talk of a neo-Nazi political party running at the next election. Allowing neo-Nazi ideology to spread poses not only a danger to Australia’s Jewish community but also to our migrant communities and other groups including Indigenous and queer Australians.
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A third grouping also exists that is far more ideologically nebulous and tricky to delineate. These are individuals whose extreme anti-Israel views have crossed the line into anti-Jewish sentiment, and for whom any distinction between diaspora Jews living in countries like Australia and the actions of the Israeli government has long since disappeared.
The vast majority of pro-Palestine protesters do not fall into this camp. Most are rightly horrified at the deplorable situation in Gaza, including the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent women and children. There is nothing antisemitic about opposing Israel’s conduct of the war or Israeli government policy.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s clumsy attempts to blame Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian state for the Bondi terror attack undermined the position of Australia’s Jews, who have long decried efforts by an antisemitic fringe within the protest movement to label all Jews as “Zios” who are somehow complicit in Israel’s war, or even its very existence.
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This slippery iteration of antisemitism, located on the outer edge of the progressive left, borrows from both Islamist and neo-Nazi tropes and adds them to a smorgasbord of far-left grievance: A preoccupation with settler-colonialism, wonky parallels with Indigenous suffering, shallow moral frameworks of oppressor and oppressed. The result is a fluid and combustible ideology that has proven devilishly hard to police.
Australians would be forgiven for being totally bamboozled by the sheer volume of policy and legislation being thrown at antisemitism all at once from various levels of government.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution. What we need is keyhole surgery, not the kitchen sink. Governments must go after the specific groups that threaten the safety of Jews or have worked to bring antisemitism into the mainstream. We should not be afraid to identify them openly.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert is an academic, author and a regular columnist.
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