Greenblatt’s warning and the same old noise
Most Australians have Israel fatigue. No stark warning or Royal Commission will change it.
Top US Jewish leader, Anti-Defamation League chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt, was in Australia to visit the site of the December 2025 antisemitic terror attack at Bondi Beach (in which 15 people were killed), express international Jewish solidarity with the Australian Jewish community, and highlight the sharp rise in antisemitism in Australia.
Greenblatt lands at a shitty time for Australia, where it feels like political and media narratives are spiralling away like a runaway train – a country caught between the acceleration of a drastic global change, going full steam into AUKUS, leaning in unconditionally into the ideology of the Trump White House and the crumbling legacy of the US-led rules-based order that holds the skeletons of millions of dead. And that means Zionism.
Meeting with Archibald people’s choice portrait subject and Australian Zionist champion Alex Ryvchin, Greenblatt, speaking from the Bondi massacre site, took a swing at the Albanese government: “And indeed, we wondered from afar, where was the Australian government?” Aside from the billions spent on institutional and operational protections, the legislative and regulatory measures, the creation of a special envoy, or the additional funding for Jewish community security and support. And aside from a tiny cohort that agrees with him, Greenblatt’s words rang a bit cheeky all things considered.
With this discourse becoming such an odd reality, you could be forgiven for thinking the country has felt a bit off over the past few years. Midway through a Royal Commission into antisemitism and social cohesion, three years into supporting Israel in its current trajectory, and you can barely recognise the sleepy island continent of Australia. Since the events of October 7, when a small colonial state on the other side of the world has conducted a genocide and ordered its powerful supporters around the globe to rattle the cage of global discourse with the aim of ensuring it will continue, our society has been thrown on its head.
The Prime Minister Anthony Albanese keeps saying that Israel is far away, that Australians are interested in policy closer to home – but most of his bipartisan mates flown there on paid-for junkets — and many of his policies and political positions have involved Zionist overlaps. Albanese’s words ring hypocritical at the least, and incongruous, loaded and disingenuous when seen as anything else – once again revealing the disproportionality of power and influence of Zionism over our country and its leaders.
According to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), in 2023 Israel ranked as Australia’s 49th-largest two-way trading partner and 56th-largest export market, and although there has been an increase in expanded national security, defence, and cyber cooperation since the Morrison era, Australia doesn’t have a formal mutual defence alliance or treaty with Israel. But for some reason, Israel-flavoured information blocks out the sun, Zionist demands form the basis of the media, and the IHRA definition of antisemitism is now the lens from which we must obtain wrong from right.
Australia’s 48th-largest two-way trading partner doesn’t have the Zionist Federation of Australia, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), or the New Israel Fund Australia (NIF Australia). Does Australia’s 47th-largest two-way trading partner have the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce (AICC), the United Israel Appeal (UIA) Australia, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Australia? China, a country of over a billion people not committing genocide and also our largest overall trading partner, has relevant peak organisations, but nowhere close to the number of parallel entities Israel does.
The reason over eighty percent of Australians have an unfavourable opinion of Israel, the highest in the West, is reasonably simple. Australians have witnessed, for too long, the overwhelming and incessant demands of Zionists taking precedence over the public interest, propped up on a platform of artificiality by media, industry, and politics. This sentiment is exacerbated by the realisation that no form of overwhelming public opposition will be acknowledged, and compounded by the discovery that despite the stark public disenfranchisement, the small interest bipartisan elite plans to forge ahead against the democratic demands of the polis.
When Rupert Murdoch is also Netanyahu’s friend and top supporter, when Penny Wong saves her warmest handshakes for Isaac Herzog, and when the Prime Minister of a government meant to lead this country is busy cowering to the demands of religious ethno-supremacists who back a nation killing children and stoking war on several fronts – a clear and unacceptable bias breeds further contempt in Australians.
We have state and federal governments who have changed the resting state of our society to accommodate the demands of those who wish to avoid feeling uncomfortable for openly supporting genocide. Everyday Australians have had to modify the way they interface with their own communities, a chilling effect has frozen into every section of our society — and we live in a country today where our governments have elevated the words of Zionists and denigrated everyday Australians for resisting them. For going on three years straight.
Our excellent doctors have been suspended, sports stars silenced, journalists sacked, musicians destroyed, academics wrecked. To see the arrogance of Greenblatt giving us a warning, when Australians have already sacrificed so much for his ideological objectives, without a modicum of empathy towards that fact, is deplorable.
It’s not our fault that a privileged few have interests reviled by most Australians, or that they won’t put pressure on Israel rather than their fellow Australians. It is our fault for allowing members of parliament to disregard such overwhelming popular revulsion. The media and political classes have been exposed under their partiality to Zionist interests, blindly propping up the genocide of Gaza and Israeli incursions into the Middle East — a position this country simply cannot relate to any longer.
Perhaps the best thing that the Zionist interests can do to achieve their aims is to back off a little, and to keep their observations to themselves. Australians are tired of the noise, the endlessness, and the totality of Zionism that has revealed itself to be all-encompassing around our country. So far away, apparently, from Israel. Greenblatt may try to make the Opera House chant what it was not, again, for a PR win that no longer can be had — yet he speaks with delirium — with the rest of the Zionist noise machine in Australia that denies that their own actions and unconscionable support of Israel are the wellspring of antisemitism. A fact most Australians can pragmatically explain to him if he stops yelling at all of us.
“The world is watching you right now,” said Greenblatt in a fairly dramatic and ultimately disingenuous manner. Fact is, the world is watching Israel, its actions, and the hollow and hypocritical words of anyone like him. No Hasbara budget will change that. His visit to our shores will have no effect on the sentiment of Australians towards the state of Israel, or the aims of Zionists: to normalise and impose acceptance of their activity against the displaced populations of Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese and anyone else who dares to obstruct their aim for Greater Israel. His stark warnings look increasingly petty among the backdrop of death and destruction, and the trail of misery and horror that leads to Tel Aviv, and the brutal ideology he works to enable and protect.
Well said.
We are all indeed fatigued from the endless bleating of the Zionist lobby and the untested, wild, allegations made by "witnesses' before the Royal Commission.
To the extent that there is antisemitism in Australia (as opposed to legitimate criticisms of the policies of the state of Israel), it could be ended very quickly by Israel ceasing to commit genocide.
Thanks Joel. As far as Ryvchin is concerned, this Royal Commission is about Zionists' feelings, and their feelings alone. Nobody else matters. And it seems nothing will stand in the way of Ryvchin and his fellow Zionists. As long as Albanese is compliant to the wishes of Zionists, things will only get worse. Then Australia will be at risk of more tragic consequences, potentially more than Bondi.
But maybe that is what Israel wants. It only embraces its diaspora for the usefulness it provides for cover; cover for Israel to continue its pursuit of genocide and empire-building. And that usefulness includes being sacrificial to Israel's broader goals.