Liberals Create Yet another “Support Israel’s Crimes” Position
A genocidal Jewish supremacist political culture rewards, well, a genocidal Jewish supremacist. That explains Anthony Housefather’s recent appointment as Special Adviser on Jewish Community Relations and Antisemitism.
On Friday Justin Trudeau rewarded his most openly hostile caucus member with the newly created position. This gives Housefather a bigger platform to promote Israel’s holocaust in Gaza.
A longstanding advocate of apartheid, Housefather has spent the past nine months working assiduously to expand Canadian assistance to Israel’s bloodletting, which has led to 50,000 killed, 100,000 injured and the destruction of most buildings, water sources and agricultural land in Gaza.
Housefather has repeatedly smeared protesters as antisemitic and clamoured for the violent suppression of students protesting Israel’s genocide. In late November, Housefather made a solidarity trip to Israel where he met former Israeli military leaders and other officials. Previously Housefather met a Knesset member from Itamar Ben Gvir’s far right party Simcha Rothman and boasted about the Trudeau government’s voting record at the United Nations being more anti-Palestinian than Stephen Harper’s.
After Canada voted with most of the world for a ceasefire at the United Nations in December, Housefather repeatedly condemned his own government to the media. A month earlier, the Montréal MP also criticized Trudeau for his statement opposing the killing of babies. At the time CBC’s At Issue panel reported that Liberal MPs (presumably Housefather) had privately threatened to quit the party if Trudeau called for a ceasefire.
After a March 18 parliamentary vote that represented a small step towards lessening Canada’s complicity in Israel’s genocide, Housefather’s threat was formalized. In a rare form of public dissent, Housefather said he was considering quitting the Liberal caucus because of the vote and his party’s MPs applauding NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson who introduced the motion. He created a media spectacle for a week, concluding it with a column in the National Post about being a proud “Zionist”.
If another MP attempted a similar move on most any other issue they would have been expelled from the Liberal caucus. Instead, the rogue genocidal Jewish supremacist is rewarded.
At the end of January, Housefather was made Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board and then parlayed his threat to leave the party over his “hurt” feelings into the appointment as Special Envoy to Promote Israel’s holocaust in Gaza.
Housefather’s appointment further confirms what I argued in a 2016 article that led to efforts to cancel my ability to speak publicly. I wrote, “‘Anti-Semitism’ may be the most abused term in Canada today. Almost entirely divorced from its dictionary definition — “discrimination against or prejudice or hostility toward Jews” — it is now primarily invoked to uphold Jewish and white privilege… Without an intervention of some sort, the Jewish community risks having future dictionaries defining “antisemitism” as “a movement for justice and equality.”
Since that time the antisemitism apparatus has grown significantly.
As Special Adviser on Jewish Community Relations and Antisemitism, Housefather will work with Trudeau’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism Deborah Lyons (who hosted a pizza party for Canadians fighting in Israeli military while ambassador). They’ll seek to enforce the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s anti Palestinian definition of antisemitism, which the Liberals adopted and have made all Canadian Heritage grantees adhere to. They’ll work with the publicly funded Holocaust museums and monuments, which use Nazi crimes to enable Israel’s holocaust in Gaza today.
They’ll probably also coordinate with the University of Ottawa’s Special Advisor on Antisemitism and a host of other similar new ventures, such as Canadian Women Against Antisemitism, campaigning in support of Israel’s horrors in Gaza.
History will not judge the antisemitism industry kindly. Claiming oppression to justify apartheid and genocide is odious and honest people know it.
Trendy Appointments: Australia’s Special Antisemitism Envoy
Was there any need for this? Australia’s Albanese government, harried by the conservative opposition for going soft on pro-Palestinian protests and the war in Gaza while allegedly wobbling on supporting Israel, has decided to bring a touch of bureaucracy to the show. Australia now has its first antisemitism envoy, a title that sits in that odd constellation of deceptive names that can be misread for darkly comic effect. We see them often: the professor of homelessness who might be confused for encouraging it, or a researcher in genocide studies who might be misunderstood for being a practitioner.
When a government is in trouble, new committees are born, officials appointed, and fresh positions created. An essential lesson in governing is to give the impression of governing, however badly, or ineffectually, it might prove to be. Best to also badge the effort with some lexical trendiness, ever important for the shortsighted and easily distracted.
On this occasion, “social cohesion” is the ephemeral term that saddles the enterprise. In the words of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, “There is no place for violence, hatred or discrimination of any kind in Australia.” As part of the government’s efforts “to promote social cohesion, we have appointed Jillian Segal AO as Special Envoy to combat Antisemitism.”
In a press release, the PM turns social worker and community healer – all in the name of social cohesion, a vapid term which, read a different way, can be construed as not rocking the boat, or upsetting any applecarts. Call it tolerable muzzling, or permissible dissent. “Australians are deeply concerned about this conflict, and many are hurting. In times like this, Australians must come together, not be torn apart.” Having “built our nation’s social cohesion together over generations [Australians] must work together to uphold, defend and preserve it.”
Albanese explains that the appointment of a special office with a singular purpose is nonetheless intended to reflect a universal aspiration. “Every Australian, no matter their race or religion, should be able to feel safe and at home in any community, without prejudice or discrimination.” A noble sentiment. Then, the throwaway line, the gentle flick: “We have advocated for a two-state solution on the world stage, at the United Nations.”
Duly stated, Albanese goes on to speak of the specialised role of Segal, who “will listen and engage with Jewish Australians, the wider Australian community, religious discrimination experts and all levels of government on the most effective way to combat Antisemitism.” She will keep company with “other Special Envoys to combat Antisemitism” in attending the World Jewish Congress to be held in Argentina next week.
The new appointee conveyed the gravity of her appointment. “Antisemitism is an age-old hatred,” Segal explained. “It has the capacity to lie dormant through good times and then in times of crisis like pandemic, which we’ve experienced, economic downturn, war, it awakens, it triggers the very worst instincts in an individual to fear, to blame others for life’s misfortunes and to hate.” Listening to such comments conveys a hermetic impression, one which resists explication on cause and effect. They serve to cauterise the grotesquery of war and obscure the fury it engenders in those who respond.
In what is becoming a force of habit, Albanese’s announcement had the scouring effect on the very cohesion he was praising. While also announcing that a Special Envoy for Islamophobia was in the works, with details to “be announced shortly”, the impression was unmistakable: the concerns and fears of one group had been chronologically privileged and elevated in the pantheon of policy.
The response from the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) expressed that very sentiment. The move of appointing “a taxpayer-funded special envoy on antisemitism” was “particularly concerning as it singles out antisemitism for special government investment and attention, while failing to address the increasingly frequent and severe forms of racism experienced by Palestinians, Muslims, First Nations people and other marginalised communities.”
APAN President Nasser Mashni expanded on the theme: “This seems to be yet another example of the Australian Government pandering to pro-Israel groups, and pitting parts of the Jewish community against the Palestinian Muslim communities – and against each other – rather than working to realise equal right and justice for all.” Not too socially cohesive, then.
The organisation also worried that the creation of a dedicated office to combat one form of religious and ethnic prejudice was at odds with current work to combat “existing systemic approaches to anti-racism” being undertaken by the Australian Human Rights Commission’s recently appointed Race Discrimination Commissioner.
To show that such concerns were not confined to non-Jewish voices, Sarah Schwartz of the Jewish Council of Australia’s executive office saw the appointment as needlessly provocative. “We are concerned that an anti-Semitism envoy in Australia … will increase racism and division by pitting Jewish communities against Palestinian, Muslim and other racialised communities.”
While Segal’s appointment has already disturbed the policy waters, the looming question is what tangible effect it will have. Having now named an official for the specific task of combating a phenomenon time immemorial, the assumption is that it can be drawn out and struck down in isolation.
This raises a host of concerns. At what point, for instance, does criticism of Israel’s particularly brutal Gaza campaign veer into the fetid swamps of antisemitic indulgence? Will pro-Palestinian protestors, activists and advocates have reason to fear even greater scrutiny, in public fora or the universities? The latter question has already interested the opposition for some months, hungry for the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry into claims of antisemitism on Australian university campuses.
In this case, the government may well have inflated a specific problem by creating an office to combat it. Well-wishers will say that this is necessary to combat a monstrous blight that, if not addressed, infects the polity. But those left out in the naming game of social cohesion are already gnashing their teeth and demanding their own representatives.
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.
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