Why Criticising Israel Isn’t Anti-Semitic

Australians should be able to hold two truths at once: antisemitism is real and rising, and criticism of Israel’s policies and actions isn’t the same thing as hatred of Jewish people. Judaism is a diverse community and identity; Israel is a nation-state with a government, laws, and military actions in Palestine that can and should be scrutinised.

If human rights mean anything, they have to apply consistently - no matter whose flag is involved. That includes both Jewish and Palestinian safety and dignity.

Here’s the simplest way to see the category error. I can condemn the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls - erasure of their education, autonomy, and basic freedoms - without that being Islamophobia. That’s not me “hating Muslims”. It’s me objecting to human rights abuses by a regime. I’m opposing policies, coercion, and use of state power to dominate and dehumanise.

The same logic also applies to Israel is a state. Judaism is a religion and a peoplehood with extraordinary diversity - spiritually, culturally, ethically, politically. Palestinians are a people with the right to live in safety, dignity, and freedom. Those truths can both exist at once. And they must, if we’re serious about human rights rather than tribal loyalty.

One of the most helpful interventions in this debate has come from Jewish Australians themselves. The Jewish Council of Australia put it plainly: “Antisemitism is the hatred of Jewish people as Jews, it is not antisemitic to criticise Israel’s military actions or support Palestinian freedom and human rights.”

Read that again. It doesn’t minimise antisemitism - it defines it accurately, and it refuses to weaponise it.

Because weaponisation has consequences. It paints Jewish people as a monolith who must answer for the actions of a foreign government. It tells Palestinians and their allies that their grief and their demands for equal rights are suspect. And it turns critique of state violence, occupation, blockade, displacement, and civilian harm into a culture-war. A slanging match where the loudest voices “win” by making others too frightened to speak.

If you want further proof that criticism of Israeli government policy isn’t inherently anti-Jewish, you don’t have to look far. Israeli Jews have built and sustained a whole community of dissent. Journalists, academics, former soldiers, lawyers, and human rights advocates are arguing fiercely about what is being done in their name.

Take Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organisation. It has stated plainly that “the crime against humanity of apartheid is being committed in the West Bank.”

This isn’t a fringe outsider smearing Jews. This is a respected Israeli organisation using the language of international law to criticise Israel’s actions in the occupied territory. If that kind of critique exists robustly within Israeli society, then labelling similar critique elsewhere as antisemitic starts to look less like protection and more like censorship-by-shame.

None of this means antisemitism isn’t real. It is. It’s ancient, adaptive, and lethal - and right now it is rising in many places, often alongside other racisms. Australia just saw it plainly at the tragic Bondi massacre. Like all of us, Jewish people are entitled to safety, to dignity, and to public life without harassment or fear. Full stop.

But clarity matters. And clarity means saying: antisemitism is hatred of Jews because they are Jews - not opposition to the policies and actions of the state of Israel.

Where people go wrong is when they blur the line between a state and a people. It’s antisemitic to hold all Jewish people responsible for what Israel’s government does. It’s antisemitic to target Jewish Australians and synagogues, to recycle classic conspiracies about secret control, and to dehumanise Jews. These are lazy ways to shock rather than think. It’s also morally rotten to use Palestinian suffering as a pretext for bigotry.

For the avoidance of doubt: condemning the October 7 massacre and kidnappings isn’t anti-Palestinian - it’s a rejection of atrocities committed Hamas, not a judgement on an entire people. But what is anti-Palestinian racism - and often Islamophobia too - is to declare that Palestinian solidarity is inherently hateful, or to treat Palestinian grief as less legitimate, less human, less speakable. When people are told that “Free Palestine” is a coded threat, the implication is that Palestinian freedom itself is unsayable. That’s not a path to safety. It’s a path to silencing.

So let’s insist on a better standard - one that’s braver, kinder and more precise.

Criticise governments and their actions. Defend communities. Refuse racism and human rights abuses in all directions. And do so peacefully and respectfully. Without hate.

And if you’re serious about justice, don’t let anyone bully you into choosing between opposing antisemitism and supporting Palestinian human rights. They both matter. because whole point of human rights is that they aren’t conditional on whose suffering is politically convenient.

Israel is a country, not a people. Not all Jews are Israelis. Israelis criticise Israel.